美国“全球领导权”话语: 认知误区与反思

“Global leadership” is one of the most important aspects in the self-identification of the United States. Although American political elites may disagree over how to best exert America’s global leadership, it has been a longstanding consensus that the United States should and must defend its “global leadership.” Within this unquestioned consensus, however, there exist many misperceptions, such as the inevitability and indispensability of U.S. global leadership, and its benevolence and universal acceptance. By criticizing these misperceptions, this article argues that as a discursive construct, U.S. “global leadership” has had profoundly negative effect on U.S. foreign policy and in particular U.S.-China relations. Insofar as the U.S. continues to believe in the righteousness and necessity of its “global leadership,” China’s development will continue to be seen as a challenge to that leadership, making it difficult to build a new type of great power relationship between the two countries. The article argues that both the U.S. and China should forgo the myths of “global leadership,” and commit themselves to becoming a “responsible great power.”