AHC: Successful UAR
- Thread starter Jordal
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The main difficulty with this is defining who "the Syrians" even are.
1950s/60s Syria is dominated by the military, and the military is dominated by cliques. While no clique ever formally defined itself as a sectarian association, sect/religion/ethnicity tended to play a huge part in how military officers saw themselves and how they picked their allies. The exception to this was arguably the Sunni portion of the officer corps, which was internally divided into a number of factions on the basis of ideology (some were communists, some Nasserists, etc.). In OTL, the Sunni officers basically tore each other apart in power struggles-- after each struggle, the victorious clique of officers would demote/arrest/kill its rivals and then install allies into positions of command. The history of the UAR is essentially just one of these power struggles-- the Nasserists displaced their rivals, until their rivals regrouped and displaced them. This is what killed the UAR in 1961.
Over time, this discord allowed minority officers to come to prominence, as the Sunni officers competed to enlist them. Now, ideology starts to enter the picture again-- one minority, the Alawite Shia, was quite supportive of Baathism (Baathism being an ideology that appealed to rural areas, where most Syrian Shia live). The Alawite officers were accordingly able to maintain close contacts on the basis of ideology and sect, and their leaders tended to coordinate their efforts. In the end, there were so few Sunni officers around (they'd all been purged at some point or another) that the Baathists were able to vie for power on their own terms-- and successfully did so. The 1961 coup was essentially a Baathist victory-- both Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad helped plan and execute it. In 1963, the Baathists launched another coup which reaffirmed their supremacy (and by extension, Alawite supremacy) over Syria. From this point on, most of the discord plays out within the Baathist ranks-- Salah Jadid achieves paramount power in 1966 (there's an amazing but dead timeline on what he would have done if he stayed in power) but loses it in 1970 to Hafez al-Assad. By this point, the steady domestication of the military is essentially over-- what remains is a force whose officer corps is thoroughly tamed and controlled not just by Hafez but by his family, with Hafez's brother (and Bashar's uncle) Rifaat being especially prominent.
(Most of this is basically off-the-top-of-my-head recollections of this article, the part where the author talks about armed-forced politics is around page 340 or so)
So really, I think that to save the UAR Nasser needs to either be more aggressive than OTL in expelling non-Nasserist Syrians from positions of authority, or less aggressive and more accommodating of non-Nasserists. Maybe Nasser can soften his attitude towards communists, and encourage the Sunni pan-Arabists and Communist factions to work together against their mutual allies. But then again, Nasser wasn't exactly a friend of the Egyptian communists, no matter how much Eastern Bloc aid he accepted.
Nasser being soft on the Baath is a bit difficult, since his ideology and Baath kind of fill the same pan-Arabist niche. By picking one, you shut the other out, and that sort of dynamic breeds conflict eventually.
1950s/60s Syria is dominated by the military, and the military is dominated by cliques. While no clique ever formally defined itself as a sectarian association, sect/religion/ethnicity tended to play a huge part in how military officers saw themselves and how they picked their allies. The exception to this was arguably the Sunni portion of the officer corps, which was internally divided into a number of factions on the basis of ideology (some were communists, some Nasserists, etc.). In OTL, the Sunni officers basically tore each other apart in power struggles-- after each struggle, the victorious clique of officers would demote/arrest/kill its rivals and then install allies into positions of command. The history of the UAR is essentially just one of these power struggles-- the Nasserists displaced their rivals, until their rivals regrouped and displaced them. This is what killed the UAR in 1961.
Over time, this discord allowed minority officers to come to prominence, as the Sunni officers competed to enlist them. Now, ideology starts to enter the picture again-- one minority, the Alawite Shia, was quite supportive of Baathism (Baathism being an ideology that appealed to rural areas, where most Syrian Shia live). The Alawite officers were accordingly able to maintain close contacts on the basis of ideology and sect, and their leaders tended to coordinate their efforts. In the end, there were so few Sunni officers around (they'd all been purged at some point or another) that the Baathists were able to vie for power on their own terms-- and successfully did so. The 1961 coup was essentially a Baathist victory-- both Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad helped plan and execute it. In 1963, the Baathists launched another coup which reaffirmed their supremacy (and by extension, Alawite supremacy) over Syria. From this point on, most of the discord plays out within the Baathist ranks-- Salah Jadid achieves paramount power in 1966 (there's an amazing but dead timeline on what he would have done if he stayed in power) but loses it in 1970 to Hafez al-Assad. By this point, the steady domestication of the military is essentially over-- what remains is a force whose officer corps is thoroughly tamed and controlled not just by Hafez but by his family, with Hafez's brother (and Bashar's uncle) Rifaat being especially prominent.
(Most of this is basically off-the-top-of-my-head recollections of this article, the part where the author talks about armed-forced politics is around page 340 or so)
So really, I think that to save the UAR Nasser needs to either be more aggressive than OTL in expelling non-Nasserist Syrians from positions of authority, or less aggressive and more accommodating of non-Nasserists. Maybe Nasser can soften his attitude towards communists, and encourage the Sunni pan-Arabists and Communist factions to work together against their mutual allies. But then again, Nasser wasn't exactly a friend of the Egyptian communists, no matter how much Eastern Bloc aid he accepted.
Nasser being soft on the Baath is a bit difficult, since his ideology and Baath kind of fill the same pan-Arabist niche. By picking one, you shut the other out, and that sort of dynamic breeds conflict eventually.