It's Maginot all over again

   
The Trumpeshere is picking spots along the West Coast to place missile sites as a defense against
a potential missile attack now that North Korea has demonstrated a missile capable of hitting           
Washington, D.C. Great plan except for one thing. The old saw that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Lining up defense along a single line has been tried before. It didn't work very well.
     Prior to World War II the French built a line of permanent immobile concrete artillery installations along their borders with Italy, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Germany to protect themselves in case Germany got ideas of world domination again. It was named for Andre Maginot, the French minister of war at the time. The plan left the way open along the Belgian border imagining a counter attack through Belgium into Germany if necessary. Much to the surprise of the French, as World War II developed, the Germans drove their tanks through Belgium around west end of the line and almost unopposed all the way to Paris. Unable to target the advancing German blitzkrieg, the fixed guns of the Maginot Line never fired a shot, they were useless. The rest is history. The rust along the Maginot line also is history.
     So, now it seems the U.S. wants to build a line of missile defense installations along the West Coast given that coast is closest to the potential invader, North Korea. But the world has changed since the 1930s and a single line of defense against a potential attacker doesn't really mean much. This plan came up along with the news that the North Koreans have successfully fired a rocket capable of hitting Washington, D.C. So by all means let's build a wall between us and them. Sound familiar?
    Well, here's a little problem I haven't seen anyone address yet. Who says they will fire the missile from west to east? Modern warfare doesn't have fronts any more. An attack can come from anywhere, so the thinking needs to be broader. We can only hope that's the case because …
   The distance from west to east from North Korea to the U.S. capital was listed as 6,800 miles but experts estimated the missile is capable of striking targets as far away as 8,000 miles. Now, I tried to figure the distance, say, firing one to the west from North Korea, over Russia, Europe and the Atlantic. I would suspect if the missile can cover 8,000 miles it can somehow be engineered to make the rest of the distance to reach the American East Coast. It's probably shorter to send one over the North Pole. So if we have this line of defense for missiles coming from the west can those missiles also intercept something coming from the north or the east or are we going to build a line that can be gone around from several directions?
Now, doesn't a bunch of missile sites in California still make us all feel safer?
     Maybe the Trumpeters ought to take another look at diplomacy. Please?
The Maginot Line
US moves to beef up West Coast Defenses

Here's a little song the Kingston Trio did in the early 60s. It's called the Ballad of John Foster Dulles (the secretary of state in the Eisenhower administration who was the United States' chief cold warrior.)