WORLD War III — aka the Cold War — has ended. World War IV has begun. President Trump has made it official. On Sept 5, Trump signed an executive order renaming the US Department of Defence as the War Department. He has the force of precedent behind him, for that was its original name from 1789 until 1949, when following World War II, Congress consolidated the army, navy and air force under one steel umbrella.
The wording used in the executive order is unequivocal: “It was under this name that the Department of War … won the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II, inspiring awe and confidence in our Nation’s military, and ensuring freedom and prosperity for all Americans.”
To this, Defence (now War) Secretary Pete Hegseth added his own jingoism: “We’re going to go on offence, not just on defence. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.”
Trump had hoped that the military parade he organised recently in Washington would have reminded the world of America’s military might. The disappointing turnout backfired. Trump should have subcontracted the event management to the Russians or the Chinese. They organise these theatrical extravaganzas with more chutzpah.
From 2025, the world capital is, and for the next century will be, Beijing.
Most nations use such occasions to showcase their armoury. We do it annually on Aug 14 (provided it does not rain) to reveal our latest rocketry. India does it on Jan 26 each year, to celebrate its Republic Day. The long procession includes missiles, ‘Nari Shakti’ (women daredevils on motorcycles), and colourful, caparisoned camels of the Rajasthan Border Security Force. It is an overt message to neighbours about what to expect.
For Russia, the 2025 Moscow Victory Day Parade on May 9 held a special significance. It commemorated the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe. It also honoured the 26 million Soviet citizens who lost their lives in that conflict. Great Britain and Europe held their own ceremonies to recall a war in which they and the Soviets were once allies. Yesterday’s friends are now foes; yesterday’s foes (Germany and Japan) are now friends.
This year, on Sept 3, the People’s Republic of China held a display that dwarfed all others. Like the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese set standards that are impossibly high for even the Russians or the North Koreans to imitate. This year, the 2025 China Victory Day parade came hard on the heels of the two-day 25th SCO Summit convened at Tianjin. Lesser minds boggle at the faultless precision with which both events were executed within hours of each other.
At the SCO summit, American and European leaders were noticeably absent. Prominently present though were Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Indians chortled with glee at the photo of PM Modi cracking a joke with Putin and Xi Jinping. (The last time Xi Jinping and Modi laughed together in China was seven years ago.) Modi, however, chose not to stay a day longer to watch the victory parade in Beijing. Other leaders did, including our prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif.
Pakistanis were treated to the sight of PM Shehbaz Sharif walking up almost shoulder to shoulder with the new triumvirate — China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, as the guests climbed the steps up the Gate of Heavenly Peace. The trio seemed hardly aware of his presence but that did not matter. The image of the four of them in one frame will adorn, like so many other such mementoes of the elder and the younger Sharifs’ VIP encounters, the walls of the Sharif residences in Raiwind.
In which language did the trio converse? (Interpreters were present but seemingly inactive.) It is said they talked of longevity. What mattered more was the signal the three sent to President Trump and his allies. The world capital was no longer Washington; from 2025, it is, and for the next century will be, Beijing.
Eighty years ago, the US-backed Republic of China forces led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek controlled 80 per cent of China’s territory. Within four years, Mao Zedong’s peasant army (Stalin called them “margarine communists”) defeated them and entered Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and his minions fled to Taiwan.
In 1972, president Nixon ‘dumped’ Taiwan by recognising the PRC. In 2019, Trump met Kim Jong Un and crossed briefly into North Korea, and talked to him for almost an hour. Today’s separatists in Taiwan and South Korea should worry. Their reunification with mainland China and North Korea (if necessary, by force) is no longer a possibility. It is an inevitability. Will that be a newly belligerent Trump’s casus belli for World War IV?
The writer is an author.
www.fsaijazuddin.pk
Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2025