The Spider King: Successful Foreign Policy

 We look at the incomparable Louis XI of France to see what an energetic, focused, comprehensive foreign policy looks like.  

Transcript

The Spider King and Successful Foreign Policy

April 2024

“It is not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.”

Henry Kissinger 

But for great evils, drastic remedies are necessary, and whoever has to treat them should not be afraid to use the instrument which cuts the best.”

Klemens von Metternich

I have to confess an affinity for stories of those who get by on their brains rather than by raw physicality or good looks. Watching Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt outthink his opponent in the Mission Impossible movies has always been more fun than outfighting them. Who does not secretly admire fictional anti-heroes like Michael Corleone or Tim Ripley, using their cleverness to escape from various traps? And the same goes for historical figures. Caesar may have conquered far and wide, but his cunning great-nephew forged a lasting empire and died of old age. Liu Bang, the first Emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty in 202 BCE, was among the few dynastic originators to have been born into a peasant family. Another is Elizabeth I of England. Somehow, she skirted death through her sister Mary, walked the razor’s edge of the catholic vs. protestant religion, and stopped an invasion by the most powerful nation in Europe.

The industrial build-out of America in the late 19th century (remember, I hate the term the Gilded Age) also accompanied a raft of people who made much money from this build-out without perhaps creating a whole lot. Andrew Carnegie, due to his labor practices and the Johnstown Flood, may not be as hailed as he once was, but he did build the steel industry in America to the point where 70 years later, America could outproduce the Japanese Empire and the German Reich combined in critical steel manufacturing. Jay Gould did not get such glowing press. But again, this guy was always mentally a step ahead of his opponents, not some downtrodden laborer but Cornelius Vanderbilt and James J Hill. I have always liked that where Gould was ruthless and unscrupulous in business, he lived a quiet personal life of devotion to his wife and children. 

So when I see an awful movie such as Napoleon compared with something impressive like Oppenheimer, I imagine all sorts of historical epics in the same vein that will only exist in my mind, alas. For example, a big-budget story on Horatio Nelson, a faithful eight-episode biopic of Grover Cleveland, or a film about Leonardo Da Vinci. 

And for those who love movies or shows with a genius, plotting anti-hero, the real-life Louis XI would make a great series. Suppose you liked the machinations of Tyrion Lannister, the cold calculation of Tony Soprano, or the sinister schemes of the Underwoods. Who needs these fictions when we have the real thing? And like Gandalf of Lord of the Rings, Louis had many names. Some called him Louis the Prudent, but others, including biographer Paul Murray Kendall, called him the Spider. Long before George RR Martin applied all his animal names (too many animal names, in my opinion), including the Eunuch Verys, Louis had the name and earned it.

In the book about one of Louis’ successors, Francis I, by Francis Hacket, the writer flowery notes of Louis,

“Inside France, his methods were single-minded. He outwitted his Feudal Lords. Outside, he showed the deep peasant acumen of his people. He looked at his neighbors with one in his head, the power to him evil. This belief in their power and intentions was the mainspring of his craftiness….He had the brains with which to outwit his dynastic rivals while avoiding the wet footprints of melodrama.”

Some writing, such as Hacket’s, who composed Francis I back in the 1930s, seems a bit too ornate for hard-headed history, but what are historians, if not writers, as well? 

On the medievalists.net blog, a piece by Susan Abernathy writes, “King Louis XI’s administration and consolidation of his kingdom and his flair for diplomacy earned him the sobriquet of “the Prudent.” But his favorite pastimes were plotting and conspiracy. He even earned the names “Cunning” and “Universal Spider” due to the webs of intrigue he would spin around Europe. It seems he was never happier than when he was planning his next scheme.”

Yet, too much focus on his plotting misses the best point about Louis. His schemes had a purpose. He knew what he wanted to accomplish, and all his efforts were aimed at that goal.

Louis was born in 1423 when the English controlled much of Northern France, and what they did not reign over was in the hands of a French noble family, the Burgundians. During his childhood and early adult years, Louis’ father, Charles VII, and the French managed to wrest much of the land back from the English. However, at Louis’s accession, several feudal lords, primarily Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, challenged Louis for supremacy. Charles, one of the most powerful and belligerent princes of the 15th century, would become Louis’s most obdurate 

Louis’s goal was to create a France where the crown was paramount, not a first among equals but instead the ruler of over all his nobles as much as the French peasants. As Abernathy noted, by the 1470s, with the death of Charles the Bold, “Louis was master of France. The three estates of the commons, the churchmen, and the nobles were all subject to the crown. Louis had broken the power of feudalism. Industry flourished throughout the kingdom, and the crown collected sufficient taxes on a regular basis.”

Many historians place Louis as the French king who stood astride the bridge between the Middle and Modern ages. He founded Feudal France and left it a nation-state. This is an oversimplification. As late as the 1600s, Louis XIV built Versailles as an expediency to further curb the power of his nobles. And Louis was not exactly alone as a monarch contending with his barons. English and German history is rife with overmighty Earls, Counts, and Dukes who disputed the power of the monarch in their lands and affairs.  

In Louis’s case, his grandfather’s madness left France vulnerable to English predations and Burgundian pretensions. Though his father (with the help of a French maid who heard voices) was the one who helped oust England from most of France, it was still with considerable assistance from the aristocracy. They were not giving up their rediscovered privileges. Louis aimed to break them and accrue power to where he felt it was best used by the crown (meaning himself).

In that era, the English tended to win battles due to their superior tactics, especially using the Longbow. The Swiss would win conflicts due to their pikemen.  The Burgundians were considered to have the best weapon, the cannon, which was barely 60 years old. Louis French Royal Forces has no such technical advantage. Given the numbers arrayed against him, Louis could not bring overwhelming military numbers. He was not a brilliant commander. Both Charles the Bold and Edward IV of England were better in the field of battle.  The Burgundian state of the late 15th century controlled the Low Countries, whose wool and linens created incredible wealth. Louis could not win through sheer spending. 

Instead, his best and only opportunity was to outthink his many enemies, and part of this was clarity about his goals. For example, when Edward IV invaded France, in league with Burgundy, Louis kept the latter occupied in Germany and the former suspicious of its ally. 

Though Louis was undoubtedly a typical medieval ruler in his great passion for hunting, he was unique in his desire to manage his expenses, 

He didn’t keep a magnificent court but stayed on the road with a small retinue, constantly riding on horseback. He dressed plainly, usually in hunting garb, so he could leave the road and hunt when the fancy struck him. He would sup with peasants and avoid official welcomes in towns by turning off the main road on arrival.

Meanwhile, the Burgundian court dazzled visitors with its pomp and ceremony, especially in the case of Charles, who kept a large army and was not averse to using it. Louis made the simple calculation that spending money on bribes or buying time was more cost-effective than the ruinous expenses and management headaches of raising armies. Not that military force was not utilized by Louis. He participated in several battles and sieges. Instead, he was different from those of his time, who believed war was the last, not the first, resort. As Hacket adds, “He did not rely on war. He relied on money. He bribed right and left.”  

If there is a godfather to the tiny canon of Louis XI (at least for English readers), that would be Paul Murray Kendall, who wrote his book, The Universal Spider, in 1971. This is where Abernathy got the title. One of the things illuminated in Kendall’s book is the all-encompassing, strategic nature of Louis’ foreign policy. Knowing he could not outspend Duke Charles, he figured out ways to reduce the Burgundian revenue. Whether limiting food supplies to the Low Countries, setting up alternative commerce centers, or never granting trading concessions.

“Otherwise, in measure after measure, he gradually shut off Franco-Burgundian commerce and likewise blocked Burgundian trade routes running through France and other lands,” noted Kendall. In this regard, Louis was indeed a modern monarch thinking about total conflict and not just armed forces. 

One of my continuous frustrations with our leaders, including Governors, Representatives, Senators, and Presidents, is their insatiable desire to get elected and stay in office. So few have a real reason to do so, and it is worsening. Ronald Reagan was the last president with a specific aim in mind: to accelerate America’s greatness through conservative means, reduce state activity in personal lives, and rebuild American power abroad. From the firing of the air traffic controllers to his tax reform to restocking the nuclear arsenal and the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan knew where he wanted to go. And a quick aside. Of the SDI, derided at the time as Star Wars, was what saved Israel a few weeks ago from some 150 Iranian missiles? Joe Biden, one of the skeptics in the 1980s, took credit for the success. Of course, he did.   

Barack Obama, more than HW Bush, Bill Clinton W. Bush, had a specific domestic agenda: the expansion of domestic government. His real aim was more about his legacy build; however, that played out more than any specific goal. His work after the bank crisis began before his presidency. The Affordable Care Act was unfinished business from the Clinton Administration’s original Hillary care. In foreign policy, his pursuit of a treaty with Iran and Secretary of State John Kerry was more about having anything to leave regarding foreign policy. 

I would argue that Obama, more than W Bush’s war on terror, which was forced upon him by 9/11, set the tone for the foreign policy we have had for the past 16 years. When I think of Obama’s foreign policy, I think of the John Krasinski and Emily Blunt movie The Quiet Place. The film’s premise is that unbeatable aliens with sharp hearing have landed on Earth. As long as the humans are quiet, the aliens leave them alone. 

President Obama was caught on an open microphone telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he would have more “flexibility” to negotiate on missile defense after the November election. In other words, as long as America will be really quiet, they will not do anything. This was the premise behind Obama’s ridiculous Iran treaty and his approach to North Korea. The past three presidents have been so concerned with a conflict on their watch that they’re ignoring the actions of our adversaries, which has invited conflicts on their watch. Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, North Korea’s continued missile tests, China’s expansion into the South China Sea, and especially Iran’s use of proxies to directly attack US servicemen are all the result of this “shhhhhhhh, don’t make a sound” approach to foreign policy.

What do Donald Trump or Joe Biden wish to accomplish apart from the presidency itself? Trump likes the office as an extension of his 50-year quest for fame. Biden is the feather in the wind-blown around by the loudest, most vociferous voices in his party. 

An argument could be made that presidents entering office with specific agendas are bad things. And domestically, I would agree with the versions of Wilson or FDR. But that should not be the case with foreign policy, which, unlike domestic spending, is almost entirely in the purview of the executive.

Here are a few questions?

·         What is the goal of our foreign policy beyond the vague term American interests?

·         Who are our key allies? 

·         Who are our geopolitical opponents, and what is the approach to each?

·         What are our plans, region by region? For example, our approach to India would differ from Europe. 

·         What is the role of NATO today in five years?

·         What about the Pacific region? 

I am on the State Department website, and the first policy I see is anti-corruption and transparency: “We prioritize anti-corruption and seek to make it even harder for criminality and terrorism to take root and spread, to promote governments that are more stable and accountable, and to level the playing field for U.S. businesses to compete in every region.”

What does that mean?

The following two (two!) issues are both climate change, and there is even a COVID piece in the top five. Only non-proliferation of arms lends itself to any concrete policy. It is all gobbly gook, the kind of thing a campaign staffer would write rather than an expert in foreign affairs. 

The White House website is not much better. It does not even address international policy until the 7th item, “President Biden will take steps to restore America’s standing in the world, strengthening the U.S. national security workforce, rebuilding democratic alliances across the globe, championing America’s values and human rights, and equipping the American middle class to succeed in a global economy.”

This is one of my concepts. The “Opposed to What” argument. Put an “opposed to what in any space here, and you see what I mean—for example, championing America’s values and human rights. As opposed to not doing this? At least the middle-class part is something as opposed to equipping wealthy and poor classes to succeed in a global economy. Good, say I with a Snidely Whiplash cackle; I do not want to see the poor succeed in a global economy. 

How about this policy, somewhere: We will repudiate the Iran treaty (Trump) or support it (Biden). That is a debate, not the pablum on tap on these sites. However, such specifics may rouse opposition, so instead, foreign policy is conducted with the goal of trying not to antagonize anyone. And god forbid our allies strike back. We do not allow the Ukrainians to lob projectiles into Russia for fear of Putin’s wrath nor give the Israelis a free hand to do what we would do if we were Israel: unleash the CIA in Qatar and take out the Hamas leaders. Biden is terrified of a greater Mid-Eastern war. But that is already happening. And fear the Iranians? Does one think that they would attack our forces directly instead of through proxies if they were not afraid of our reprisals? They do not because they know that we would take the full measure, unlike the limitations we impose on our allies. 

So, to go all acronyms on you, I would ask WWLD. Let’s take Iran. Louis would be in every capital from Amman, Jordan, to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, building a coalition to contain the Islamic Republic. He would figure out every economic way to put them out of business with a combination of sanctions and ways to reduce the price of oil (which would hurt Russia, Venezuela, etc. He would be unequivocally supporting Israel, knowing that Arab Americans, even ones in battleground Michigan, have no choice but to vote for him. Louis would be building a strong resistance within the Republic as well. But it is not even the tactics. Louis would have the vision, energy, discipline, and resilience to see the job through. He would weave his web, and any who got entangled in it would wish they had sided with him all along.