President Donald Trump wanted a military parade that bests what he once witnessed in France. But raw displays of military power are more common to ones in Russia, China and North Korea, where such parades carry added meanings.
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-Élysée 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.
“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?'”
