The satirical history of England, 1066 And All That, explained that history came to a full stop after the first world war, when America overtook England as Top Nation.

讽刺性的英国历史书《1066那堆事》(1066 And All That)阐释了，历史在一战后画下一个句号，从那时起，美国取代英格兰成为世界“顶尖国家”（Top Nation）。

The concept of Top Nation was very much on the agenda at a K?nigswinter conference I attended recently. Guests were preoccupied¹ with the contest between China and the US to become the Top Nation of the 21st century. And yet, as parallel sessions debated the future of the EU, I realised that there was an underlying² debate between two different views of the world. For foreign policy experts, America is Top Nation. But, from an economic perspective, perhaps it is Denmark.

在我最近于柯尼希斯温特(K?nigswinter)参加的一次会议上，“顶尖国家”的概念是一项重要议程。与会者都专注于中国与美国为成为21世纪“顶尖国家”而展开的竞赛。不过，在同时进行的会议就欧盟的未来展开辩论的时候，我发现这其中还存在两种不同世界观之间的潜在辩论。在外交政策专家看来，美国是“顶尖国家”；但从经济层面而言，也许丹麦才是“顶尖国家”。

In 1066 And All That, Top Nation is defined by its ability to push other people around. The British empire, on which the sun never set and in which Queen Victoria was empress of an India she had never even visited, epitomised Top Nationhood.

在《1066那堆事》一书中，“顶尖国家”是依据一个国家摆布其他人的能力来定义的。大英帝国便是“顶尖国家”的例子，它拥有日不落的版图，从未到过印度的维多利亚女王(Queen Victoria)却是印度女皇。

But Denmark has lost interest in pushing other people around. In the past two centuries the kingdom it has lost Norway, Schleswig-Holstein and Iceland, and Greenland will probably find its own resource-rich independence before long. No one much minds. Denmark is small, socially cohesive³ and very rich. In international surveys of happiness, the country is usually at or close to the top.

但是丹麦对摆布其他人已经失去了兴趣。过去两个世纪中，丹麦王国相继失去了挪威、石勒苏益格-荷尔斯泰因(Schleswig-Holstein)以及冰岛，要不了多久，资源丰富的格陵兰岛很可能也会寻求独立。没人太在乎。丹麦是一个社会和谐而又非常富有的小国。在国际幸福指数调查中，丹麦通常排名第一或是排前几名。

Of course, Denmark is also rather boring. Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People describes “Jante Law” — the crushing conformity⁴ and self-satisfaction of small towns in his adopted country. Still, after a century in which the European continent was riven by two catastrophic wars that now seem both distant and absurd (there was something surreal about travelling to that K?nigswinter conference through a landscape that still bore the scars of the 1945 battle for Berlin), most Europeans think boring is good.

当然，丹麦也相当乏味。迈克尔?布思(Michael Booth)在其所著的《下一个全球超级典范：北欧》(The Almost Nearly Perfect People)中描述了“詹代法则”(Jante Law)——即在他所加入国籍的那个国家的小镇中那种绝对的一致性和自我满足。不过，在上个世纪欧洲大陆遭遇过两次现在看来似乎既遥远又荒谬的灾难性战争的撕裂后（在前往柯尼希斯温特开会的途中所经过的一段风景，仍然保留着1945年柏林战役的伤疤，让人有种不真实的感觉），绝大多数欧洲人都认为乏味是件好事。

The English once suffered from Norman Angell’s “Great Illusion”: the British journalist and Labour MP argued in his 1909 book against the myth he argued that prosperity was the product of aggressive control of territory and resources — and now we know better. The wealth of Denmark is instead built on exporting bacon and drugs to control diabetes[ANY SOURCE/ LINK WE CAN INCLUDE?] — an appropriate combination — around the world. That kind of global engagement is now enough for most Europeans. Last year’s Scottish independence referendum was, to a degree, a choice between political and economic concepts of Top Nationhood. Did Scots want to renew the UK’s Trident nuclear submarines — the enfeebled modern assertion that Britannia rules the waves — or would they rather be like Denmark?

英国人曾一度抱有诺曼?安杰尔(Norman Angell)所说的“大幻觉”(The Great Illusion)：这位当过记者、也当过工党(Labour)议员的英国人在其1909年所著的书中，对一种谬论进行了驳斥，即繁荣是对领土和资源进行侵略性控制的产物——如今我们都清楚这是谬论。相反，丹麦的财富是建立在向全球出口培根（bacon，即咸猪肉——编者注）和控制糖尿病药物（这是一个恰当的组合）上的。如今这种国际参与度对多数欧洲人来说已经足够了。从某种程度而言，去年的苏格兰独立公投就是在政治概念上的“顶尖国家”与经济概念上的“顶尖国家”之间的一次选择。苏格兰人是想要续订英国的“三叉戟”(Trident)核潜艇（当代版不列颠尼亚统治海洋的无力主张），还是宁愿做像丹麦那样的国家？

As aspects of that Scottish debate showed, complacency and insularity⁵ can be taken too far. In the 1970s Mogens Glistrup’s Progress party, which proposed to replace Denmark’s defence forces with a recorded announcement in Russian saying “we surrender”, became the second-largest party in the country’s parliament. Another candidate for economic Top Nation is Switzerland, which has for centuries successfully maintained the slightly more assertive⁶ principle of “If you do not bother us, we will not bother you”. Glistrup went too far when he sought to declare Denmark a Muslim-free zone. Yet in last week’s election, the Danish People’s party, successor to his Progress party, won more than 20 per cent of the vote.

正如苏独辩论的一些方面所表明的那样，自满和岛国性可能会走得太过火。在上世纪70年代，莫恩斯?格利斯楚普(Mogens Glistrup)所领导的进步党(Progress Party)成为丹麦议会的第二大政党，该党曾提议以“我们投降”的俄语录音取代丹麦的国防力量。瑞士是另一个经济意义上“顶尖国家”的候选国，几个世纪以来它一直成功保持着一个略微强硬一点的原则——“人不犯我，我不犯人”。当格利斯楚普试图宣布丹麦为非穆斯林区域时，他做过头了。不过，在不久前的选举中，从进步党中分离出来的丹麦人民党(Danish People’s Party)赢得了逾20%的选票。

Some economists⁷ view Top Nationhood in a different way: has Chinese gross domestic product yet overtaken that of the US? [IS THIS RHETORICAL? ANY LINK TO A DEBATE OF THE KIND YOU REFER TO?]Will India’s burgeoning⁸ population and economic growth eventually give it the largest GDP of all? But I have never understood why this competition is interesting, except as a guide to the resources available to support a military version of Top Nation. And that is not a competition that India, like Denmark, seems to want to enter. To the benefit, not just of Indians and Danes, but of the whole world.

有一些经济学家看待“顶尖国家”的角度则不同：中国的国内生产总值(GDP)已经超越美国了吗？印度迅速膨胀的人口和经济增速最终会使其成为全球GDP最高的国家吗？但是我从来都没能理解这种竞赛有什么意思，除了它可以帮助我们理解哪些资源可用于支撑军事版“顶尖国家”。并且这种竞赛似乎并非是印度（或丹麦）希望加入的。不仅对印度人和丹麦人，这对整个世界都是件好事。