How do states’ desires to perform an international-societal role interact with the imperative to safeguard their security in an anarchic international system? Using the case of the contemporary United Kingdom, this article explores the tensions between roleplay and realpolitik – gaining social recognition as a particular kind of state while doing what it takes to survive – through one key role conception, “Great Power”. Recent scholarship has dubbed Britain a “residual Great Power”: lacking the wherewithal to impose regional order through preponderance, it is still cast into the role of militarized international order-upholder by the allies whose support is necessary for such rolesustainment, America and France. Yet this role-based approach sets a different threshold on capability than the requirement to undertake survival-essential military missions, independent of potentially unreliable allies’ charity – realists’ understanding of “great power”. Theoretically, therefore, the article demonstrates that roleplay and realpolitik remain separate incentive structures underlying states’ foreign policy choices. Empirically, meanwhile, the article shows – through opportunity-cost force-posture analysis – that contemporary Britain is torn between the logics. Striving for independent self-protection capabilities, above-and-beyond the “residual power” criterion, London nonetheless makes a residual power’s implicit assumptions about alliance support in the deployment of those capabilities. 1 Author’s Note: I thank Stephane Baele, Joslyn Barnhart Trager, Gregorio Bettiza, Richard Foord, Andrej Krickovic, Patrick Porter, Carsten Schulz, Henning Tamm, Catarina Thomson, Kit Waterman, participants in the 2017 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, participants in the University of Exeter’s Centre for Advanced International Studies seminar series, the anonymous reviewers, and especially Helena Mills for invaluable comments on versions of this article. Two Visions of Greatness: Roleplay and Realpolitik in UK Strategic Posture 2 Nothing animates British foreign and defense policy elites like obsessing over their country’s “role” in the world, and the gnawing subtext, whether Britain is still “Great.” Dean Acheson’s oft-invoked 1962 barb to U.S. Military Academy cadets that “Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role” – front-page news in an outraged London (Brinkley 1990:601) – touched a nerve. The post-Cold War “unipolar moment” of U.S.-led Western dominance (Krauthammer 1990-91; Wohlforth 1999), with its “end-of-history” optimism and scope for UK leadership of humanitarian foreign-policy initiatives (Cook 1997; Blair 1999), provided a brief respite from the hand-wringing. But post-2001 embroilment in Washington’s flawed “Global War on Terror” alongside fiscal overstretch since the 2008-9 financial crisis has returned rolethemed soul-searching to Britain’s strategy-making community. The just-elected ConservativeLiberal coalition government’s 2010 National Security Strategy and accompanying Strategic Defence and Security Review (NSS/SDSR) – the official effort at squaring expansive global commitments with newly-straitened circumstances – began by asserting that national strategy must consider what “role” Britain wants to “play” in the world (HM Government 2010a:4). Policymakers and pundits invoke an allegedly “special” UK world role as a rationale for foreignpolicy decisions, while scholars utilize role-based analyses of Britain’s international position and strategic choices. With Britain’s exit from the European Union (“Brexit”) looming, British role concerns have also contributed to a major recent international-systemic shock (Blagden 2017:8-9) and will be prominent in public debate for the foreseeable future (Landale 2016; Nougayrède 2016). Indeed, Prime Minister Theresa May has felt compelled to explicitly reassert Britain’s “confident role” as a “global power” as Brexit unfolds (Giles and Martin 2017; The

中文翻译：

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伟大的两种愿景：英国战略态势中的角色扮演和现实政治

在无政府主义的国际体系中，国家扮演国际社会角色的愿望如何与维护其安全的必要性相互作用？本文以当代英国为例，通过一个关键的角色概念“大国”，探讨了角色扮演与现实政治之间的紧张关系——作为一种特殊国家获得社会认可，同时为生存而努力。最近的学术将英国称为“残余大国”：由于缺乏通过优势强加地区秩序的必要手段，它仍然被美国和法国等盟国赋予军事化国际秩序维护者的角色，这些盟国的支持是维持这种角色所必需的。然而，这种基于角色的方法为能力设定了不同的门槛，而不是承担生存必不可少的军事任务的要求，独立于可能不可靠的盟友的慈善——现实主义者对“大国”的理解。因此，从理论上讲，本文表明角色扮演和现实政治仍然是国家外交政策选择背后的独立激励结构。同时，从经验上看，这篇文章通过机会成本力量态势分析表明，当代英国在逻辑之间左右为难。伦敦努力争取独立的自我保护能力，超越“剩余力量”标准，尽管如此，伦敦仍然对联盟支持在部署这些能力时做出了隐含的假设。1 作者注：感谢 Stephane Baele、Joslyn Barnhart Trager、Gregorio Bettiza、Richard Foord、Andrej Krickovic、Patrick Porter、Carsten Schulz、Henning Tamm、Catarina Thomson、Kit Waterman，国际研究协会 2017 年年会的参与者，埃克塞特大学高级国际研究中心系列研讨会的参与者，匿名审稿人，尤其是 Helena Mills 对本文各版本的宝贵意见。伟大的两种愿景：英国战略态势中的角色扮演和现实政治 2 没有什么比英国外交和国防政策精英更关注本国在世界上的“角色”，以及英国是否仍然“伟大”的潜台词了。迪恩·艾奇逊 (Dean Acheson) 经常引用 1962 年对美国的指责 军事学院学员“英国失去了一个帝国，但尚未找到一个角色”——愤怒的伦敦的头版新闻（布林克利 1990：601）——触动了神经。冷战后美国领导的西方主导地位的“单极时刻”（Krauthammer 1990-91；Wohlforth 1999），其“历史终结”乐观主义和英国领导人道主义外交政策倡议的范围（Cook 1997； Blair 1999 年），提供了一个短暂的喘息之机。但 2001 年之后，华盛顿有缺陷的“全球反恐战争”陷入困境，加上自 2008-9 年金融危机以来的财政过度扩张，英国的战略制定社区重新开始以角色为主题的自我反省。刚刚选出的保守宗教联盟政府2010年国家安全战略和伴随的战略国防和安全审查（NSS / SDSR） - 以新近的情况平衡全球承诺的正式努力 - 开始通过断言国家战略必须考虑“角色”英国想在世界上“玩”（英国政府 2010a:4）。政策制定者和权威人士援引所谓的“特殊”英国世界角色作为外交政策决策的依据，而学者则利用基于角色的英国国际地位和战略选择分析。随着英国退出欧盟（“Brexit”）迫在眉睫，英国角色的担忧也导致了近期的重大国际系统性冲击（Blagden 2017：8-9），并且在可预见的未来将在公共辩论中突出（Landale 2016 ; 牛轧糖 2016）。事实上，随着英国退欧的展开，英国首相特蕾莎·梅不得不明确重申英国作为“全球大国”的“自信角色”（Giles and Martin 2017；The