The modern study of the crusades, as well as public understanding of those phenomena, continues to operate under the shadow of association between that series of medieval military campaigns and modern western intervention in the Near and Middle East. While this association does not have its origins in US operations following the events of 11 September 2001, it was carelessly reinforced in the wake of those acts of terrorism by President George W. Bush. The association endures in part through the rhetoric of extremist groups. This understanding of such intervention, allegedly motivated by the desire to exploit regional resources, and its supposed historical precedents, gained renewed attention within the sphere of mainstream US politics in 2016. On the campaign trail, then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump argued for the imperative to seize Iraqi oil reserves, thereby denying them to factions such as ISIS, declaring that: ‘You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils … I always said: Take the oil’. This was condemned by one commentator as advocating simple theft, although legal scholar and former US General Charles Dunlap was quick to respond by clarifying the distinction between licit spoil-taking and illegal pillage. The soon-to-be presi-dent's critics did grant him a level of historicity to the adage, conceding that only in recent centuries has the matter of war spoils been the subject of increasingly elaborate definition and regulation by international law. Yet this is perhaps to dismiss the extent to which spoil-taking in the medieval and early modern world could be limited in its scope and earnest in its self-regulation. Although often discussed in monetary terms, instances of conflict, both medieval and modern, demonstrate that material worth, or even immediate utility, may not be the most significant attribute in understanding the role of spoils in conflict. The mass seizure of US military equipment by Taliban forces during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan demonstrates this point forcefully, with morale, prestige, momentum, and perceived political and religious legitimacy all crucial factors in understanding the significance of such plundering.

It remains open to further scholarly investigation how spoil-taking on crusading campaigns, as well as in other forms of sanctified medieval warfare, fit into a broader value system that crossed the chasms of military reality, sincere spirituality and the violence of an expanding Christian society.