For some, it will always be 1939. We are forever telling ourselves how, in the 1930s, the US and Britain underestimated the threat from Germany and Japan, how Winston Churchill alone among western leaders saw the danger and summoned his country to a defence of democracy against the Nazis. The 70 years of American leadership following the second world war were a catalogue of Churchillian moments, from the Berlin airlift to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
对某些人来说,世界永远停留在1939年。我们不停地告诉自己,上世纪30年代时,美英是怎样低估了德国和日本的威胁,西方领导人中唯独温斯顿•邱吉尔(Winston Churchill)一人看出危险,并号召他的国人捍卫民主,抗击纳粹(Nazis)。美国在二战后持续70年的领头,不乏这样的“丘吉尔时刻”——从柏林空运(1948年第一次柏林危机期间美国借助大规模空运挫败苏联对西柏林的封锁——译者注)到柏林墙的倒塌。