The columns of goosestepping troops, tanks and missile launchers pounding across Beijing’s Square of Heavenly Peace on Wednesday were supposed to be commemorating the final defeat of Fascism in the Second World War.
But they looked and sounded like an ominous warning to the Western democracies: that the world America and its allies created 80 years ago is on its last legs.
The master of ceremonies, China’s President Xi Jinping, flanked by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong un, presented his vast country as the beating heart of an even more extensive alliance. We have every reason to be worried - very worried.
China’s extraordinary economic growth has paid for a dramatic surge in military spending. A country that once sought strength in numbers now shows off high-tech weapons comparable with the very best that America can offer – while producing them at a pace beyond anything USA’s sclerotic arms industry can match.
Together with battle-hardened Russia and resourceful North Korea - which somehow makes modern nuclear missiles despite the grinding poverty of its people - this new anti-Western axis is an even greater threat even than Hitler once posed to America and her allies.
