Big Trouble in Little China 2

Once China's real strategic imperative -- securing its energy and trade
routes -- are grasped its activities are more easily interpreted. Increases in
China's amphibious capabilities are usually seen as menacing Taiwan. But here's
what the Navy
League has to say:

The PLAN's evolving strategy has been described in terms of two distinct
phases. The strategy's first phase is for the PLAN to develop a "green
water active defense strategy" capability. This "green water"
generally is described as being encompassed within an arc swung from
Vladivostok to the north, to the Strait of Malacca to the south, and out to
the "first island chain" (Aleutians, Kuriles, Ryukyus, Taiwan,
Philippines, and Greater Sunda islands) to the east. Analysts have assessed
that the PLAN is likely to attain this green water capability early in the
21st century. Open-source writings also suggest that the PLAN intends to
develop a capability to operate in the "second island chain" (Bonins,
Guam, Marianas, and Palau islands) by the mid-21st century. In the future, the
PLAN also may expand its operations to bases in Myanmar, Burma. These bases
will provide the PLAN with direct access to the Strait of Malacca and the Bay
of Bengal.

These are very same island chains which so preoccupied the Imperial Japanese
Navy during the Second World War and for exactly the same reasons. Any attempts
to positively control sealanes leading in and out of northeast Asia will involve
dominating the Malay Barrier and the Bonins, Guam, Marianas, and Palau islands.
As to the amphibious force, the Navy League has this assessment:

The PLAN's 7,000-man Marine ... Force's ... primary mission is to safeguard China's island holdings in the South China Sea during times of peace and to seize and defend islands in the South China Sea during times of war.
(Here's where the Spratleys comes in. It sits across the route from the Malay
barrier to the East China Sea -- Wretchard). The Marine Force also may be
used for amphibious raids or for establishing beachheads in scenarios
entailing a military confrontation with Taiwan.

Taiwan is the secondary mission. Keeping China's access to energy is the
primary mission. The devil in the proposition is that as long as China is seen
as representing a threat to Japan, any attempts to reach out to "the first
island chain" (which includes the Aleutians) and the "second island
chain" (which includes the Bonins, which is Japanese territory) will bring
a reaction from Nippon. Like the Anglo-German Naval Race of the 1900s, any
serious maritime rivalry will be fraught will grave consequences. One
interesting thing about these developments is that for the first time in 500
years Europe is absent from the maritime strategic equation.

Big Trouble in Little China

Defense
Tech asks whether China will soon "have the teeth to chomp down on
Taiwan" and concludes that it will, citing increases in China's amphibious
warfare capability. 

the PLA has shifted focus towards amphibious operations for a significant
part of the ground forces ... this has included the reorganisation of two
motorised infantry divisions in the Nanjing and Guangzhou Military Regions
into amphibious infantry divisions and the transfer of another infantry
division to the navy to form a second marine brigade in the late 1990s. ...
round a quarter of all PLA manoeuvre units, which number around 20 divisions
or brigades, plus supporting artillery and air-defence units, have
participated in training exercises for amphibious operations�

The US intelligence community has reported that since 2001, the Chinese
shipbuilding industry has produced 23 new amphibious assault ships and 13
conventional attack submarines. ... The PLA Navy (PLAN) is rapidly
transforming itself from a coastal force into a bluewater naval power with a
force modernisation drive that is unprecedented in the post-Cold War era.
"The range and number of warships the Chinese navy is acquiring can be
compared to the Soviet Union's race to become an ocean-going navy to rival the
US in the 1970s," said a China-based foreign naval attach�.

But stop there a moment. "The PLA Navy (PLAN) is rapidly transforming
itself from a coastal force into a bluewater naval power with a force
modernisation drive that is unprecedented in the post-Cold War era." If
China's strategic goal is to take Taiwan why should it need a Blue Water navy?
Furthermore, why should Taiwan represent any strategic priority at all? The
small island nation poses no credible threat to mainland. The real strategic
center of Chinese interests is the South China sea through which the commercial
and petroleum lifeblood of China flows. According to the Washington
Times, China understands that the principle national security threat facing
it is disruption of sea lanes bringing oil and commerce to its shores.

China believes the U.S. military will disrupt China's energy imports in any
conflict over Taiwan ... Beijing's leaders see access to oil and gas resources
as vital to economic growth and fear that stalled economic growth could cause
instability and ultimately the collapse of their nation of 1.3 billion people.
Energy demand, particularly for oil, will increase sharply in the next 20
years � from 75 million barrels per day last year to 120 million barrels in
2025 -- with Asia consuming 80 percent of the added 45 million barrels, the
report said. Eighty percent of China's oil currently passes through the Strait
of Malacca, and the report states that China believes the sea area is
"controlled by the U.S. Navy." Chinese President Hu Jintao recently
stated that China faces a "Malacca Dilemma" -- the vulnerability of
its oil supply lines from the Middle East and Africa to disruption. Oil-tanker
traffic through the Strait, which is closest to Indonesia, is projected to
grow from 10 million barrels a day in 2002 to 20 million barrels a day in
2020, the report said. Chinese specialists interviewed for the report said the
United States has the military capability to cut off Chinese oil imports and
could "severely cripple" China by blocking its energy supplies.

As the Belmont Club argued in an earlier
post, one USN riposte to a Chinese blockade campaign against Taiwan would be
to shut the oil flowing to the People's Republic at the spigot, through its
control of the Persian Gulf: a counter-blockade. This blue-water threat
represents the true strategic threat to the Chinese commercial lifeline. For
that reason, recent Chinese efforts to build naval intallations ("a string
of pearls") along the route to the Persian Gulf in Cambodia, Rangoon, Burma
and Pakistan and develop its oceangoing navy must be understood as going
beyond its ambitions against Taiwan.

But even if the United States could be persuaded not to intervene
in any dispute with Taiwan, China's peculiar geographic vulnerability to
maritime disruption means that even Taiwan's small submarine force could pose a
major threat. This map
from Global Security underscores how vital the South China Sea is to China's
economy. Virtually all VLCC traffic to China, Japan and South Korea pass through
the Lombok and Malacca Straits. Traffic bound for the cluster
of ports (run your mouse along the Chinese coast and the ports will pop up
as circles) around Guangdong (Hongkong and related ports) can stop 600 km
west-southwest of Taiwan, but traffic bound for the port clusters around
Shanghai must pass east of Taiwan, through the Luzon straits before berthing 600
km due north of Taipei -- right past the Bonins -- including Okinawa. Should
Taiwan respond to a Chinese threat by deploying its Zwaardvis class diesel
electrics along the Bonin littoral, the northern Chinese ports would be
blockadaded. Both the Guangdong and Shanghai ports themselves are well within
range of the 9,000 nautical mile ranged Taiwanese diesel-electrics.

Here is where some military analysts may have it wrong with their scenarios
of a triumphal Chinese descent on a hapless Taiwan.  Taiwanese diesel electrics could respond to mainland saber rattling by taking station to the Bonins northeast of Taiwan and would be far better suited to littoral warfare than the nuclear attack boats Beijing is building. Moreover, any combat between Taiwan and China in this area would be exceedingly dangerous,
because it would occur virtually within Japanese territorial waters. China would
have to be very careful in naval operations or risk attacking Japanese fleet
units by accident. Escorting tanker convoys east of Taiwan and through the
Bonins  would be a nightmare. In fact, Taiwanese naval action need only be
threatened: any naval confrontation in the South China sea would almost
certainly disrupt commercial and oil traffic not only to China, but to Japan and
Korea as well. If that were not enough, the Taiwanese subs could head south as
well. All Taiwan would need to do is torpedo one large VLCC in the Malacca
straits to block it for months. None of these prospects have been lost on
Taiwanese planners. The Taipei
Times says:

"If Taiwan obtains the eight diesel-powered submarines we propose to
purchase through the US, we will have the capability of blockading China's sea
lanes in South China and East China seas," Minister of National Defense
Lee Jye  said yesterday at the legislature. He said the MND assessed that
China will need to import 90 percent of its energy needs by 2020. He said
China currently has 30 days of oil reserves, and that it wants to reach 50
days in 2010 and 90 days in 2020. He said, however, that even if China
achieves that goal, its oil reserves would be insufficient in comparison with
the US' 158-day reserves and Japan's 161-day reserves.

In addition, he said that the MND believes that by the year 2010, China
will need to import 36.29 million tonnes of food, rising to 54.4 million
tonnes in 2020 and 118 million tonnes in 2030. He said China therefore
requires secure sea lanes, which the MND believes is one of China's big
weaknesses should it go to war against Taiwan. Lee said the MND calculated
that in 2020, Taiwan will require at least 10 submarines to patrol waters
around Taiwan, including waters east of Taiwan, the East China Sea and the
South China Sea. He said if China takes military action against Taiwan, the 10
submarines would be able to blockade the sea lanes and attack China's warships
and civilian shipping.

The Taiwanese have done the numbers. They understand the capability of their
boats is limited by their small numbers but know that if China precipitates a
conflict in the South China sea it would run out of energy seventy days before the US and Japan -- though the US will only be inconvenienced because eastbound voyages to the US can be routed through the Torres Straits and the westward
route to the East Coast through the Mozambique Channel and around the Horn of
Africa will remain open. (See page 8 of this
document for a thumbnail chart of world VLCC lanes) One final thought from
the Indian Navy perspective:

the navy last month operationalised its first full-fledged UAV base in
Kochi in Kerala ... four Heron crafts were ordered from Israel.
... The navy plans to induct at least a dozen Israeli UAVs and set up UAV
bases in Port Blair and Lakshwadeep islands as well. In fact, a full-fledged
base in the Andaman islands to monitor the Chinese movements in the seas is
also being planned. China has, during the last decade, shown increasing
eagerness to be present in the Andamans. It has eavesdropping equipment
permanently placed in the Coco Islands.

China is the last nation that will want trouble in the Taiwan Straits.

Faustian Bargain

Let's start from the source least likely to run the headline: the Guardian
reviews newspaper reports which suggest that French voters may reject the
proffered European Constitution, scheduled for ratification on May 29.

The French are becoming increasingly disenchanted with Europe and are ready
to turn their backs on the EU, according to the latest opinion polls in the
French newspapers Le Figaro and Le Parisien. Their polls, published yesterday
and last Thursday respectively, show that more than half of French voters say
they will vote no to the European constitution when the country goes to the
polls on May 29.

Then let's go to the 'why' part of the disenchantment.

Why are the French "feeling sick of Europe", asked Eric le
Boucher in Le Monde. "They regret the enlargement of the EU. They detest
the idea that their public services are open to foreign competition. They
complain about the liberal slant of the union." And they are peeved that
the prosperity enjoyed by Britain, Scandinavia and eastern Europe has not been
seen at home, he said. In France, the benefits of the EU are unclear, Le
Boucher noted - "economic growth has stalled, unemployment is rising
inexorably" - and pessimism reigns.

Historians in the far future will struggle to understand the convoluted inner
logic of the Le Monde observation. "They regret the enlargement of the EU"
which is that which they wanted. "They detest the idea that their public
services are open to foreign competition" and yet they detest the benefits
of the policy they most ardently oppose: "and they are peeved that the
prosperity enjoyed by Britain, Scandinavia and eastern Europe has not been seen
at home". But let us take it as datum and plainly say that the French are
disgusted with the consequences of their own desires.

The Astute
Blogger asks whether the French are, by a funny twist of fate, set to
destroy their own creation: that having created their own Frankenstein monster,
they are now in danger of being strangled by it. (hat tip: DA). The burden of
trying to pursue two contradictory goals may prove too much. On the one hand,
the French are committed to preserving the welfare state while on the other hand
were creating the very conditions that undermine it. According to the International
Herald Tribune:

At a meeting in Brussels, EU leaders took a strong turn toward entrenching Europe's high-tax social model by backing away from a radical deregulation of the Continent's services sector. They wanted to assuage fears among voters in France and Germany that cheaper workers from the free-market economies of Eastern Europe would steal their jobs.
...

It will mean a significant rewriting of the European Commission's services
directive that was meant to allow businesses that provide services - from
consultants to accountants to builders - to compete freely in all countries
across the union. . The services directive had been blamed for the dramatic
drop in French public support for the new constitutional treaty after two
opinion polls showed a majority of French voters could reject it in May's
referendum.

The price of forging ahead with a European Union in which France was allowed
to play by special rules amounted to creating a "separate but equal"
regime on the grounds that Europe 'needed France' in order to remain Europe, a
regime in which some are more European than others.

 Jean-Claude Juncker, current EU president, denied that Europe was
splitting in two between the new free-market Eastern economies that joined the
EU last year and an old Europe that wants to defend the west's high-tax social
model. ... In rewriting the services proposals, France sought guarantees
against social dumping by harmonizing social laws. Chirac also demanded
special protection for public services such as health care and for cultural
industries such as television. ... "This is about protecting
uncompetitive workers in France, Germany and Belgium," said Ann Mettler
of the Lisbon Council, a free market think tank in Brussels. She pointed out
that EU unemployment stood at 90 million and that youth unemployment was at 18
percent. "That is not inclusive. It is not social." .

The alarm is genuine though the surprise should not be. The European project
was in part originally conceived as an amplifier for French ambitions and the
pretty flame of the fuse has lost its charm as it nears the primer. People are
beginning to understand the document before them but the political salesmen are
determined to offer any combination of rebates, coupons, special offers and
financing to get the final signature on the contract
of sale. Stephen Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster" speaks of
the belated remorse that so often follows Faustian bargains, though like as not
there will be no reprieve from the consequences of this deal.

It was about the last straw for Jabez Stone. "I vow," he said,
and he looked around him kind of desperate -- "I vow it's enough to make
a man want to sell his soul to the devil. And I would, too, for two centsl"
... But till you make a bargain like that, you've got no idea of how fast ...
years can run. For every day, when he gets up, he thinks, "There's one
more night gone," and every night when he lies down ... it makes him sick
at heart.

But with France and the Netherlands close to rejecting the European
Constitution, in spite of the blandishments, the referendum on May 29 is of
critical importance because there really isn't a Plan B in case the European
project is derailed. According to Financial
Times, there are only plans to limit the scope of the catastrophe.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the veteran prime minister of Luxembourg and holder of
the rotating EU presidency, is said by officials to be on standby to
co-ordinate the EU's response if France or the Netherlands votes No. One
senior EU official said: �We may want to issue a political statement quickly
to try to limit the damage. Then we would try to pick up the pieces at the EU
summit on June 16-17.� He said there were no formal contingency plans in
place, and there were still hopes that both France and the Netherlands would
endorse the treaty.

Which leaves the field open to the first European leader able to articulate a
viable and alternative trajectory for the nations of the old continent.

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna

During the outage of I Could Scream, Dympha will be posting at 
Gates of Vienna. The problem is at the service provider end, and we will do our best to keep content up under all circumstances.

Taiwan and China

(This is a copy of content currently on the new site which is unavailable due
to the outage)

James Dunnigan at the Strategy Page discusses the idea of an "out of the blue" (OOTB) attack by China on Taiwan.

What this means is that, during what appears to be peacetime maneuvers, the troops involved will suddenly move against a nearby nation and invade. ... The OOTB was most noticeably used, and successfully at that, when the Russian trained Egyptian army surprised the Israelis and recaptured the Suez canal in 1973. ... if the Chinese could get control of the air over Taiwan for a day or so, three Chinese airborne divisions could be dropped on Taiwan as well. Taiwan has always expected assistance from the U.S. Navy and Air Force. But without advance warning to get a carrier or two into the area, and a few hundred U.S. Air Force planes alerted for movement to Taiwan, Japan and Guam, the American assistance would be too late. 

An OOTB attack necessarily trades velocity for mass. By compressing decisive operations within a very short time span China puts aside its greatest asset, which is numerical superiority. The total force China can immediately put ashore is limited by its amphibious lift: one heavy division plus up to four light divisions.

It is estimated that the large and medium amphibious ships in service with the PLA could lift a whole heavy armour division, or 1.5 to 2 light infantry divisions and their some equipment in the first wave of a regional amphibious assault. However, if take the sealift capabilities of smaller landing crafts and merchant ships into account, the aggregate lift of China�s amphibious forces could reach as many as five divisions (60,000 troops and their equipment). 

An OOTB attack would be risky in the extreme. Because there are no landing areas on Taiwan's east coast, geography dictates that any amphibious assault be directed against the middle of the western coast. The five or so divisions, augmented by part of China's 3 airborne divisions would face Taiwan's 2 mech infantry and 10 infantry divisions, backed up by more than 7 armored brigades who know full well where they would land. Unlike the attacking troops, they will have armor on hand, artillery and plenty of ammunition. Taiwan has over 300 SP and 1,100 towed artillery pieces.

By process of elimination, the most attractive [though not most likely] target for an amphibious assault against Taiwan would be the coastal region between Tung-Hsiao and San-Wan. Midway between the northern Taipei urban agglomeration and the central populated region around Taichung, this coastal area is free of annoying mud-flats, and offers open terrain suitable for the build-up of a beach-head and subsequent decisive maneuver. A lodgement in this area would effective cut the island in half, and lay the foundation for subsequent operations to the north and south. 

Because the prospect of overrunning the Taiwanese defense force in a short time looks so unpromising the standard scenario for attacking Taiwan as described in a document called The Security Situation in the Taiwan Strait imagines a deliberate and phased assault, with the island first being worn down by a naval blockade and prolonged bombardment. The actual invasion would be a "coup de grace".

An amphibious invasion of Taiwan by China would be a highly risky and most unlikely option for the PLA, chosen only as a last resort to force the total surrender of the island. It most likely would be preceded by a variety of preparatory operations to include a blockade, conventional missile strikes, and special operations on Taiwan. These operations would play a critical role in determining how China would pursue the coup de grace, with an amphibious assault only one facet of a multi-pronged invasion plan.

Yet a deliberate and phased attack has its attendant problems too; the biggest of which is that it allows the US time to mirror the Chinese buildup, something which the USN is precisely prepared to do. A Congressional Research Service document (RS21338) entitled Navy Ship Deployments: New Approaches available through CRS Gallery Watch describes a concept called the Fleet Response Plan, which rather than maintaining single battlegroups in three forward areas -- the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean/Persian Gulf region, and the Western Pacific -- will enable the Navy to surge a concentrated force to a threatened area.

In addition, the Navy is implementing a new Fleet Response Plan (FRP) that will improve the Navy�s ability to surge multiple formations in response to emergencies. ... Implementing the FRP, Navy officials say, will permit the Navy to deploy up to 6 of its CSGs within 30 days, and an additional 2 CSGs within another 60 days after that.

China's strategic choice then is between an OOTB pitting 5 or 6 lightly armed divisions against 12 Taiwanese to take advantage of surprise or to advance with a much larger force against up to 8 USN battlegroups. This is complicated by the fact that one US response to a Chinese blockade of Taiwan might include a counter-blockade of China's fuel imports. The growing Chinese dependence on Middle Eastern oil has a created a vulnerability that did not exist a decade ago. The Middle East Quarterly (hat tip: Kae) notes:

China's thirst for oil shows no sign of slackening. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, China is now the second-largest consumer of petroleum products in the world. Today, China imports roughly 2 million barrels of oil per day, half of which comes from the Middle East. The International Energy Agency predicts that within a quarter-century, China will import 10 million barrels a day, the current U.S. level. Beijing considers its Achilles' heel to be a U.S. naval blockade. ...

As a hedge against reliance on the U.S. Navy for sea-line protection, Beijing has constructed a naval base in Gwadar, Pakistan, not far from the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, facilities in Myanmar close to the Strait of Malacca, and the Kompong-Sihanoukville Port in Cambodia.

Yet America's dominant position in the Persian Gulf virtually ensures that no Chinese tankers would ever get so far as Hormuz, let alone Malacca if it came to that. Ironically, the bigger the Chinese economy becomes, the more vulnerable it grows to US countermeasures. And because any US-Chinese confrontation would be economically catastrophic for both countries, and to Japan and South Korea besides, Taiwan's real guarantee against invasion is that it is a poisoned pawn. It would cost China everything it worked for in the last two decades to swallow.

The Business End

In article entitled Beyond
Ruthless, the Washington Post describes what victory consists of: the
physical destruction of the enemy. Writer Steve Fainaru follows Sgt. 1st Class
Domingo Ruiz as he ambushes insurgents and chases them all around Mosul.

Ruiz's unit, the 4th Platoon, has killed at least 15 suspected insurgents
in the past two months, according to soldiers. Commanders said the unit
encounters more enemy contact than any other platoon in the battalion. The
platoon calls itself the "Violators." Its patch depicts a leering
skull clad in a green beret, blood dripping from its mouth. Its motto is
"Carpe Noctum," or "Seize the Night," a reference in Latin
to the platoon's propensity to operate after dark. A self-described
"greaser," Ruiz wears a pencil-thin mustache and slicks back the
dark hair on the top of his head with Rebound Activator Gel. The lower half of
his scalp is shaved.

Which gives you an idea of the irreducibly violent nature of the job. The one
psychological thing about the US presence in Mosul, which Ruiz exploits to
effect, is the now accepted notion that they will stay until the insurgency is
beaten. He uses it to drive the enemy not simply from the physical buildings of
Mosul but from the mental landscape of the residents. Imperceptibly but
steadily, the US military has come to intuitively understand the key features of
human terrain. Although writers will attempt to capture that knowledge in field
manuals and instructional material, its living repository is really in the
memories and experience of men like Sgt. Ruiz.

To some extent, one can sympathize with pacifists who fear the very existence
of that knowledge, who would prefer a world innocent of the craft of war. The
structure of armies are themselves testaments to the destructiveness of what
they must contain. The emphasis on discipline; the focus on control; even
ceremony, are ways of keeping the lid on a genie which it is perilous even to
regard. Armies parade to music so that we can forget what they are for.

Ruiz said the decision to pick up the skull fragment and take it back to
the base was a "sarcastic" gesture to confirm the kill to the
battalion. (Capt. Rob) Born, who was not present during the attack, said the
soldiers picked up the fragment not as a trophy, which is prohibited under
military regulations, but to confirm "that we had the remains of a
terrorist."

By such distinctions is the sword kept within the sheath.

Nightfall

Theodore Dalrymple describes the curious phenomenon which anyone, at one time
or another, may have felt: the slow pull of evil. Human beings experience it in
many forms; the shameful and surreptitious attraction to pornography,
drink,  cruelty or plain laziness: the subconscious knowledge that you are
going to do something bad; and though you try to deceive yourself into imagining
you will not succumb just yet, you let yourself approach the edge just near
enough so that in a moment of weakness you will fall over as planned. Except, as
Dalrymple argues in the City
Journal, the human recognition of evil normally allows us to resist so it
never has us wholly in its grasp. Looking back on 14 years of service in
hospitals and prisons, Dalrymple realized he was witnessing the inexorable
incapacitation of human discernment; the deadening of the ability to distinguish between good and evil which is so essential to survival.

My work has caused me to become perhaps unhealthily preoccupied with the
problem of evil. Why do people commit evil? ... From the vantage point of one
six-bedded hospital ward, I have met at least 5,000 perpetrators of the kind
of violence I have just described and 5,000 victims of it ... Perhaps the most
alarming feature of this low-level but endemic evil ... is that it is unforced
and spontaneous. ...  In the worst dictatorships, some of the evil
ordinary men and women do they do out of fear of not committing it. There,
goodness requires heroism. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, for example, a
man who failed to report a political joke to the authorities was himself
guilty of an offense that could lead to deportation or death. But in modern
Britain ... the evil is freely chosen.

He goes on to describe a variety of human wreckage. Private torture chambers
for those who have welshed on drug debts; self-destructive behavior; absolute
selfishness and irresponsibility. In nearly every case the one thing the
perpetrators and victims of evil were never allowed to do was to judge their own
acts. That was absolutely forbidden. The universal course of treatment
prescribed by all the organs of the Welfare State was to find ways to make them
'feel better about it'.

Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever
claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This
semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with
life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the
responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. ... A ridiculous
pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill,
and the doctor pretends to cure him. In the process, the patient is willfully
blinded to the conduct that inevitably causes his misery in the first place.

The avoidance of the obvious became a private joke between Dalrymple and his
patients. He knew -- and they knew -- how they had gotten into the fixes that
had disfigured their lives, but he only ever referred to it in jest. The beaten
women had a specially ironic sense of humor and loved his good natured chaffing:
"next time you are thinking of going out with a man, bring him to me for my
inspection, and I'll tell you if you can go out with him."

This never fails to make the most wretched, the most "depressed"
of women smile broadly or laugh heartily. They know exactly what I mean, and I
need not spell it out further. They know that I mean that most of the men they
have chosen have their evil written all over them, sometimes quite literally
in the form of tattoos, saying "FUCK OFF" or "MAD DOG."
And they understand that if I can spot the evil instantly, because they know
what I would look for, so can they ... the men in these situations also know
perfectly well the meaning and consequences of what they are doing. The same
day that I saw the patient I have just described, a man aged 25 came into our
ward, in need of an operation to remove foil-wrapped packets of cocaine that
he had swallowed in order to evade being caught by the police in possession of
them.

Dalrymple makes a strong case for the utility of morality as a
survival skill. It is a craft, which like hunting and gathering, was once passed
on to keep people from perishing in the wilderness. Now it is disparaged; the
modern welfare state has no need of it.

As for the men, the state absolves them of all responsibility for their
children. The state is now father to the child. The biological father is
therefore free to use whatever income he has as pocket money, for
entertainment and little treats. He is thereby reduced to the status of a
child, though a spoiled child with the physical capabilities of a man ... But
if the welfare state is a necessary condition for the spread of evil, it is
not sufficient. ... Here we enter the realm of culture and ideas. For it is
necessary not only to believe that it is economically feasible to behave in
the irresponsible and egotistical fashion that I have described, but also to
believe that it is morally permissible to do so. And this idea has been
peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, more assiduously
than anywhere else, to the extent that it is now taken for granted. ...

So while my patients know in their hearts that what they are doing is
wrong, and worse than wrong, they are encouraged nevertheless to do it by the
strong belief that they have the right to do it, because everything is merely
a matter of choice. Almost no one in Britain ever publicly challenges this
belief. Nor has any politician the courage to demand a withdrawal of the
public subsidy that allows the intensifying evil I have seen over the past 14
years -- violence, rape, intimidation, cruelty, drug addiction, neglect -- to
flourish so exuberantly. With 40 percent of children in Britain born out of
wedlock, and the proportion still rising, and with divorce the norm rather
than the exception, there soon will be no electoral constituency for reversal.
It is already deemed to be electoral suicide to advocate it by those who, in
their hearts, know that such a reversal is necessary.

By a strange process of summation the politicians of the welfare state become
afflicted with the same blindness they wrongly believed confined to low-income
housing estates. Suicidal public policies are pursued -- even when everyone
knows they are suicidal -- because no one can remember how to behave
differently.

A sharp economic downturn would expose how far the policies of successive
governments, all in the direction of libertinism, have atomized British
society, so that all social solidarity within families and communities, so
protective in times of hardship, has been destroyed. The elites cannot even
acknowledge what has happened, however obvious it is, for to do so would be to
admit their past responsibility for it, and that would make them feel bad.
Better that millions should live in wretchedness and squalor than that they
should feel bad about themselves.

Read the whole thing.