By Philip Yeung
For seventy minutes, all eyes of the world were riveted on Beijing. This is no ordinary march past. Its crisp goosestepping gives Chinese viewers goosebumps of pride. Tightly choreographed to the inch, it represents a nation marching into history.
Never has a military parade been so pregnant with meaning.
Military planners at the Pentagon were up all night processing China's display of military muscle. Trump has changed the name of the US Department of Defense to the ominous-sounding Department of War. But China is sending a different message, not of war, but of deterrence. China doesn't do flashy things for show. At a time of flux, China has carefully calibrated its moves to achieve its strategic goals without firing a shot, as per Sun Tzu's Art of War--"winning without fighting".
Key strategic goals piggyback on this parade: America, Japan, Taiwan, and the future of the non-US world.
History teaches us that a unipolar world is prone to war. An unchallengeable bully feels emboldened to stir the pot at will. Mark Twain famously said, "God created war so that Americans would learn geography." For the past half-century, China has been lying low, making peace and economic partners, and technologically reinventing itself. The US has been busy fishing in troubled waters all over the map.
As we speak, it is lurking off the coast of Venezuela, looking for an easy kill. The leader of Venezuela, who was in attendance at the parade, must have watched it with a heart-pounding rush of emotion as the fate of his country teeters on the brink. It may be the first country to benefit from China's power of deterrence on display.
After the brief Indo-Pakistani air war, China's military hardware has humbled Western air power with its deadly accuracy and dominance of the sky. The instant losers in China's Victory Parade are Western military contractors. Purchasers will stampede to China, not because its weapons are pocket-friendly, but because they give more bang for the buck. That commercial side-effect is overshadowed by a bigger impact elsewhere, notably in Japan.
The score over Japan's war of aggression against China has never been settled. That is why its past imperial crimes are in the crosshairs in this parade. Unlike Germany, Japan has never apologized or paid a red cent in compensation to its Chinese victims, numbering 35 million dead in total. Unrepentant to the last, Japan is rekindling its old militarism, rearming itself with its first post-war aircraft carrier. China is putting Tokyo on notice: Waiting for your floating fortress is its supersonic aircraft carrier killer missiles.
The Japanese are suffering from another fallout from the atomic bombs. To this day, they believe that their country was defeated by US atomic bombs, that China is not the rightful victor. It has whitewashed its illegal invasion by sanitizing school textbooks. Without suffering an invasion of their homeland, they never tasted the horrors of a protracted land war.
Japanese "shame culture", in sharp contrast to the German "guilt culture", has kept them from saying sorry. Japan's history lesson is 80 years overdue. They pour salt on open Chinese wounds by taking part in US-led joint military exercises in the overheated South China Sea and making unwanted noises over Taiwan. This parade is intended to send chills down the spine of nostalgic Japanese militarists.
The EU, meanwhile, is scrambling to cope with Trump's isolationism and US exceptionalism. Under Trump, America is no longer a reliable ally. Europe may have to sink or swim by itself in defending its own backyard. It makes no sense to pigeonhole China as an adversary when it carries bigger smart weapons to support a philosophy that rejects the pointlessness of war.
Taiwan separatists are left trembling in their boots. Seventy miles from the mainland coast, the island is a sitting duck for Beijing's hyper-smart weapons. Don't rule out help from China-first Taiwanese with deep mainland roots. They won't sit idly by to see separatists tear China apart. They may help sweep the secessionists into the dustbins of history. Street fighting, if it comes to that, will be made easier by these patriotic residents. As for America, while it laughs all the way to the bank dumping unaffordable weapons on the island, it won't sacrifice American lives to fight a Chinese domestic war over ten thousand miles from Washington. The parade, with its history-ending weapons, has just shortened the waiting time for Taiwan's reunification with the mainland.
This is a pivotal moment. The world is entering a multipolar phase. The US is in decline as it turns inwards. China is in the ascendancy. The world is made safer with China tipping the military balance. America will think twice before starting another killing field. China's arrival means that the free-roaming days of the American bully are numbered. Time to break out the bubbly and sip the sweetness of a new era. This victory parade is an act of remembrance, and a reassurance that history will not and must not repeat itself.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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