The Angevin Counterfactual
As Andrew Sullivan notes, there’s been a lot of interesting debate about Stephen Walt’s counterfactual from a few days ago. See, for example, here and here and here here. Apropos of all that, and apropos of this Roger Cohen column which technically begins with a counterfactual, I want to offer up a counterfactual of my own – the only one, so far, that could plausibly be the title for a Matt Damon vehicle.
Here’s the scenario.
Imagine, if you will, that the Third Crusade was a smashing success. Richard Lionheart wins a huge and surprising victory over Saladin and recaptures Jerusalem. Saladin’s dominion splinters, and the Saracens are unable to make a renewed assault on the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Instead, an Anglo-French Catholic island survives for twelve generations, succumbing only in the 15th century to the Ottoman assault.
After the Ottoman conquest, the Angevins, as they come to call themselves, scatter across the empire, settling primarily in Syria, Egypt and western Anatolia. There is a brief flurry of enthusiasm for the restoration of their lost kingdom at the time of the Greek revolt, and while it comes to nothing at the time, over the course of the 19th century there is a steady migration of Angevins, promoted by Catholic knightly orders, back to the Levant. Dreams of restoration do not become a reality until after World War I. In the wake of Turkish massacres of Angevins, Britain demanded the League of Nations restore the Kingdom of Jerusalem under British protection. In spite of protests from the Sharif of Mecca, the French government, and the World Zionist Congress, the proposal was accepted and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, stretching from Tyre in the north to Jerusalem in the south, was restored in 1922.
I’ll pass briefly over the next 70-80 years of history – riots by the Samarian Arabs in the 1930s; occupation by, resistance to and collaboration with the Axis; the lopsided victory in the Suez War and its complex aftermath; the abdication and the ascendancy of the Protector . . . By the end of the 20th century, the erstwhile Kingdom of Jerusalem is locked in a seemly endless conflict with the Samarian Arabs. Back when it was a bulwark against Soviet influence, the Angevin state was a logical ally of the United States. But now, realist critics of the Angevin-American alliance argue that it is a millstone around America’s neck – an unnecessary embarrassment and a cause of friction between America and the far more important Gulf oil states. And yet, as the Angevin position gets more and more difficult, America binds herself ever more strongly to her odd little ally.
Why should that be? Obviously, for reasons of affinity. And yet, that affinity itself needs a bit of unpacking. The Angevins speak a different language (Norman French), and have a wildly different culture. They were never a colony of the United States. The traditional Catholicism that predominates in the Kingdom is a relative rarity in America, where most Catholics are tied to the faith by ethnic identity as much as anything. America’s Jews for obvious reasons have always resented the existence of the Angevin state, and the Irish, in spite of a common religion, have never warmed to what many of them see as a relic of British imperialism, medieval and modern. It’s really only among a slice of the American elite – old-line Anglophilic WASPs and traditionalist Catholics – that the affinity is profound. But as these segments are overrepresented in the elite relative to their percentage of the American population, their affinity has an outsized impact on American policy and, as well, on national perceptions.
Now, obviously there is a huge difference between Israel’s history and the counterfactual above. I put out the counterfactual for one purpose only: to highlight a difference in tone between the way we talk about our affinity for Israel and the way I imagine we’d talk about our affinity for the Angevin Kingdom. And the difference is in that word, “we.” If realists were to criticize American policy towards the Angevins, they might well say that Americans are blinded to the facts of the situation because of affinity, and that our blindness wasn’t doing ourselves or the Angevins any good. But they’d be unlikely to suggest that undue influence by a small group was a good description of the problem, because that group would be recognized as part of who we are. And that’s not entirely the case with criticism of America’s strong connection with Israel. When Roger Cohen highlights that there are a whole lot of Jews involved in America’s Mideast policy, and not a whole lot of Arabs or Persians, he’s right – and he’s right to highlight that this might leave us blind to facts, and that it’s worth being self-conscious about reaching out for perspective beyond the usual circle. But it’s not a terribly surprising thing that the discrepancy in personnel exists – Jews are just a much bigger part of the American elite generally than are Arabs and Persians, and broad-based American affinity for Israel is more clearly a consequence of the broad integration of American Jews, particularly into the American elite, than it is a consequence of American Jewish distinction. When the concern is expressed as being about undue influence, rather than being about an American affinity that is blinding us to interest, that suggests a base-level suspicion that, to some degree, the Jewish elite is not “us.” Which I think is what disturbs Jews – and not only Jews – about those kinds of arguments.
Would we be more likely to throw the Angevins over than we have been to throw Israel over? It depends – in part on the details of the circumstances and what we really perceived our interests to be. Perhaps we’d be more likely to do so because we wouldn’t feel the Angevins had the same moral trump card of near extinction, or because we could more plausibly think of the Angevins coming “home” to France or Britain if things went really pear-shaped. Or perhaps we’d be less-likely to do so because the affinity was broader, or because the mere existence of an Angevin state for several centuries in medieval days changed the nature of Arab nationalism in the Middle East in modern times – who knows. I will attempt to shed light on this question as well, by way of a comparison with South Africa – a state for which the American elite (or a segment thereof) had considerable affinity (for a variety of reasons) but which we did (to some extent) throw over. I would venture to say that one reason South Africa lost America’s general support is that many Americans (including many among the elite) felt an affinity for the victims of apartheid – and that this affinity had a great deal to do with a reconception in the post-Civil Rights era of who we are – a reconception that put African-Americans truly within the circle of “us.” That change was historically determined – it didn’t happen because of some abstract commitment to multi-culturalism but because of real facts about American history and real changes in American society. In any event, similar facts and history do not obtain with respect to the Arab side of the conflict with Israel or with my counterfactual Angevins.
I like this, but you should make it a Norman (Viking) kingdom supported by an international elite of vociferous Normans such as Jerry Pournelle and golfer-entrepreneur Greg Norman.
— Steve Sailer · Jan 17, 01:24 AM · #
Here’s my counterfactual, from my review of Jimmy Carter’s book in TakiMag.com last year:
Like many Americans, I was for most of my life fanatically pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian. What began to push me towards a more balanced view was, ironically enough, reading the enormously long article in the September, 1999 issue of Commentary by Justus Reid Weiner, “‘My Beautiful Old House’ and Other Fabrications by Edward Said.” It denounced the Palestinian-American intellectual for falsely implying that his father’s mansion in Jerusalem had been stolen by the Israelis during their War of Independence in the late 1940s.
I already despised Said … so, I sat down with enthusiasm to read the muckraking piece in Commentary. Indeed, I decided to boil the essay down to a nutshell to make it even stronger—as I do with most things I read that I admire. But when I summarized the central assertion in the essay, all I could come up with was the following:
That big house in Jerusalem that the Israelis took for themselves wasn’t owned by Said’s father at all. It was [pause for the punchline] merely owned by his aunt! Ha-ha-ha. What a liar!
“Wait a minute,” I thought to myself. “That didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. That’s not terribly persuasive. I mean, sure, Said is exaggerating, but it’s perfectly natural for anybody to be sore if your aunt’s mansion got taken, even if it wasn’t your father’s. Look at how the Miami Cubans can’t forgive Castro.”
This unexpected spasm of empathy for a single Palestinian started nagging at me. I eventually wondered how I, a native Southern Californian, would have felt if back in the 1940s the Japanese had taken over the coast of California from Santa Barbara to San Diego, established a “Shintoist State,” expropriated my aunt’s house when she fled their advance, and gave it to refugees from Hiroshima. Would I be philosophical and understanding about it? Would most Americans?
Probably not.
Does this analogy mean that Israel has no right to exist? Of course not, no more than the dubious origin of the Mexican-American War means that Mexico should get back California. But it does explain a little about why the Palestinians and the rest of the Arabs feel the way they do.
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/a_separate_peace_part_ii
— Steve Sailer · Jan 17, 01:29 AM · #
Something similar almost took place: in the peace settlement after WWI, America was offered Christian Armenia as a protectorate, but refused.
Even with that refusal, Armenians now make up about 1% of the American population, and swing a certain amount of weight in American foreign policy due to their prosperity and insistence. Thus the Armenian Caucus in the House of Representatives numbers about 100 members, even though there is only about 1 Armenian member of Congress.
Armenians supporters periodically bring a resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians to be genocide to the floor of the House. It came within minutes of passing in 2000, but a phone call from Bill Clinton to Denny Hastert pleading that it wasn’t worth the harm to the US-Turkey relations headed it off from a vote.
Interestingly, some Jewish organizations have worked against the Armenian resolution, owing both to the traditionally strong relations between Israel and Turkey (especially between Israel and Turkey’s Donmeh elite), and a certain proprietariness about being official victims of genocide.
In sum, the U.S.-Armenia relationship is like the U.S.-Israeli relationship qualitatively, but much less strong quantitatively, so the Armenians, despite their best efforts, get the fuzzy end of the lollipop in American foreign policy.
And that’s mostly because Armenians are like Jews qualitatively (e.g., Armenians are probably the second most over-represented ethnicity among Hollywood agents, producers, and moguls), but fall short of Jews quantitatively (e.g., in millions of people and in billions of wealth).
— Steve Sailer · Jan 17, 03:24 AM · #
Excuse me, I should have said that Armenians make up about 0.3% of the U.S. population, or about 1/6th as large a percentage as Jews make up of the U.S. population. (All these figures are very rough.)
— Steve Sailer · Jan 17, 03:30 AM · #
Even though I think this exercise in Israel-Palestine counterfactuals is, by definition, pointless, since like a Rorschah test everyone will put in whatever they perceive, as a former passionate student of the Crusades I thoroughly enjoyed this one. (I almost wrote a novel where the Order of Malta sails west and founds a nation in Cuba.)
— PEG · Jan 17, 09:10 AM · #
interesting counterfactual. I find it really hard to imagine Outremer emerging as a British protectorate post WWI given that its cultural, linguistic and religious affiliations are all French—the Angevins would actually fill the role in French policy of super-Maronites. A three cornered conflict between French-backed Angevins, British-backed Zionists, and local Arabs could be quite interesting, if not exactly pleasant to live through.
— William Burns · Jan 17, 07:16 PM · #
Lebanon was a French colony/protectorate from 1919-1943, with the Christians, a few of whom were descendants of French crusaders, getting the upper hand in running the place. The Christians are highly French in tastes. For example, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan” and grandson of a deputy prime minister of Lebanon, grew up speaking French as his first language.
— Steve Sailer · Jan 17, 08:56 PM · #
The question I have about Walt’s counterfactual that begins with Israel being crushed in the 1967 war is whether Jews in America would care as much about Israel if it was a loser instead of a conqueror?
For example, in Norman Podhoretz’s second autobiography, Israel never is mentioned until page 323 when it wins the Six Days War. Podhoretz became fanatically concerned about Israel’s survival after the Six Day War (i.e., after its chances of survival had increased radically), but hadn’t paid much attention to Israel before when it was in greater danger of being destroyed. This seems to have been a fairly general pattern, with American Jewish interest in Israel’s survival going up after its survival was assured.
In other words, human beings love a winner.
— Steve Sailer · Jan 17, 09:07 PM · #
William Burns,
It’s also possible that the Angevins, if they were really hard-core Catholics, might have jettisoned their French linguistic ties during the Revolution, and thrown their lot in with Spain, Austria or Russia. Or they might have emigrated en masse to Latin America and tried to carve out an integralist, ultramontane society there. Or they might have sent an assassin to Egypt in 1798 to take out Napoleon, in which case the entire history of Europe would be different. The basic problem with this sort of counterfactual, delightful as they are, is that they assume you can change one aspect of history while leaving everything else the same. On the contrary, in a history in which the Third Crusade was successful, lots of other things would have been changed as well.
I don’t think that the United States or the international community would have been as sympathetic to the idea of a Christian homeland in Palestine as they were to a Jewish one. The hypothetical Angevins’ attachment to the land would have lasted for a much shorter period of time than the Jews’ attachment; Christianity is much more of a global missionary religion than Judaism, and places less emphasis on attachment to a specific land and geography; there have been plenty of Christian states over the last two millenia but, with the brief exception of the Khazaria, no Jewish ones; the Holocaust was directed against Jews (and to a lesser extent against Gypsies, Communists, etc.) and not specifically against Christians.
I think a more plausible counterfactual would be if the Greeks had been successful in conquering parts of Western Turkey in the early 1920s, and re-establishing a Byzantine Christian state in the midst of an overwhelmingly Muslim society.
— Hector · Jan 17, 11:27 PM · #
This post was awesome.
— ETH · Jan 19, 07:37 PM · #
I agree very much with your analysis, sir. I would only add this: your Angevin state is likely to get less support from America simply because it has more of a historical presence in the area. Its more likely to be seen as just another part of the endlessly confusing ethnic and religious tapestry of the Middle East. Israel on the other hand is more of a European state and a settler state. Like us.
— Adam Greenwood · Jan 19, 10:30 PM · #
Does this counterfactual world even have an Ottoman Empire? A succesful Third Crusade would mean no Fourth Crusade and hence no fatal weakening of the Byzantine Empire— perhaps the Ottomans remained loyal vassals of the Basileus and even converted to Christianity in the long run (as some in fact did in their early days in Asia Minor). Also, how did this Crusader world play out with the Mongol invasion of the Middle East? Did the Crusader states make alliance with the Khan and enable the Hordes to thoroughly smash the Arab/Turkic/Kurdish states everywhere east of the Levant?
— JonF · Jan 20, 03:02 AM · #
In a just world, this pitch would generate a Matt Damon movie, and it would be awesome.
— J Mann · Jan 20, 04:15 PM · #
“ I mean, sure, Said is exaggerating, but it’s perfectly natural for anybody to be sore if your aunt’s mansion got taken, even if it wasn’t your father’s. Look at how the Miami Cubans can’t forgive Castro.””
Mr. Sailer,
Edward Said was born in Jerusalem while his parents were visiting relatives. He grew up in Egypt and his connection to mandatory Palestine began and ended with with the residence of his collateral relations there. He did not merely exaggerate or leave a false impression by implication. His statements about his formative years included claims of having attended specific schools in mandatory Palestine in which he was never enrolled (because he was attending school in Egypt) and in musing over the subsequent appropriation one of his uncle’s properties of a prominent Jewish intellectual who, in fact, had been evicted by Said’s aunt during the war. Said lied, plain and simple, for over thirty years.— Art Deco · Jan 21, 12:29 AM · #
Like I said, I don’t like Edward Said. But, his aunt’s house still got taken. Like him, I’d be sore if the (counterfactual) Shintoist state had taken my aunt’s house in Arcadia, CA.
— Steve Sailer · Jan 21, 10:11 AM · #
It’s reasonable for Said to be sore, sure, but American generally have some support for the stability of states we can recognize. Cypriots, Basques, Brittany seperatists, FALN, Zapatistas, Uigurs, Chechens — we generally like them only so long as they aren’t violent. Even Tibetans or oppressed Chinese christians, if they began suicide bombing buses and cafes, would probably lose the lion’s share of their public support.
The IRA is a good example, IMHO. They got some support and some condemnation, but ultimately, the US did for the IRA more or less what it is trying to do for the Palestinians – cram a peace deal down both parties’ throats where the world trades recognition and assistance for a promise to credibly pretend to stop fighting.
— J Mann · Jan 21, 04:18 PM · #