Show-offs
On warfighting morale, Radio Free Asia, and why nobody should be too impressed by what they see at a big Communist-run military parade
Mick Ryan, Australian retired-general-turned-war-theorist, has observed that the latest giant military parade through Beijing was mainly devoid of surprises, though Ryan does note that China's capacity for developing and manufacturing new military hardware seems to have expanded quite a bit. The whole affair was a spectacle for the purpose of spectacle, featuring front-row seats for Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin.
■ In the modern era, big military parades like this are generally put on for chumps: A victory parade is one thing, but a parade to show off big guns and big missiles is really just a way to burn through a whole lot of cash in return for (usually) mandatory applause. That doesn't mean China's arsenal isn't potentially impressive, nor that the US should ignore the consequences of our own hostile behavior towards nations that ought to be easy friends of ours. (This is, for instance, a really stupid time to be cutting off funding for Radio Free Asia and other levers of public influence abroad.)
■ But a parade doesn't reveal anything about whether a country has organized its military in the right way to win conflicts. The top-down orientation of China's People's Liberation Army is a strategic deadweight, especially compared with the way that the United States has historically encouraged and rewarded initiative at lower levels of leadership.
■ The other thing masked by the mere spectacle and showmanship of a parade is the thoroughly unstable superstructure of China's military. The People's Liberation Army isn't sworn to protect the country; it's there to preserve, protect, and defend the Communist Party. There's no way to make that a stable platform in perpetuity.
■ That doesn't mean it can't stick around for a long time (it obviously already has), but we should never overlook the role of morale in successful warfare. And to fight for the preservation of a self-serving party is a different motive than to fight for one's country. No parade can truly reveal the effects of that kind of moral decay.
