Why have movements to unite separate nations, such as Pan-Arabism, seemingly died out?

u/ttrombonist has already referred you to two previous excellent posts on the subreddits on pan-Arabism. I will try to provide a similar answer for pan-Arabism and also try to provide some perspective on pan-Turkism.

One initial question is whether these movements really died out or not. Another question is whether the ones that died out did so at least in part due to some common reason. In a sense, it is certainly correct that they have died out. If you check the newspapers from the early to mid-20th century, you will have a hard time reading about politics without mention of some such ideology, be it pan-Slavism, pan-Germanism, pan-Arabism, etc. This no longer seems to be the case. There just do not seem to be too many pan-Slavists wandering about these days.

When did these movements fade away? I think this gives us a clue as to the second question. Pan-Germanism fell from grace after WW2 for pretty obvious reasons. There are marginal groups who continue to espouse such views but these tend to be neo-Nazis, etc. Not that pan-Germanism must be necessarily racist or Nazi, of course. It's just that historically, pan-Germanism took its chance and sided with the Nazis and ended up on the wrong side of history, as it were. How about pan-Slavism? Here too, WW2 seems quite crucial. Russia was arguably the homeland of pan-Slavism, despite the crucial (and in many cases, founding) contributions by intellectuals in Austria-Hungary. Understandably, this was no more after 1917, the October Revolution. Between then and our time, most Slavic (especially Czech and Poles) intellectuals have been busy wondering about what being European meant for them. Milan Kundera has a splendid piece on 'The Tragedy of Central Europe' published in 1984. The whole argument is based on the dichotomy between the East (Russia and the rest) and West (Europe, plus later additions like America), with Central Europe originally belonging to the West and being kidnapped by the East in terms of politics (obviously, referring to the iron curtain, the Prague Spring, and so on). From WW2 onwards, of course, Czechs had plenty of time to actually meet Russians. Perhaps contact is not always great for getting to like people. Especially if they tend to ride tanks.

When did these movements fade away? I think this gives us a clue as to the second question. Pan-Germanism fell from grace after WW2 for pretty obvious reasons. There are marginal groups who continue to espouse such views but these tend to be neo-Nazis, etc. Not that pan-Germanism must be necessarily racist or Nazi, of course. It's just that historically, pan-Germanism took its chance and sided with the Nazis and ended up on the wrong side of history, as it were. How about pan-Slavism? Here too, WW2 seems quite crucial. Russia was arguably the homeland of pan-Slavism, despite the crucial (and in many cases, founding) contributions by intellectuals in Austria-Hungary. Understandably, this was no more after 1917, the October Revolution. Between then and our time, most Slavic (especially Czech and Pole) intellectuals have been busy wondering about what being European meant for them. Milan Kundera has a splendid piece on 'The Tragedy of Central Europe' published in 1984. The whole argument is based on the dichotomy between the East (Russia and the rest) and West (Europe, plus later additions like America), with Central Europe originally belonging to the West and being kidnapped by the East in terms of politics (obviously, referring to the iron curtain, the Prague Spring, and so on). From WW2 onwards, of course, Czechs had plenty of time to actually meet Russians. Perhaps contact is not always great for getting to like people. Especially if they tend to ride tanks.

Pan-Arabism seems to support our working theory that political turning points and contact cause downfall of these ideologies. Previous posts that u/ttrombonist has kindly referred to are rich in the history of this movement, so I do not want to go into too much detail. Very briefly, there was the Nahda, the Arabic 'Reawakening' in the 19th century. Over time, the movement came to assume more overtly political colours, ultimately leading to the creation of pan-Arabist political organisations such as the Baath Party. Between the 1950s and 1970s, pan-Arabism was arguably the dominant ideological force in the Middle East. Then, something happens around the 1970s, especially in the late 1970s and 1980s, and you see these movements receding before the rising wave of Islamism in many countries. It is not as if Islamism arose ex nihilo in the 1970s: you had your Hassan al-Banna's and Sayyid al-Qutb's decades before that. But what is important is that the Arab-Israeli Wars do seem to have significantly damaged the credibility of pan-Arabism. Pan-Arabism was intended to rejuvenate the Arabs, to make them as potent as the Western powers in every sphere of life (as in the ancient glory days of Arabs, the argument went). It would solve a whole range of social and political issues pervading the Arabic life and one obvious issue was Palestine. But pan-Arabism turned out to be as impotent as the previous monarchical Arab regimes its ideologues portrayed as corrupt pro-Western puppets. Considering that in the meantime, Islamists were seeking to propagate their views among Arab masses by all means, perhaps the war proved the tipping point. Then came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, chaps like bin Laden and al-Zawahiri acquiring influence and experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So it appears we have some important political turning points and crises to explain the fall of pan-Arabism. What about increased contact? Perhaps there was some of that too. Syria and Egypt were united under the banner of the United Arab Republic between 1958 and (de facto) 1961. To put it very briefly and simply, there were a significant number of Syrian elites who were not delighted to see Egyptians occupying such a leading position. It did not take long for some Syrians to decry 'Egyptisation instead of unification'. So increased contact may have played a role here too.

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