Power, mostly.

The goal to unify the Arab Nation was, ironically, an exercise in disunity for the governments involved. When Ba'athists first took power in Iraq in 1963, for example, they were toppled by a Nasserist counter-revolution. This being despite the fact that both ideologies had a very similar goal.

Egypt's Nasserist regime was at the forefront of Arab Nationalist initiatives from the 1950s to the 1960s, which made them the regional power in many ways. However, that was a position coveted by the Syrian and Iraqi regimes too, who were especially concerned about being above the other mostly due to nationalism about their respective “branches” (as Ba’athists referred to Arab states) and wanting greater regional influence.

The Syrian regime could be said to have already got the upper-hand over their Iraqi counterparts by the 1970. They had been part of the United Arab Republic (though left in 1961 because it was clear to them that the Egyptian government considered itself in charge of the Republic) so could claim to have done more for Pan-Arabism than Iraq’s government, and also because they’d fought against Israeli’s government more than the Iraqi regime had. Even though 1967 was a severe defeat for the Syrian government, they could at least claim that they’d fought against imperialism, whereas the Iraqi regime spent much of the war being bombed before it even reached the battlefield.

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War changed things. At first, mostly due to bitterness at not having been included in the planning, Iraq’s dictator Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr didn’t want to get involved unless he was requested to provide assistance (Terrill, 2000: 7-9).

His second in command/real power behind the throne, Saddam Hussein, however, had other ideas. Intervention could be presented as a selfless act for the cause of Arab Nationalism and anti-imperialism (Terrill, 2000: 3).

Plus, if they only joined after the Syrian (or Egyptian) regimes asked for assistance, then they could style themselves as being their saviour. This is exactly what happened post-war.

During the war, the Iraqi military fought alongside the Syrian military on the Golan front. At the time, the Syrian regime feared that the Israeli military would advance on Damascus (they were already shelling it) and the Iraqi military launched counter-attacks which they later claimed saved the city from capture (the Israeli government truthfully had no intention of taking Damascus, and the counter-attacks were destroyed). The Iraqi regime, however, claimed that it was the Iraqi Ba’athists who saved the Syrian Ba’athists from the Israeli military, that Damascus was only free because of them, and promoted the fact that they had suffered many losses in lives to defend the Pan-Arab cause (Terrill, 2000: 18).

As you can probably imagine, this didn’t go down well with Hafez al-Assad’s regime in Syria. In 1978, when Egypt’s government signed the Camp David Accords and made peace with the Israeli government. The Egyptian government under Anwar Sadat was now discredited in the eyes of Arab Nationalists (he’d be assassinated in 1981) and so Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein (who took over in 1979) now had the leadership spot of Arab Nationalism up for grabs.

Syria’s regime had also discredited itself in the eyes of Arab Nationalists, though, by intervening in the Lebanese Civil War in 1976. In brief, Assad wanted Lebanon stable for fear that an unstable Lebanon would give the Israeli government pretext to move in and thus put Syria at greater risk in a future war, as it would provide another flank from which to be attacked (Lawson, 1984: 452).

In Assad’s view, a stable Lebanon was only possible by protecting the status quo whereby the Christian population held the most political power, because he feared that if the Christians lost that power then Lebanon could split. This would not only threaten the security of the Syrian state, but would complicate the Syrian regime’s plan to establish itself as head of the Arab Nationalist cause. It would be much harder to unify Arabs when one of the pivotal nations of that proposed union was collapsing in on itself. By intervening to help the politically more powerful Christian population, Assad could increase Syrian regime influence in Lebanese politics for its own ends (Berti, 2011: 19).

Of course, this meant that Assad was siding with Christians (whose significant political control in Lebanon had been established the the French government) against Palestinian groups and Muslims. Although Ba’athism was a secular ideology, Islam still provided a useful political tool for Ba’athist politicians (look no further than Saddam during and after the Gulf War). So, Assad siding not only against Muslims but above all against Palestinians, whose struggle against the Israeli government formed a centre-point of the Arab Nationalist struggle, was seen as a betrayal.

I’m a little hazy on the Lebanese Civil War, not gonna lie but I find it quite confusing having not read too deeply into it, so I won’t speak much more about it. Suffice to say, however, Saddam used the conflict as a proxy war against both the Iranian and Syrian regimes and would arm one of the Syrian regime’s enemies (Boustany, 1990).

Speaking of Iran’s regime, Saddam invaded Iran in 1980 to take advantage of perceived weakness in the state following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In relation to the Syrian-Iraqi Ba’athist tensions, he hoped that his invasion would lead to a counter-revolution and the new regime of Ayatollah Khomeini would be toppled, because he believed that this would not only increase his own regional power but also increase his reputation as a leading force of Arab Nationalism (Woods et al., 2009: 5-6).

He would later argue that other Arab governments were ungrateful for his war against the Iranian regime and its revolution and should repay him for it.

Both Syria’s and Iraq’s Ba’athist regimes were nationalist towards their own nations. I know that for Saddam, he liked to link his Iraqi state with the like of Nebuchadnezzar and Salah ad-Din, and declared Iraq as ‘the pride of the Arabs, their protector, and their model of noble values’ (Post & Baram, 2003: 166; 168-169).

The Gulf War offered the Syrian regime another chance to gain greater influence in the Middle East, undermining the Iraqi regime. Assad would get money and connections which he believed would help him in the future as well as providing the ability to cut Saddam down to size, so to speak.

So, yeah, it was mostly all about power, really. Both nation’s Ba’athist regimes wanted to be the regional power and be the leading force in the Arab Nationalist cause, and so kept undermining and working against one another in order to better their own position.

Hope this helped!

Sources:

Berti, Benedetta (2011) The Ongoing Battle for Beirut: Old Dynamics and New Trends. Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies

Boustany, Nora (1990) Doctrine, Dreams Drive Saddam Hussein. The Washington Post, August 12. Available at: Washingtonpost.com: Iraq Special Report: Key Players, Last Accessed: 09/06/2021

Lawson, Fred H. (1984) Syria's Intervention in the Lebanese Civil War, 1976: A Domestic Conflict Explanation. International Organization, Vol. 38 (3), pp. 451-480

Post, Jerrold M. & Baram, Amatzia (2003) “Saddam is Iraq: Iraq is Saddam” (Until Operation Iraqi Freedom). Maxwell Air Force Base: The Counterproliferation Papers Future Warfare Series, No. 17, Chapter 7, pp. 163-220

Terrill, W. Andrew (2000) Iraq’s Role in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 11 (3), pp. 1-20

Woods, Kevin, Murray, Williamson, Holaday, Thomas & Elkhamri, Mounir (2009) Saddam’s War: An Iraqi Military Perspective of the Iran-Iraq War. Washington DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies