The fear of the slow erosion of Judeo-Christian civilisation appears to be gripping sections of the West after President Donald Trump backed away from what many had interpreted as an existential confrontation and agreed to suspend military operations against Iran. Instead of bringing about regime change, an outcome some in Washington had quietly hoped for, the United States and Israel appear, by most assessments, to have ended up consolidating the Islamic Republic’s position. Many analysts believe Iran emerged from the conflict with the stronger hand.
Had the outcome been different, few in the West would have criticised Trump. The present-day Christian Zionists of the West might well have hailed him in the tradition of Godfrey of Bouillon, the French nobleman who captured Jerusalem from the Fatimid dynasty in 1099, or King Richard the Lionheart, a central figure of the Third Crusade against Salahuddin Ayyubi in 1191.
The parallel is imperfect, but instructive.
In that scenario, the British, Italian, Canadian and Australian Prime Ministers, the French President and the German Chancellor – and perhaps others – might have overlooked Trump’s past transgressions and declared him the greatest champion of Judeo-Christian civilisation. Instead, the mood is rather different.
In all eight Crusades launched between the 11th and 13th centuries, the Christian armies of Europe fought unitedly against Muslim power. Unlike today, Jews lived in substantial numbers in Palestine and other Arab provinces and enjoyed full protection under Muslim rule. By contrast, during the 88 years of Christian occupation of Jerusalem between 1099 and 1187, both Muslims and Jews endured immense hardship, being massacred, persecuted and expelled from the city.
The Christian armies succeeded only in the First Crusade. Salahuddin Ayyubi recaptured Jerusalem in 1187, and the subsequent crusades ended largely in failure. What is striking is that the retreating armies frequently turned on one another – looting the property of fellow Christians, leaving their own people to starve.
King Richard’s imprisonment
Even the hero of the Battle of Acre, King Richard himself, was captured and imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria on the journey home after failing to retake Jerusalem. Leopold’s justification was that Richard had insulted him during the campaign, an episode that carries certain echoes of the tensions between Trump and his European allies during the recent conflict.
The Catholic world nonetheless launched five more crusades, the eighth ending in disaster in the 1270s. For over five centuries thereafter, until Napoleon invaded Egypt and Syria in 1798, Palestine and Jerusalem faced no comparable external threat. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turks had occupied Constantinople in 1453 and pushed as deep as the outskirts of Vienna by 1683. Even as Muslims were driven out of Spain after seven centuries in the Iberian Peninsula, a fate many historians argue they brought upon themselves through internal divisions.
It was in the decades following Napoleon’s brief occupation of Egypt and Syria that the idea of deploying Jewish aspirations in service of western strategic goals began to take shape among Christian Zionists. By the 1830s, largely among Protestants, the concept of a Judeo-Christian civilisation had been articulated. What followed is a matter of historical record.
Trump, a convenient target
Why, then, is Trump alone drawing fierce criticism from significant sections of the same West, even as much of the western media, including outlets normally hostile to him, had enthusiastically welcomed the targeting of Iran’s top leadership? The argument here is that he failed to deliver what the West has, in this reading, been working towards for the better part of 47 years.
Initially, blame was directed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though one could argue he is a secondary figure in a game that has been unfolding for roughly two centuries. A narrative took hold that the US was fighting Israel’s war, when the case can equally be made that Israel has long functioned as an instrument of broader western strategic interests, with the Americans and Europeans stepping in directly only when circumstances demanded as, arguably, they did in the recent conflict.
There is little serious dispute that Israel’s survival has depended heavily on sustained western support. Now that the West itself faces mounting constraints, anxiety is rising. Accusing fingers are being pointed at Trump. Yet, it is worth recalling that inflammatory rhetoric about Palestinians and Iranians has not been unique to him or Netanyahu. Several American presidents and Israeli prime ministers since 1948 have spoken in similar terms. Joe Biden and George W Bush are not distant memories.
Meekly surrendered
Now that the US has in a way meekly surrendered before Iran, a campaign against Trump is likely to intensify. Those who initially supported him may soon leave him in the lurch. It may be premature to suggest he could meet the fate of King Richard, but the historical precedent of western powers turning on their own champions after failed adventures is not without basis.
Israel, meanwhile, is heading into a serious political crisis ahead of elections later this year. With little to show for the conflict, the corruption charges against a badly weakened Netanyahu may prove harder to deflect. The country has paid a steep price for a war whose strategic rationale remains contested.
Israel was created, funded and, according to widely documented accounts, assisted toward nuclear capability by the West. The question of what happens to it now is one western capitals would prefer not to confront openly.
It is worth noting here that the Dimona nuclear facility, long presented as a symbol of Israeli self-reliance, was, in fact, constructed by France between 1956 and 1967. Similarly, Britain and France’s own nuclear programmes in the 1950s would have been far harder to sustain without American backing, itself driven by the imperative to counter a Soviet Union that had gone nuclear in August 1949.
Western losses
The costs of the recent conflict, by various estimates, have been considerable. In casualties, in economic disruption and in the flight of millions of Americans and Europeans who had dominated trade, industry and business across West Asia, with losses running into the trillions of dollars.
The oil and gas infrastructure of the Gulf may be nominally Arab-owned, but the primary beneficiaries of those enterprises have long been investors and corporations on both sides of the North Atlantic. Whatever these Arab states earn, much of it flows back into western banks and industries.
Fifth column fears
With Iranian forces having reportedly struck American military positions and multinational assets in the Gulf, the concern in some western quarters is less about the immediate military setback and more about a longer-term political shift – the quiet emergence of what some are calling a fifth column: Arab establishment figures who have, it is feared, begun to align their interests with Tehran.
Iran’s potential consolidation of influence over the Strait of Hormuz could allow it to rebuild economically, breaking the sanctions regime that had constrained it for decades.
This is the development causing the deepest anxiety in western capitals, not the battles that have already been fought, but the alignments that may now be quietly forming.
The long-term consequences of this confrontation, if the analysis above holds, could prove far more significant than the West’s withdrawals from Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. Those were retreats from the periphery. This, the argument goes, cuts closer to the core.
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