Ministry of War

The War Ministries are back. In this regard, too, we are returning to the past. Last night (Spanish time) the United States presidency revived the old War Department sign, two days after the impressive parade of Chinese armed forces in Beijing to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in the Middle East. Eighty years have passed, the world is different, and the eastern bloc of the great Eurasian continental shelf closed ranks this week in Beijing. China, Russia, India, and Iran, hand in hand. Nothing like this had ever been seen. The United States responded last night with a recreation of the War Department. Back to 1945. Back to the 1930s. Back to the 19th century.

“We haven't won a major war since we changed the name [Department of Defense] after World War II. And that's not to disparage our warfighters, whether in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's to recognize that this name change isn't just about renaming, it's about restoring,” said the new Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who was Secretary of Defense until the day before yesterday. “It's about restoring the warrior ethos , victory as the ultimate goal, intentionality in the use of force so that the War Department fights decisively, not in endless conflicts,” he added.

President Donald Trump put it more simply: “We won World War I and we won World War II. We won everything, and then we decided to get woke and change the name to the Department of Defense, politically correct. So we're going back to the War Department. I think it's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of the world we're in.” We'll see how many countries sign up for the name change in the coming months.

The US War Department returns to the scene as the People's Republic of China closes ranks with its closest allies. In terms of stage presence, Wednesday's parade had to impress Trump. The current US president views his term as a continuous reality TV show, and this week the star of the show has been Xi Jinping. That is intolerable.

The Chinese emperor has gathered the leaders of the major Asian powers—including India, crucially—and presided over a spectacular military parade in Beijing. Trump couldn't sit still. Hours after the parade, the Pentagon, now the War Department, released images of a boat carrying alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers destroyed by a missile from the US Navy deployed in the Caribbean Sea. Eleven men were charred. A lightning-fast liquidation, without any attempt to board the vessel and arrest its crew. (Imagine a boat belonging to Sito Miñanco or Marcial Dorado destroyed in the 1980s by a Spanish Navy missile off the coast of Galicia, for later broadcast on the news.)

The Beijing parade was a spectacular exercise specially designed for television and social media. China has a Ministry of National Defense, whose function is more diplomatic than executive. It is the ceremonial facade of the Chinese armed forces. The decision-making center is the Central Military Commission, chaired by the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping is known as President of the People's Republic, General Secretary of the CCP, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

The Beijing parade was imposing, with a clear desire to surpass the legendary military parades in Moscow's Red Square. Discipline, synchronization, forcefulness, projection of force. Xi Jinping flanked by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. The neo-tsarist president of the Russian Federation and the satrap of North Korea next to the powerful general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, dressed in the uniform popularized by Mao Zedong, the zhongshan jacket. The Mao jacket, a Chinese adaptation of the Prussian cadet uniform, was actually first used in the 1930s by the first president of the Republic of China, the nationalist Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang.

Russia on the same level as North Korea. It's surprising. Neither Stalin, nor Khrushchev, nor any other Soviet leader would have ever agreed to travel to Beijing to appear on the same level as the president of the small and isolated North Korea. Times have changed. The now dominant power on the Eurasian continental shelf is the People's Republic of China. The Soviet Union ceased to exist more than thirty years ago, and Russia has needed the North Koreans to avoid foundering in the war in Ukraine, in which both sides are consuming enormous amounts of ammunition. The Russian army has been able to overcome a serious military supply crisis thanks to the thousands of howitzers sold by the North Korean regime and the dispatch of 12,000 soldiers to help plug the Kursk Gap. Cannon fodder. It is estimated that more than half of that military contingent died in combat a few months ago, but Russia has been able to recover the territory of the Kursk Oblast invaded by the Ukrainians in a desperate attempt to have Russian soil at the negotiating table.

"If Russia, China, and Iran form an alliance, the hegemony of the United States could be seriously threatened." This was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski in the 1990s in the famous geopolitical textbook entitled The Grand Chessboard , which is studied in many Western diplomatic schools. This Eurasian alliance could push Russia to regain control of Eastern Europe. Ukraine would be crucial, he predicted.

Born in Poland, Brzezinski served as National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter and can be considered one of the theorists of the final phase of the Cold War. Keeping Russia and China separate was a North American priority. This was understood by Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s, opening diplomatic relations with Beijing at a time of heightened tension between the Chinese communist leaders and the post-Stalin Soviet nomenclature. The Chinese did not want to be commanded from Moscow, and Mao felt in danger when Nikita Khrushchev denounced the crimes of Stalinism. For his part, the impetuous Khrushchev, who sought a USSR with a higher standard of living, concluded that Mao was, at heart, a Chinese nationalist. He wrote as much in his memoirs. When the Sino-Soviet dispute began, which eventually led to a military confrontation over the Ussuri River border near the Pacific, China was still a backward country with a predominantly peasant base.

Kissinger saw the gap, understood its strategic importance, and drove a wedge with the diplomatic opening to Beijing in 1972, which entailed the granting of loans to China and the gradual admission of Chinese students to American universities. Thus began the formation of the legion of new Chinese engineers. That was fifty years ago. Half a century later, China has become a major economic, technological, and military power, has strengthened ties with Russia from a dominant position, has a direct line to Iran, and is making a tactical approach to India, which in turn is offended by the tariffs imposed by Trump in retaliation for Indian imports of Russian oil. The Indian nationalist government is playing with several cards, and we should not be surprised if it soon makes peace with Washington. Meanwhile, China capitalizes on its adversary's mistakes.

September began with a resounding display of the Eastern bloc. In this context, the War Department label returns theatrically.

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