1919 was a moment of political possibility in Greater Syria, with the elites of the region viewing the Ottoman Empire’s demise as an opportunity to create their own political future. These elites envisioned a myriad of new political paths for their region, ranging from the formation of an independent Greater Syria linked with a large confederation of Arab states, to the establishment of several separate states with a ‘great power’ helping to modernize each of them. In hopes of heading off British, French, and Zionist designs on the region, these elites used the visit of the King-Crane Commission (a group of Americans who visited Greater Syria in hopes of learning the political aspirations of the region’s inhabitants) as a chance to debate, make public, and eventually consolidate their opinions about the region’s political future (the Damascus Program of July, 1919). Although the report of the King-Crane Commission accurately conveyed the opinions of these elites to the Paris Peace Conference, the Commission wielded no influence over decisions made by the British and French for the region and the optimism of the moment vanished with the formal imposition of imperial rule over a divided Greater Syria. Drawing on heretofore unutilized evidence from the records of the King-Crane Commission and the intelligence reports of the Zionist Commission (who rightly feared that many in the region would oppose Zionism), this paper will examine the diversity of elite visions for the future of Greater Syria in 1919. Although it is true that the varied opinions among the elites of the region and the grander compromise represented by the Damascus Program played little role in the political reorganization of Greater Syria, this paper argues that the articulation of these competing visions for Greater Syria constitute an important moment in the elite conceptualization of the region’s political future that would resurface in various forms in the ensuing years. Studying these unrealized articulations (largely ignored by scholars) offers a counterfactual glimpse of what the region’s future could have been without the British, French, and Zionist imperial interruptions. In a sense, this was the first major flourish of public debate about Greater Syria’s political future and offers a discursive base for the study of the region’s post-Ottoman political evolution.