By Franz-Stefan Gady
When militarism and national insecurity intersect, as they seem to be doing today in Asia, carnage often follows.
In my life I have participated in several military parades. Of these, two stand out. As an officer candidate in the Austrian Army, I marched in step to the tune of the Radetzky March past a crowd — my Father, my Uncle Winfried and Aunt Waltraud among them — down an alley leading to Eggenberg Palace, in Graz.
It was late fall and chilly dark. Half of the members of my company carried torches, which cast eerie shadows on the baroque exterior of the castle.
The second was in late summer. I was commanding a section of an honor guard marching in step through the village of Hengsberg to a green meadow, where a few hundred recruits swore their military oath in front of relatives and local villagers.
On both occasions, as we marched by, crowds spontaneously clapped, some shouting, “Bravo, super Burschen!” (Well done, fine boys!). I felt something like the spirited flush that once filled me — God knows why — when, as a boy, I watched John Wayne at Iwo Jima or Bataan. The shrill bark of red faced sergeants and long days of monotonous drill were for a brief moment forgotten.
National military parades are a thing of the past in most of the West, but they are becoming a popular form of statesmanship in Asia. By year’s end, lavish pageants of military hardware and marchers in formation will advance down boulevards of India, Pakistan, North Korea, China and Russia.
However alluring and visually striking, these parades embody militarism, the deadly business at the heart of every sovereign state. And the term “parade” comes from the Latin word parare, “to prepare.” Throughout history, parades have prepared citizens for war. When militarism and national insecurity intersect, as they seem to be doing today in Asia, carnage often follows.
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