Military Parades and Horseless Dictators
The Steady State - By Annie Pforzheimer and Tony Fainberg
As former national security professionals we have watched many U.S. military parades. Many were in honor of individuals — recipients of awards, retirees, senior elected officials — but we have never seen or heard of a U.S. parade in honor of an individual ordered by that individual. This year, on June 14, the Army’s 250th anniversary, President Trump reportedly wants a big parade – to coincide with his birthday.
It’s an expensive present. By way of cost comparison, a military parade that President Trump wanted (but didn’t end up getting) in 2018 was projected to cost $92 million, not including damage to Washington’s streets from the tanks he requested.
One could argue a showy parade might be a badly-timed waste of the money that taxpayers had thought was going to be somehow saved by shrinking the government and putting veterans out of work. But maybe that focus on mere money is unfair, when the principle of the thing is putting active duty servicemembers to work to showcase the Dear Leader.
Like our many military and civilian colleagues who have served all over the world, we didn’t expect to see this behavior at home.
Overseas, dictators revel in the ability to make others stand or march in line in their honor. Turkmenistan’s dictator, Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov (since 2022 sharing tyrannical power with his son, Serdar), presides over an annual parade at which the chant is "the people, the homeland, and the great Supreme Commander-in-Chief!" Gurbanguli wants to be known for his claims of amazing horsemanship, which, however, took a beating in 2013 when he was covertly filmed falling off his horse after finishing a race (in first place, as was the custom). Several dozen men are shown on the clandestine video hustling the president to safety, and journalists were searched for flash drives upon their departure from the event, in an attempt to keep the video from airing. His first-place finish was a follow-up to his “spontaneous,” last-minute entry into Turkmenistan’s first auto race the previous year, which Gurbanguli also won. As is the custom. This successful competitive record calls to mind Donald Trump’s golfing championships at his own Mar-a-Lago club.
But military parades, even more than publicized sporting events, help dictators focus their citizens’ minds on the personal greatness of the tyrant and on the disparity of power between themselves and the state. This majestic tradition is not new: Soviet parades had that purpose, starting with Lenin and enhanced by Stalin. So did those of Mussolini and Hitler.
The same may be said of the current leaders of the People’s Republic of China and of North Korea. China’s parade tempo is usually annual, but North Korea is a “more is more” kind of place: military parades are usually held for Korean People’s Army Foundation Day, the founding of the Korean People’s Army, Victory Day, Liberation Day, National Day, Party Foundation Day, and most notably, and the two birthdays of the tyrant father and tyrant grandfather of current tyrant Kim Jong Un. The money going to these parades apparently doesn’t stretch to supplying food for the country, since over 18 percent of North Korean children have “stunting”, or impaired growth and development due to undernourishment.
Food may be more available here than in North Korea, but at a time when President Trump and his friends declare their outrage at waste, fraud, and abuse and at the enormous deficits of the US government, at a time when we are told that the government cannot afford Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention Social Security payments or even helplines, it is quite strange that the US government appears to be planning to spend an enormous sum of money for a military parade that coincides with our Dear Leader’s birthday.
Turkey is another nation hosting a cult of personality. While our first president has a stone monument in his honor, his true legacy rests on his ability to look beyond himself to ensure others can lead the country he helped found. Turkey’s first president and founder, Kemal Ataturk, is protected by a law that makes it a crime to “insult his memory”. He is immortalized with a massive tomb within a huge mausoleum complex. Visiting U.S. officials learn how to lay a wreath properly at Ataturk’s sarcophagus, a 40-ton piece of red marble, by ceremoniously backing out of the room.
We see the point of military parades if they honor our troops, our citizens, and a nation that rests on the rule of law - not the dictates of a single person. Here, we are allowed to criticize our first president - and any president. It would be impossible to maintain our American way of life if we actually lived under authoritarian, cultish rule.
Autocrats are fundamentally unpredictable and eccentric, made more so by encouraging weird acts of devotion and stifling opposing points of view. To maintain our constitutional republic, as it has long existed, we need to push back on all efforts to create an American autocrat. Let’s say “no” to vanity parades.
Annie Pforzheimer is a retired senior U.S. diplomat who served in Turkey, El Salvador, and Afghanistan. She is a Non-Resident Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an adjunct professor of international relations.
Tony Fainberg is a retired physicist, who worked for many years in basic research in the field of particle physics. He then embarked on a second career in the government and government contracting space, engaging in technical analyses in support of nuclear nonproliferation policies and counterterrorism.