PJ Media

PJ Mediahttps://pjmedia.com/spengler/feedPJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usSun, 05 Apr 2026 14:41:19 -0400No, Matt Pottinger: We Didn’t Feed the Chinese Shark<![CDATA[Former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger had this to say about China last week: “We saw a baby shark and thought that we could transform it into a dolphin. We kept feeding the shark and the shark got bigger and bigger. And now we’re dealing with a formidable, great white.”]]>Fri, 12 May 2023 08:31:12 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Conservatism]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2023/05/12/no-matt-pottinger-we-didnt-feed-the-chinese-shark-n1694696The Sino-Forming of the Global South<![CDATA[Why did Saudi Arabia and Iran go to Beijing to restore diplomatic relations?]]>Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:54:54 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[China]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2023/04/14/the-sino-forming-of-the-global-south-n1687300One Cheer for China<![CDATA[Not since Chiang Kai-Shek blew up the Yellow River dikes at Zhengzhou in 1938 to slow the advancing Japanese has a major nation inflicted as much damage on itself to hurt an adversary as Washington did in its last round of high-tech export curbs on China. Millions died in the ensuing flood and famine. It didn’t help Chiang, and it won’t help the United States, where semiconductor R&D and capital expenditures will shrivel. Unmitigated panic has taken hold of American policymakers, and the outcome will not be good. Scott Foster detailed the damage to the revenues of America’s semiconductor equipment and design industries in Asia Times on Oct. 17.]]>Wed, 26 Oct 2022 18:17:33 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[China]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/10/26/one-cheer-for-china-n1640388The American Republic, the British Monarchy, and the Sense of the Sacred<![CDATA[Americans rarely grasp the extent to which the British people invested their monarch with a sense of sanctity. Elizabeth II personified the “mystic chords of memory” that bind a country together with a national identity. The monarchy is Britain’s most popular institution, and more popular today than at any time since opinion polls began. As religion faded in Britain, the monarchy became the repository of the country’s sense of the sacred. Britons will mourn Elizabeth II as no American of living memory was mourned. I offer my condolences, along with so many around the world.]]>Thu, 08 Sep 2022 20:29:29 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Judaism]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/09/08/the-american-republic-the-british-monarchy-and-the-sense-of-the-sacred-n1627962Russia Plays the Iran Card in Response to U.S. Blunders<![CDATA[To say that the Biden administration failed to think through the consequences of confrontation with Russia over Ukraine might be the understatement of the 21st century. Western observers are shocked—shocked —to learn that Putin will ally himself with our enemies. Wrote the Daily Telegraph on July 19, “Desperate for new friends, Vladimir Putin plots unholy alliance with Iran and Turkey.” This isn’t desperation, though, but a trade-off that Russia has pondered for nearly twenty years. Putin always has had the option to turn spoiler and to use Russia’s considerable capabilities in military technology to make life miserable for America and its allies, most of all Israel.]]>Fri, 22 Jul 2022 10:23:58 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Russia]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/07/22/auto-draft-70-n1615005Donald Trump Is Magnificently Right About Ukraine<![CDATA[Former President Donald Trump told the “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville on June 17:]]>Sun, 19 Jun 2022 07:48:34 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Ukraine]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/06/19/auto-draft-73-n1606391The Ukraine Echo Chamber Goes Full Chernobyl<![CDATA[The lid blew off the Ukraine echo chamber this week as Russian artillery pulverized Ukrainian forces in Donbas. Ukraine has lost 10,000 dead, 40,000 to 50,000 wounded, and 8,000 captured. It is running out of Soviet-era ammunition for its limited artillery. A month ago the whole American body politic, from progressive left to neo-conservatives, drank the victory Kool-Aid. Remember when Russia’s incompetent, corrupt army was about to be swept from the field? As is their wont, the Russians blundered around and took losses for a few weeks before figuring out how to wage an old-fashioned, World War II-style artillery campaign. “It’s been so long since anyone fought a conventional war that they had to remember how to do it,” said a European military observer.]]>Mon, 13 Jun 2022 15:32:26 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Ukraine]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/06/13/the-ukraine-echo-chamber-goes-full-chernobyl-n1605057'It Became Necessary to Destroy the Country to Save It'<![CDATA[Peter Arnett’s celebrated quote — “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it” — was a fabrication during the Vietnam War but has a macabre application to Ukraine. American fecklessness and Russian rapacity together will leave a grease spot where Ukraine used to be. It was all tragically, idiotically unnecessary.]]>Mon, 30 May 2022 18:35:05 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Ukraine]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/05/30/it-became-necessary-to-destroy-the-country-to-save-it-n1602025Canceling Beethoven: Who's Relevant to Whom?<![CDATA[“Joy, immortal incandescence Daughter of Elysium! Breathing fire from your presence To your temple ground we come.”]]>Sun, 10 Apr 2022 12:45:58 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Woke]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/04/10/canceling-beethoven-whos-relevant-to-whom-n1588547Putin Won't Go, Russia Won't Collapse—So What Will Biden Do About Ukraine?<![CDATA[Another seance with the ghost of Cardinal Richelieu explains Putin’s objectives in Ukraine: Russia will ruin and depopulate Ukraine, the way Richelieu reduced large parts of Germany to cannibalism during the Thirty Years War. Shortly after I conjured the spirit of Europe’s greatest (and nastiest) strategist, the Telegram channel of Russia’s most fanatic nationalist, Aleksandr Dugin, featured the item below:]]>Sun, 03 Apr 2022 16:16:32 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Ukraine]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/04/03/putin-wont-go-russia-wont-collapse-so-what-will-biden-do-about-ukraine-n1586600Reliving the Nightmare of 1914 (We're Doing It Again)<![CDATA[Reliving the nightmare of 1914 World War I had no good guys, no winners, just mediocre, small-minded politicians unable to step back from the brink By DAVID P. GOLDMAN MARCH 4, 2022 [Note: I am releasing this from the Asia Times paywall given the gravity of the world situation.]]]>Tue, 08 Mar 2022 20:39:21 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Conservatism]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/03/08/reliving-the-nightmare-of-1914-were-doing-it-againi-n1564934Jack Reacher, American Archetype<![CDATA[Over the years I’ve managed to read a couple of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. It’s yet another iteration of the American Story repeated endlessly in American fiction high and low, from Huckleberry Finn to Dashiell Hammett, and from John Wayne to Clint Eastwood: A stranger wanders into town, rights the wrongs, wins the girl, leaves the girl, and continues his wandering. It’s John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, but without the reception in the Celestial City. America from the outset has been caught in a recurring dream (sometimes a nightmare) of a journey that cannot end but only begin again. As I argued some years ago in an essay for Tablet magazine (excerpted below), this is a theological imperative. Americans styled themselves a new Mission in the Wilderness and a new City on the Hill, in Lincoln’s felicitous phrase, “an almost-chosen people.” All the great nations of Europe at some point styled themselves the Chosen People, from dei gesta per francos in the 12th century to Moscow’s pretensions to be a Third Rome and Hitler’s Master Race. What distinguished American Protestants was their Augustinian understanding that however shiny their City on a Hill might be, it was not yet the Heavenly City, and the pilgrimage to the Heavenly City cannot end on earth. We obsessively rehearse this theological paradox in cowboy, detective and other popular fiction. Our national hero has many names—Huck Finn, the Continental Op, Shane, the High Plains Drifter, or Jack Reacher—but he remains Bunyan’s Pilgrim, traveling towards but never closer to the Celestial City. From Tablet Magazine, May 10, 2016:]]>Fri, 11 Feb 2022 15:49:16 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[USA]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/02/11/jack-reacher-american-archetype-n1558514What if They Had a War But There Was No One There to Begin With?<![CDATA[Note: I post below my Asia Times analysis, “Ukraine is the Hollow Man of Europe.” It’s behind the Asia Times paywall (Asia Times journalists have to get paid like everyone else), but given the urgency of the situation, I make it available to PJ Media readers.]]>Thu, 27 Jan 2022 20:48:53 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/01/27/what-if-they-had-a-war-but-there-was-no-one-there-to-begin-with-n1553825Putin's Waited 30 Years to Sort Out Ukraine<![CDATA[“Ukraine’s induction into the Western alliance system would mean that the US missiles could hit Moscow in 5 minutes, rendering Russian air defence systems ineffectual and obsolete,” writes former top Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar in his blog. Since 1991, when the U.S. and Germany assured Gorbachev that NATO would NOT expand eastward if Russia agreed to German unification, Russia has believed that the West betrayed a solemn commitment by pushing NATO towards Russia’s border (this is disputed by most U.S. sources).]]>Tue, 25 Jan 2022 08:52:20 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Conservatism]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2022/01/25/putins-waited-30-years-to-sort-out-ukraine-n1552603U.S. Brings a Pea-Shooter to a Gunfight With China<![CDATA[Many of my conservative friends are spinning their wheels with pea-shooter-gauge measures against China—kicking Chinese companies out of the U.S. stock market, for example. On Dec. 10 the U.S. government canceled an initial public offering for the Chinese AI startup SenseTime, whose facial recognition software may help Chinese authorities identify Uyghurs. Two weeks later SenseTime moved its IPO to Hong Kong; it rose 44% in the first two days of trading. China has a trade surplus, $3.2 trillion in reserves, and a 40% savings rate. It is an exporter, not an importer of capital. American capital markets are a convenience, not a necessity for Chinese companies.]]>Fri, 31 Dec 2021 13:35:18 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[China]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2021/12/31/u-s-brings-a-pea-shooter-to-a-gunfight-with-china-n1545733Donald Trump's Alleged Anti-Semitism<![CDATA[Liberal Jewish outlets and the liberal media are charging Donald Trump with anti-Semitism, on the basis of his recent remarks to Israeli journalist Barak Raviv:]]>Sat, 18 Dec 2021 18:57:04 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2021/12/18/trumps-alleged-anti-semitism-n1542666Hanukkah: When the Jews Chose Life<![CDATA[Tonight begin the eight days of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights that commemorates the purification of the Temple at Jerusalem after the expulsion of the Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ occupying army in 167 B.C.E. It was as much as a Jewish civil war as a war of liberation; large parts of the Jewish elite embraced Greek occupation and Greek culture. The Jewish Hellenizers still have their defenders, for example, New York Times columnist David Brooks, who a dozen years ago wrote:]]>Sun, 28 Nov 2021 15:01:13 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Judaism]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2021/11/28/hanukkah-when-the-jews-chose-life-n1537113How to Stop Inflation—a Winning Republican Program<![CDATA[Last August I wrote that inflation can crush the Democrats in 2022. After the Republican triumph in Virginia earlier this month, there’s no doubt about it. The 2022 and 2024 elections are the Republicans’ to lose.]]>Mon, 15 Nov 2021 11:12:30 -0500<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Budget]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2021/11/15/how-to-stop-inflation-a-winning-republican-program-n1532966The World No Longer Believes in American Democracy, and Neither do We<![CDATA[If the end of the world came, but nobody told you about it, would you care? Here’s a stunning piece of information that appeared in exactly no American news media, right, left or center. I read about it in Global Times, the Chinese government’s English-language newspaper.]]>Sat, 06 Nov 2021 21:03:51 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[USA]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2021/11/06/the-world-no-longer-believes-in-american-democracy-neither-do-we-n1530393How the Virtual Empire Corrupted America: My January 2000 Warning<![CDATA[My essays under the “Spengler” byline debuted in January 2000 with a meditation on tech stocks. I forecast that—contrary to the then-prevailing wisdom—Internet equities would blossom by feeding on the moral rot of the society underneath them. Not in my darkest rumination could I have envisioned the corruption of a whole generation of American youth through smartphones and social media, as documented by Prof. Jean Twenge of the University of California San Diego. I repost below my maiden essay, “What if Internet Stocks Aren’t a Bubble?”]]>Fri, 15 Oct 2021 09:26:23 -0400<![CDATA[David P. Goldman]]><![CDATA[Conservatism]]>https://pjmedia.com/david-p-goldman/2021/10/15/how-virtual-empire-corrupted-america-my-january-2000-warning-n1524134