After the carnage of the First World War, France responded to the horrors of trench warfare by building the ultimate trenches - the infamous Maginot Line, a system of almost 5,000 individual fortifications arrayed along hundreds of miles of front to a depth of 20 miles.
Only the Great Wall of China was longer - and the Maginot Line was vastly more complex. A marvel of military engineering, the problem was that it required an enemy who played by French rules.
What happened? Paris poured so much money and effort into its network of fortresses that the generals couldn't believe it wouldn't work - the Germans would simply have to behave as required.
The Germans didn't. France fell.
Now the United States sits in imagined security behind its own array of crucial strategic assets - our network of satellites.
Beat our satellites, beat us.
The Chinese know it. The Russians know it. And religious fanatics are bound to figure it out.
A Maginot Line In The Sky by Ralph Peters
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