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TOURTOUR, France — After a happy night of foie gras and fireworks in my favorite hilltop Provence village, I watched the Bastille Day parade in Paris the next morning on TV, the annual clash of symbols that reflects the best of France. It never fails to thrill.

Jets streaked low over the Champ-Elysees, wingtip to wingtip, painting the sky in French blue, white and red. The president stood in an open command car. rolling past cheering crowds from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde.

For three hours, units from firefighters to Foreign Legionnaires — 7,000 in all— marched in step at measured cadence. But this year, as well-trained troops with ingenuous new hardware are on alert for a real war down the road in Ukraine, it was fresh news.

France’s nuclear force de frappe was kept under wraps. But everyone knows it was there.

At the start, President Emmanuel Macron stopped for a brief ceremony at the eternal flame for fallen soldiers. Eyes moistened at the end as two popular singers, a man and a woman, belted out La Marseillaise, the national anthem since 1792.

Donald Trump, with parade envy after a friendlier Macron invited him to attend in 2017, staged his own version as birthday gift to himself. He spent perhaps $100 million to tear up asphalt and airlift troops to march past a draft-dodging would-be monarch.

The contrast was beyond stark. It was all about him and dwarfed by millions in No Kings demonstrations across America.

Two French networks showed specialists operate space-age tools to track hostile forces and free hostages. Dogs in helmets stuffed with electronics snoop behind enemy lines. One-man vehicles, basically James Bond go-karts, bristle with lethal cannons.

LeClerc tanks on treads built in 2008 were souped up to barrel along at 70 miles an hour or plow through swamps, protected with deflecting cages and undercarriage armor to foil terrorists’ weapon of choice — IEDs, improvised explosive devices.

In the Washington parade footage, I had watched a cluster of men in combat fatigues walk by out of step, with a soldier holding aloft what looked like a kid’s drone like a guy delivering a pepperoni pizza.

Heavy tanks and artillery built for old-style set piece combat smacked of musclebound weightlifters impotent on steroids.

But the difference was much deeper. France, Germany and European allies are preparing to protect a world now imperiled by demagogues. Popular support runs deep on a continent that has learned the hard way why war is hell.

In Gilles, a Normandy village of 500 inhabitants, Mayor Michel Malhoppe’s Bastille Day address reflected the tone of ceremonies across France. He said:

“Today we are witnessing a reversal of things. We speak of illiberal democracy, a euphemism for not saying totalitarian regime or dictatorship. The presence in the West of a billionaire clown in a red cap, presiding over the largest country in the world, once the guarantor of international law, has become the champion of lawlessness, seeking to run the world like a casino in a reality TV atmosphere.”

Malhoppe added what so many expatriates, not ex-patriots, from a divided United States now feel: “I apologize to our American friends here, but I know their deep attachment to democracy and their sadness at what their country has become today.”

Then he turned to Russia for the other dimension:

“In the East, a testosterone-fueled mafioso asserts his virility by waging war to reconstitute the Soviet empire. He attacks and kills Ukrainians with near impunity before continuing his work ... endangering, sooner or later, our security, then our democracy and finally our existence.”

The mayor’s words bit hard when NATO Secretary-General Mark Rudd came to Washington in slavish obeisance to hear U.S. terms for aiding Ukraine. Allies can buy weapons from America for transfer to Ukraine, according to the president’s terms.

Trump will sell surface-to-air Patriot missiles and other defensive arms but nothing to reach Moscow or deep into Russia. Later, America gets a cut of war-battered Ukraine’s minerals and resources. Sanctions begin in 50 days, after the summer killing season.

Bastille Day made clear how what remains of a free world is adapting to a new global disorder. The United States that weighed in to beat back Hitler, then repair the war’s damage while drafting conventions to protect human rights, has gone AWOL.

Trump was guest of honor when Macron hoped to move the new president beyond his own selfish line of sight. He flattered Trump on arm-in-arm White House visits and gamely smiled at crude references to his wife. Finally, he gave up on “my dear Donald.”

This year’s guest, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, brought 400 troops, a parade highlight. Baton twirlers danced to upbeat gamelan music. Standard bearers wore large masks — tigers, eagles, sharks and walruses — to symbolize essential military attributes.

But they looked tough as titanium, ready to defend sea lanes and South Asian territory if a cold war with China turns hot.

Beyond geopolitics, discord is heated over tariffs. Trump’s flip-flopping now threatens Europe with a flat 30 percent. That would cripple exporters forced to find other markets. Americans would pay up to a third more for European imports.

Tourists from the United States and expatriates with income in America already pay higher prices as the dollar sinks against the euro and other currencies.

Beyond the big picture, a long-term shift in cultural attitudes troubles me deeply. The Pentagon is focused on big showdowns and force protection, taking every precaution to avoid, as the cliché goes, harm’s way.

The French, long experienced at quelling African mayhem with small, versatile forces, hardly fit comic-strip Bart Simpson’s “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” depiction when they declined to join Americans in the calamitous 2003 Iraq War.

In 1998, when NATO forces pacified Kosovo from a main base in Tirana, Albania, the contrast first hit me hard.

During the Vietnam War in the 1970s, we reporters had the token rank of major. Any accredited journalist could bump a captain off a flight. Military briefers at the “Five O’clock Follies” were hammered with a chorus of questions they could not evade.

Military-press relations went downhill fast after Vietnam, from “pools” to “embeds” to banned access. At Tirana, worn out with the beginnings of pneumonia, I asked a French officer for a lift to his airbase near Marseille, a 90-minute drive from my home.

“Sure,” he said. “But you’ve got a problem. Americans are guarding the gate.”

I approached a U.S. sentry, showing my press pass with the friendly banter of former days. He fixed with me a 1,000-mile stare. He alone stood between world peace and disorder. He declined to consult an officer with an ominous, “No, sir.”

Over his shoulder, I saw French loadmasters finish their job. “That’s my ride,” I finally said. “Shoot me in the back if you have to and explain why to your commander.” I’m still around, but I wouldn’t try that today with Trump’s kind of army.

Bastille Day is far more than a parade, speeches and wine-splashed neighborhood dances at local fire stations. As obstreperous and divided as the French can be, they see mostly the world as it is.

In cities, towns and villages, millions of names carved in stone since 1914 add up to stark reality. They include sons, brothers and husbands along with women who joined the Resistance. War is no word to be thrown around lightly.