Opinion Trump’s parade

Trump was apparently inspired to launch a Salute to America parade bristling with military hardware after seeing tanks roll down the Champs-Élysées in a French parade.

America has always celebrated the Fourth of July with things that go bang. But this year, President Trump is shooting for bigger bang for buck than mere fireworks can offer. The parade in Washington, which is generally associated with marching bands and warm feelings of togetherness, features Bradley armoured personnel carriers and Abrams tanks this year, at the very spot where Martin Luther King declared that he had a dream. That spells BAE Systems and General Dynamics, companies at the heart of the military-industrial complex. And the high point, according to Trump, is a “flyover” by F-18 Hornets, which means Boeing. The Americans are very accurate in terming it a flyover, rather than a flypast, as we do, despite the evidence of our senses. For us, a flyover signifies urban infrastructure, which regularly comes crashing down. Not a good omen for a parade.

Trump was apparently inspired to launch a Salute to America parade bristling with military hardware after seeing tanks roll down the Champs-Élysées in a French parade. But India could have served as an even finer model, for our Republic Day parade was inspired by the world-beating Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square. Russia’s annual display of military hardware, which has traditionally featured gigantic ballistic missiles on their launchers, has rivalled Soviet monumental statuary as the most forceful expression of revolutionary triumphalism and continues to perplex and awe the world.

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In India, though, some diffidence is sometimes expressed over the public display of weaponry. The parade down Rajpath, it is argued, was an important element of the self-assertion of a young nation, but may have outlived its usefulness. In America, the Democrats have dismissed Trump’s extravaganza as yet another symptom of his narcissism, and a means to politicise the forces. But obviously, Trump will not let them rain on his parade.