Brazilian samba queens. Prussian generals. Circus clowns. Roman emperors showing off their war booty. Autocrats. All love a good parade.
Some countries, among them Brazil (Carnival) and France (Bastille Day), are much better at putting on parades than others.
For anyone who has experienced the chaos of Parisian traffic, to watch the deftness of the French army drilling down the Champs-Élysées every July 14 is a thing of wonderment. It helps, of course, that the road, with its huge triumphal arch at one end of the broad, sloping boulevard, seems almost to have been designed for pomp and marching and not for carrying traffic. The word boulevardier is French, after all.
As good as they are, though, they are simply outclassed by Russia and China when it comes to showing off army muscles, new weapons, glossy painted missile launchers and spectacular open-order drill.
If the Beijing spectacle was intended to send a message, it was as subtle as a meteorite hitting a dinosaur
To Beijing, then, for last week’s victory parade, official name “Conference to Commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War”.
Unofficially, it might simply have been called Ozymandias: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Standing alongside Xi Jinping were +Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, watching nuclear-capable mobile missile launchers, stealth drones on trucks, and reconnaissance and ammunition-carrying robot dogs roll by. Jet fighters and bombers roared overhead.
It was a sharp contrast to the US military parade in Washington in June in which some infantry units had all the gravitas of strolling flaneurs as they boulevardiered through the capital.
If the Beijing spectacle was intended to send a message, it was as subtle as a meteorite hitting a dinosaur. The global order has changed, the axis has shifted, and we’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy.
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