How Trump's military parade draws comparisons to Russia, China

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

Up to 7,500 troops, 120 vehicles and 50 aircraft will take to the streets and skies of Washington, D.C. on June 14 to celebrate the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary. The event coincides with Trump's 79th birthday. It also marks a rare example of an official military parade taking place inside the United States.
Trump's desire to hold a parade has been linked to his 2017 attendance of France's annual Bastille Day, which celebrates that nation's revolutionary history, values and culture. After marveling at the showcase of tanks and fighter jets along the Champs-Elysee in Paris, Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron he wanted to "top" it. "It was one of the greatest parades I've ever seen," he added a few months later. "It was military might."
But the French parade is not at its core a display of military power, historians and military experts say. Countries from Iran to North Korea that regularly indulge in large military parades in front of the world's cameras do so in part to send aggressive political and propagandistic messages to adversaries at home and abroad.
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"There's definitely a correlation between putting on a military parade and authoritarian regimes," said Markus Schiller, CEO of Munich, Germany-based company ST Analytics, an aerospace and security consultancy.
"These parades are about sending message to other countries and also to domestic political rivals," he said.
"You won't seen any parades like this in Germany or Norway or Australia because they cost a lot of money and everybody would just shake their heads and say, 'Why does the government need to do this?'"
Trump has said the parade's cost will be a bargain.
"It's peanuts compared to the value of doing it," he said. "We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we're going to celebrate it."
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The U.S. government has sponsored military parades previously. Troops, tanks and war planes have also shown up at American presidential inaugurations, including those of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. The last high-profile military parade was in 1991, to commemorate the end of the Gulf War.
Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are among nations who routinely stage grand parades featuring military personnel and hardware such as missile systems, goose-stepping troops, tanks and other armored vehicles.
On May 9, Russia's President Vladimir Putin hosted China's President Xi Jinping and more than 20 other world leaders as thousands of troops and columns of trucks carrying drones and other weapons paraded through Red Square. The highly choreographed annual event commemorates the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany. The drones, displayed for the first time, were an apparent reference to Russia's deadly use of them in Ukraine.
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According to a planning document seen by USA TODAY, the parade on June 14 and a series of related events in Washington, D.C., beginning the first week of June, will cost up to $45 million.
On the day of the parade, there will be a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery and a festival on the National Mall featuring Army equipment displays and demonstrations. The day will culminate with a parade through the city and an enlistment ceremony presided over by Trump - and fireworks. The parade will salute the Army's heritage from the Revolutionary War to the present, with soldiers in period uniforms.
Putting a finger on military power
Lyle Goldstein is a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
He said that while overseas military parades are often associated with authoritarian regimes "whose goals are manifested by the parade, and a lot of those goals relate to nationalism," parades can serve a wider positive purpose. They honor sacrifices, instill national pride and offer reassurances about defense spending.
They can also, Goldstein said, simultaneously act as a deterrent and betray insecurities.
"We know from human behavior that if you're insecure you can lash out or be showy. If, as Americans, we were truly confident in our armed forces we wouldn't need to display our military might," said Goldstein, who now runs the Asia program at Defense Priorities, a Washington, D.C. think tank. Goldstein's research has helped establish that in some areas of defense, such as hypersonic missiles, the U.S. is not keeping pace with China and Russia.
Still, Schiller, of ST Analytics, said that military parades are also often about "tricks" and "playing games" to create the illusion of military power that may not exist, or only partly exist.
The U.S. is not expected to show off any of its long-range missiles and rockets on June 14. France also refrains from featuring these in its Bastille Day celebrations, not least because if an accident were to take place it could have devastating consequences for those attending the event. But rapid, intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. are a regular feature of military parades in China and North Korea.
"No nation I know of ever parades the real thing," said Schiller, referring to these missiles, as well as ones in military parades in India and Pakistan. He said mock-up missiles are often paraded with details such as cables and diameters tweaked so analysts studying images of them can't definitively conclude what they're seeing.
France's Bastille Day - more than a parade
Jean-Yves Camus is a defense expert at the Paris-based French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.
He said the Bastille Day event that apparently captivated Trump's imagination is not "mainly about the army." He said the ceremony is not to everyone's tastes and "left-wing people" generally don't like it and so don't attend.
Camus said the military aspect was "simply a glimpse" at France's different units and that while other nation might use parades to show off "strong leadership, if not autocratic leadership," that wasn't the case in France.
"Macron will attend this year, and then the next year or year after that, there will be a new president."
"Most people go because it's really very fascinating, and you have this very beautiful, wide avenue - the Champs-Elysee - to watch it from," Camus added. "The night before there are joyful events scattered all over Paris. People go dancing. There is music. You have, I would say, this profound sense of connection with history."
Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman and Tom Vanden Brook