WASHINGTON D.C. — More than the tariffs and venting his grievances, there was nothing Pres. Donald Trump wanted more than a military parade. The US Army celebrates its 250th anniversary on June 14, a weekend, which also happens to be “Flag Day” and the president’s 79th birthday – a coincidence that will allow him to check off a key item in his bucket list – and the Pentagon is pulling all the stops.
He wanted the parade during his first term but was rebuffed by Congress – then narrowly controlled by Democrats – because of the $100 million price tag. This time around, it’ll just be $45 million.
The presidential parade follows an uproar over Mr. Trump’s expressed intention to accept a $400 million Boeing “palace in the sky” jumbo jet from Qatar, erstwhile Hamas benefactor, who’ve financed Houthi predations against Saudi Arabia and until recently, blamed for destabilizing the oil-rich region.
The outcry has come from both Democrats and Republicans out of security, constitutional concerns and the plainly toxic imagery of an American president unabashedly taking gifts from foreigners (there is of course the “Emolument Clause” in the US Constitution that specifically forbids it).
In the president’s eyes, they’re all perks of the White House. American presidents have received gifts from foreign leaders – from wooden desks from Queen Victoria (“Resolute Desk”) to giant pandas from China to a cuddly Goran Shepherd puppy from Bulgaria, since the nation was born in 1776. But they all obviously pale to the proposed Qatari gift, coursed through the Pentagon that Mr. Trump said he intends to fly in and donate to his presidential library at the end of his term.
Taxpayers are expected to shoulder the estimated $600 million to strip the plane down for possible bugs and install all the top-secret electronics, avionics and counter-measures so an American president can safely use it.
Meanwhile, the Army is working on the parade route in Washington D.C. Pavement and curbs will be reinforced to take 70-ton M-1 Abrams battle tanks through the district’s narrow streets. Steel barriers are going up and security measures finalized. About 100 tanks, armored vehicles, mobile missiles and other assorted equipment – including 50 helicopters (currently restricted after the deadly collision over Reagan Airport) – will join thousands of troops on the parade. It will be grand and intimidating, just as Mr. Trump wants it.
The president has an unencumbered, uncomplicated, even Machiavellian (“it is better to be feared than to be loved”) understanding of “strength” – and it’s inextricably connected to US military superiority. Time and again, he’s demonstrated a disdain for nuanced, subtle “soft power” that has been the pillar of American foreign and security policy for decades.
It was no coincidence that the US Agency of International Development (USAID) was among the first to be decimated by Elon Musk and the Trump-created Dept. of Government Efficiency, along with the Voice of America and various investments in United Nations or World Bank-affiliated organizations.
“While prior US presidents have violated aspects of the liberal order, Donald Trump is the first to reject the idea that soft power has any value in foreign policy,” wrote Joseph Nye Jr. on “The Future of American Soft Power”.
Mr. Trump has long self-identified with authoritarians, often lamenting why he has to be saddled by guard rails dictated as much by jurisprudence as by tradition. If there is one enduring image of strongmen, it is presiding over a military parade. And because of the president’s media celebrity DNA, standing and saluting troops and tanks passing past – or descending in a foreign land from the “palace in the sky” – is the fulfillment of his deepest yearnings to be seen by the world as a “strong man.”