LONDON — “We have fought colonialism and defeated it and we still fight imperialism and we will fight it whenever it manifests itself.” So claimed South Africa’s sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, recently. He was talking not of war or invasion but about the F.B.I.’s investigation into corruption involving FIFA, world soccer’s governing body. Other officials from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean have expressed similar sentiments.

伦敦——“我们曾经反抗并战胜殖民主义，我们至今仍在反抗帝国主义，只要它一冒头，我们就会和它战斗。”南非体育部长菲基利·姆巴鲁拉(Fikile Mbalula)近日如是宣告。他说的不是战争或侵略，而是美国联邦调查局(FBI)对世界足球管理机构FIFA的腐败调查。还有一些非洲、亚洲和加勒比海地区的官员表达了类似的看法。

Western commentators have equally viewed the FIFA scandal as a grand geopolitical confrontation. In The Financial Times, the journalist Simon Kuper compared FIFA’s departing president, Sepp Blatter, to Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro. “Like Saddam Hussein, Mr. Blatter has now been removed by a crusading U.S.,” he wrote.

西方评论人士同样视FIFA丑闻为一场宏大的地缘政治冲突。《金融时报》(Financial Times)记者西蒙·库珀尔(Simon Kuper)把即将离职的FIFA主席赛普·布拉特(Sepp Blatter)比作约瑟夫·斯大林(Joseph Stalin)和菲德尔·卡斯特罗(Fidel Castro)。“和萨达姆·侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)一样，布拉特先生被东征的美国十字军除掉了，”他写道。

James Kirchick, a fellow at the think tank Foreign Policy Initiative, claimed that Mr. Blatter “resembles nothing more than one of the tinpot dictators America overthrows every decade or so” as it takes on “the burden of maintaining the liberal world order.”

美国智库外交政策倡议(Foreign Policy Initiative)的研究员詹姆斯·吉尔切克(James Kirchick)称，布拉特“跟美国每隔几年就要推翻一个的下三滥独裁者并无不同”，因为这个国家“肩负着维护自由世界秩序的使命。”

How did a story about corruption in an international sporting organization turn into an overblown debate about colonialism, military intervention and liberal values? To answer that, we need to understand how both soccer and politics have changed in recent decades.

一个国际体育组织的腐败问题，为什么会变成一场关于殖民主义、军事干预和自由主义价值的大讨论？要弄清个中缘由，我们首先需要知道，过去几十年来足球和政治发生了怎样的变化。

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in Paris in 1904, initially comprising only European nations. By World War II, FIFA had added a few South American members. After the war, there was a major expansion as many newly independent states from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean joined. Yet FIFA continued, in effect, to be governed as though it were an exclusive European club — until 1974, when João Havelange, a Brazilian, won election as FIFA’s president.

国际足球联合会(Fédération Internationale de Football Association)是1904年在巴黎成立的，最初的成员全是欧洲国家。到了第二次世界大战，FIFA已经有了一些南美国家成员。战后的一次大规模扩张吸纳了亚洲、非洲和加勒比海地区的许多刚刚独立的国家。然而实际上FIFA的大权始终掌握在欧洲手上——这一点直到1974年才有所改变，当时巴西人若昂·阿维兰热(João Havelange)当选主席。

Mr. Havelange transformed the organization. He expanded the World Cup competition to teams from nations outside Europe and South America, and made the tournament a major money-spinning enterprise, with sponsorship from companies like Adidas and Coca-Cola. And he oversaw a huge increase in revenues from television rights.

阿维兰热给这个机构带来天翻地覆的变化。他将世界杯(the World Cup)的比赛拓展到了欧洲和南美以外的国家，并把这项赛事变成了一台赚钱机器，吸引阿迪达斯(Adidas)和可口可乐(Coca-Cola)这样的大公司进行赞助。电视转播授权收入在他任内也大幅增长。

Mr. Havelange was also dogged during his 24-year presidency by allegations of corruption. Andrew Jennings, a British investigative journalist, told a Brazilian Senate hearing in 2011 that Mr. Havelange may have amassed $50 million in bribes. When Mr. Blatter became president in 1998, he picked up where Mr. Havelange left off — using FIFA largess to consolidate a power base among African, Asian and Caribbean federations.

在任主席的24年里，阿维兰热一直遭到腐败的指控。2011年，英国调查记者安德鲁·詹宁斯(Andrew Jennings)在一次巴西参议院听证会上说，阿维兰热可能累计收取了5000万美元的贿赂。1998年成为主席的布拉特继续阿维兰热的策略——利用FIFA的财力，在非洲、亚洲和加勒比海国家中建立了牢固的权力基础。

Branko Milanovic, an economist who specializes in development and inequality, believes that corruption is the price we must pay for a more inclusive world: FIFA could not have developed soccer in poor countries without corrupt practices. The choice, he claims, is either “a less unequal society with greater corruption, or an autocratic, elite-run society with less corruption.”

从事发展和不平等研究的经济学家布兰科·米兰诺维奇(Branko Milanovic)认为，要想让世界更具包容性，腐败是必须付出的代价：FIFA如果没有腐败手段，就不可能在穷国发展足球。在他看来，世界只有两条路可走，要么“更腐败但没那么不平等，要么权贵一手遮天但没那么腐败”。

Really? After all, what makes many non-Western countries corrupt is precisely that they are run for the benefit of a small elite, with little democratic accountability. Nor is corruption unknown in the West — either in soccer or in finance. Witness the 2006 disgrace of the Italian soccer club Juventus for bribing referees and the 2012 Libor scandal, in which Barclays, UBS and other banks were fined millions of dollars for manipulating interest rates.

真的吗？许多非西方国家的腐败，说到底正是因为它们在为一小撮权贵谋福利，不需要接受什么民主问责。而西方也不是没有腐败——无论是足球还是金融领域。且看2006年意大利尤文图斯足球俱乐部(Juventus)贿赂裁判的可耻事件，以及2012年的伦敦银行间同业拆借利率(Libor)丑闻，后者导致巴克莱银行(Barclays)、瑞银(UBS)等多家银行因操纵利率被罚款数亿美元。

Greg Dyke, chairman of the England Football Association, has claimed that only the West can clean up the mess of FIFA because there is “a set of values which you find in Western Europe, and in America, and in Australia, that don’t apply everywhere.” Yet five years ago, when England was bidding to host the 2018 World Cup, the soccer authorities described British media investigations into FIFA corruption as “unpatriotic.” Even the prime minister, David Cameron, who last week demanded at an international summit meeting a global crackdown on the “cancer” of corruption, said he, too, was “frustrated” by the media scrutiny of FIFA. Only after England lost its bid, to Russia, did Britain’s leaders discover the need to crusade against corruption.

英格兰足球总会(England Football Association)主席格雷格·戴克(Greg Dyke)声称，只有西方能清理FIFA这个烂摊子，因为“在西欧，在美国，在澳大利亚，你能找到一套别的地方不见得有的价值观。”然而五年前英格兰竞逐2018年世界杯举办权的时候，这个足球权力机构称调查FIFA腐败行径的英国媒体“不爱国”。连戴维·卡梅伦(David Cameron)也曾表示媒体对FIFA的不依不饶令他倍感“烦恼”，而这位英国首相上周又在一个国际峰会上呼吁全球各国打击腐败“癌瘤”。直到英格兰在申办中输给了俄罗斯，英国的领导人们才意识到讨伐腐败的必要性。

From Hitler’s propaganda exploitation of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games to the campaign in the 1970s to isolate apartheid South Africa, sport and politics have long been intertwined. In the past, however, the sporting arena was an extension of wider political struggles. The debate over FIFA suggests that sport today has come not to reflect politics, as in the past, but also, in some sense, to substitute for it.

从希特勒将1936年柏林奥运会变成政宣舞台，到1970年代对实施种族隔离制度的南非加以孤立，体育和政治早已纠缠不清。然而在过去，体育竞技场是广泛政治斗争的一种延伸。围绕FIFA展开的争论表明，如今的体育已经不像以前那样是政治的反映，某种意义上，它已经成为政治的替代品。

In the global South, the movements that led the struggle against colonialism are often today the instigators of tyranny and injustice. Saber-rattling rhetoric against F.B.I. “imperialists” provides a useful make-believe conflict for leaders who have given up on the cause of creating a better world. Ironically, their arguments find a mirror image among Western politicians and commentators, who view the F.B.I. investigation as a necessary expression of American power.

在南方国家(the Global South)，昔日的反殖民斗争运动，如今却时常促成了专制与不公。对那些无心去改善这世界的领导人来说，用剑弩拔张的语言形容来自FBI的“帝国主义者”，可以制造一场有利于他们的虚假冲突。讽刺的是，他们的说法在西方政治和评论人士中找到的呼应，这些人也把FBI的调查看作是美国力量在进行必不可少的伸张。

“Only the U.S. could or would” challenge FIFA, suggested the Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman. Or as Kevin Glass, a policy director at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, tweeted: “World War I. World War II. Communism. FIFA. Just another in the line of things that America has to fix since everyone else cannot.” After the F.B.I. takedown of FIFA officials, Mr. Kirchick assured us that “the world is a much better place thanks to American hegemony.”

《金融时报》专栏作家吉迪恩·拉赫曼(Gideon Rachman)表示，“只有美国有能力或有意愿”挑战FIFA。或者正如富兰克林政公中心公司(Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity)政策主管凯文·格拉斯(Kevin Glass)在Twitter上所说：“一战、二战、共产主义、FIFA。这只是美国必须解决的一系列问题中的又一个而已，因为别人都无能为力。”在FBI拿下FIFA官员之后，吉尔切克向我们保证，“感谢美国霸权把世界变成了一个更好的地方。”

Such extravagant claims actually hint at a broader anxiety about American power. From Ukraine to the Islamic State, American hegemony is, in reality, being sorely tested. To imagine that an F.B.I. investigation bears comparison to resisting Hitler or challenging Communism — or even bringing down Saddam Hussein — reveals not the strength, but the weakness, of American power today.

这种夸张的说法其实暗示了对美国权力的更广泛的焦虑。从乌克兰到伊斯兰国(Islamic State)，美国霸权事实上受到了严峻考验。在思维中，把一次FBI调查与抵抗希特勒(Hitler)或挑战共产主义——甚至是打到萨达姆·侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)——相提并论，揭示了当今美国力量的嬴弱，而不是它的强大。

Neither Mr. Blatter’s friends nor his foes seem willing to allow a corruption investigation to be simply that. The F.B.I. probe will no doubt expose many ugly truths about soccer’s finances. But the surreal debate over the FIFA scandal has already told us much about the state of contemporary geopolitics.

布拉特的朋友和敌人似乎都不愿意让一次腐败调查仅限于此。FBI的调查必定会暴露许多关于足球界财务状况的丑陋事实。但是，关于FIFA丑闻的超现实争论，已经向我们透露了许多关于当代地缘政治状况的信息。