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America at the Crossroads of Grand Strategy 5 strategy overcomes a nation’s deficiency by countering it with an asym- metrical approach. If you face an opponent with an overwhelming num- ber of fixed fortifications, like the Maginot Line in 1940 France, Germany did not try to go through it with infantry lines. Instead, they “offset” the French advantage by using amassed concentration of tanks, many of which went around the fortifications. Following the Second World War, the United States realized that it would not counter enemies with equal or superior numbers. That was a losing strategy. So it decided to find off- sets. The first offset was under the Eisenhower administration. The admin- istration knew it could not counter Soviet and Chinese numbers, so it developed the “New Look” and “Massive Retaliation.” Nuclear weapons would be the offset the American inferiority of numbers. The second offset of the 1970s and 1980s focused on precision weapons, stealth, firepower, and long-range targeting. The third offset, beginning around 2014, ush- ered in emphasis on artificial intelligence, miniaturization robotics, cyber, and data. Some are calling for a fourth offset centered around alliances and partnerships. It may be a mistake to view space as the ultimate offset. Although space offers the ultimate in the American quest for more superior technol- ogy and potential firepower, it requires a complete rewiring of national ­ security strategy. Space power is not so much an offset as it is the strategy writ large. It enables “the American way of warfare” (Kehler 2021). It is currently our most advanced military asset and our most vulnerable and unpro- tected arena. It is, in the words of Coyote Smith, our Achilles heel. “It is America’s largest center of gravity because every sector supporting the instruments of national power—diplomacy, information, military, and economic—has grown dependent upon space forces for daily operations, with little or no alternative means. Space has become America’s Achilles’ heel because those satellites are undefended” (C. Smith 2020). Most Amer- icans don’t realize how far-reaching our space dependencies are “from everyday life to warfighting” (Shaw 2021). It is the driver for the internet, communications, weather forecasting, surveillance, reconnaissance, mis- sile warning, and overall intelligence. The United States cannot simply monitor the world without our space assets (Woolsey 2021). In the future, space power moves us from the three-dimensional realm to the fourth that will take us from the orbits of the Earth to Mars (Kwast 2021). SPACE FUTURES WORKSHOP In September 2019, the then-U.S. Air Force Space Command (before the re-creation of U.S. Space Command and creation of the Space Force) spon- sored a workshop titled “The Future of Space 2060 and Implications for