Manchukuo: An Instrument of Imperial Expansion for the Puppet-masters of Japan

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Economic history, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History

In 1931 the Manchurian component of the Japanese Imperial Army faked the sabotage of the Southern Manchurian Railroad (which was controlled by the Japanese themselves) near Mukden (present day Shenyang). The Japanese military, playing the victim, alleged it was the work of Chinese dissidents, and used the so-called Mukden Incident to launch a full-scale invasion of Manchuria✴.

Kwantung Garrison troops in Shenyang, 1931 ⇓

The military onslaught from Japan’s Kwantung Army (formerly Garrison) [関東軍, Kantogun] (AKA the Guandong Army) met with determined if largely ineffective resistance…the Chinese were under-prepared, under-equipped and not as technologically advanced militarily as the Japanese, but their defensive efforts were also undermined by Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek who ordered the local warlord Zhang Xue-liang✪ to hold back on resisting the Japanese invaders. The reason – Chang had fixed on a strategy that prioritised gaining control over the rest of the China in the civil war against Mao’s Chinese communists [‘Mukden Incident’, Encyclopaedia Britannia, (John Swift), www.britannia.com]. The Japanese military successes were followed by the creation of a Japanese “puppet state”, Manchukuoꆤ, in Manchuria in April 1932 (comprising China’s Northeast and Inner Mongolia).

Background to Manchukuo: Japanese “special interests’

Japan had pursued an aggressively interventionist policy in the region for decades before Manchukuo. Victorious wars against a diminishing Chinese empire (First Sino-Japanese War, 1894-95) and Tsarist Russia (Russo-Japanese War 1904-05) emboldened Japan’s ambitions. Japan’s spoils of war after defeating the Russians included the extension of its economic sphere of influence to southern Manchuria. Moving into ports, mines, hotels and other businesses and its takeover of Russian railroads, brought with it a big influx of Japanese settlers [‘Manchukuo’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/].

Even prior to Manchukuo’s creation, Japan had been conceded a portion of Chinese territory in the southern Liaoning Peninsula which included Dalian (renamed Darien by the Japanese). Known as the Kwantung Leased Territory, it remained in Japanese hands until 1945.

Manchukuo’s capital was Hsinking [Xīnjīng: (literally ‘new capital’)] (today reverted to its original name, Chángchūn) in Jilin province. In 1945 at the end of WWII the capital was moved to nearby Tonghua. Hsinking had the status of a “special city” under the Manchurian state, as did Harbin.

Puppet statehood

The Manchukuo state established by the Japanese militarists was initially a republic but in 1934 it was changed to a one-party constitutional monarchy, the so-called Empire of (Greater) Manchuriaᴥ. The Japanese dredged up the former boy-emperor Pu Yi (last Chinese emperor of the Qing Dynasty) to be the titular figurehead of the ’empire’. Executive power of the Manchukuo government purportedly resided with the prime ministers (Zheng Xiaoxu 1932-35 and Zhang Jinghui 1935-45). The Manchukuo PM held authority under an authoritarian–personalist dictatorship, but this was more perception than substance as real power lay firmly with the Japanese☯️.

“Emperor of Manchukuo” ⇓ (Model display of puppet emperor in palace museum)

Kwantung Army, a rogue element

The Kwantung◘ Army, the arm of the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria, functioned as something of a rogue element, habitually acting independently of the Japanese government and the Army General Staff in Tokyo which struggled to rein it in. The Mukden Incident (see above) and the Huanggutun Incident (see below) are two such instances of their rogue activities. Service in the Kwantung Garrison, which had its headquarters in the Manchukuo capital Hsinkingᕡ, was a recognised path for promotion in the Japanese high command…instrumental chiefs of staff Seishirō Itagaki and Hideki Tōjō were both beneficiaries of this [ibid].

Hsinking: Kwantung Army HQs ⇓

Highly politicised, the Kwantung Army adopted an extra-military role for itself in Manchuria, eg, the commanding officer of the Kwantung Army was also Manchukuo ambassador to Japan and held an extraordinary power of veto – even over the Emperor of Japan! [ibid.].

‘Race’-based stratification

Japan peopled the sparsely populated parts of Manchuria with Japanese migrants who sat atop a social pyramid with other ethnic groups in the region stratified under the Japanese. Rationing of essential foodstuffs (including rice, wheat and sugar) was administered in accordance with this racial hierarchy. The Japanese-dominated colony of more than 30 million has been characterised as more “an Auschwitz state or a concentration-camp state” than merely a “puppet state” [Yamamuro Shin’ichi, quoted in Smith, Norman. “Disguising Resistance in Manchukuo: Feminism as Anti-Colonialism in the Collected Works of Zhu Ti.” The International History Review, vol. 28, no. 3, 2006, pp. 515–536. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40111222].

Japanese dominated Manchuria was indeed a police state, one of the most brutal in an (interwar) era of totalitarian excesses. The Manchukuo regime unleashed a systematic campaign of terror and intimidation against the local Russian and Chinese populations (including arrests without trial, “thought crimes”, organised riots and other forms of subjugation) [‘Manchuria’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Artillery unit of Fengtian Clique ⇓

Resistance to Japanese domination

After the establishment of Manchukuo and the ineffective performance of the Fengtian (Liaoning) Army against the Japanese war machine, various Chinese militias were formed to carry on the resistance. The main forces comprised Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies, backed by the KMT Nationalists and led by famous general Ma Zhanshanᕤ. Other resistance to the Japanese in the Northeast came from Communist-organised guerrilla units. The anti-Japanese militias’ campaigns, which included harrying and terrorising the Kwantung Army, lasted ten years until the Japanese Army and Airforce finally pacified Manchuria in 1942.

The brunt of the early Chinese fight-back against Japan’s imperial expansion was borne by these warlord militias and volunteer armies, but after Chiang Kai-shek was talked round to a truce with the communists and a united front against Japan in 1937 (in effect postponing the civil war to the conclusion of WWII), the Republic of China (ROC) army engaged directly with the Kwantung Army (Battles of Shanhai Pass, Rehe, Beiping-Tianjin, 2nd Battle of Héběi, Chahar Campaign, etc).

ROC flag (>1928) ⇓ 中華民國 Chunghwa Minkuo

1937: Second Sino-Japanese War

After colonising Manchuria, the Japanese military used it as a base to invade the rest of China. In 1937 the eruption of fighting between Chinese and Japanese troops near Peking (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) led to full-scale war. Antony Beevor [The Second World War, (2012)] marks this episode as being effectively the start of the Second World War (some historians date it’s origins earlier, from the Mukden Incident in 1931).

Marco Polo Bridge ⇓(Photo: The China Guide)

Siberian sideshow

Eventually the Kwantung Army, unchecked by Tokyo, overreached itself by invading Siberia, provoking the USSR into an undeclared war and several border conflicts and battles in the late 1930s. The clashes culminated in the decimation of Japanese 6th Army at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in August 1939 [‘The Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War of 1939’, The Diplomat, (Stuart D Coleman), 28-Aug-2012, www.thediplomat.com].

1930s Tokyo ‘spin’

The Japanese came under attack in the West for establishing a harsh, totalitarian regime in Manchuria. Attempts were made to deflect the criticism by portraying the interventions in China’s northeast as a positive contribution to the restoration of regional order. Apologists for Japan, pointing to the pattern of internecine conflicts between warlords, communist insurgency and general chaotic conditions in the rest of China in the first third of the 20th century, argued that Manchuria in the same period had, courtesy of Japanese involvement, enjoyed “peace and order, progress and prosperity, (making) great strides in commercial and industrial development” [Saito, Hirosi. “A Japanese View of the Manchurian Situation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 165 (1933): 159-66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1018175].

Manzhouguo passport ⇓

Japanese spin imbued the Manchukuo regime with a pseudo-legitimacy that was almost mythic: “the ‘Manchus’ followed the ‘kingly way’ (王道 wangdao) of harmony, prosperity, and peace under the benevolent guidance and protection of imperial Japan” [Review of Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern, (Prasenjit Duara), by John J. Stephan, The International History Review,Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 181-182. Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40110486]❅.

Myth-busting Manchukuo

Reconnecting with this, Japanese historians in the postwar period, tried to justify the horrors committed by the occupying Japanese army, characterising the incursion in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia as an act of ‘liberation’, prompted by motives which were ‘enlightened’. Recent research by Shin’ichi Yamamuro leads the Japanese academic to posit a view of the Manchukuo occupation that challenges the mainstream Japanese one. Yamamuro debunks the theory that right-wing Japanese military and civilian authorities were supposedly imbued with the idealism of wanting to construct a “paradise in earth” in China’s three northern provinces [Manchuria Under Japanese Dominion, (Shin’ichi Yamamuro, translated by Joshua A. Fogel), 2006; Bill Sewell. “Review of Yamamuro Shin’ichi. Manchuria under Japanese Dominion. Translated by Joshua A. Fogel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006,” H-US-Japan Reviews, March, 2007. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=265211196449094].

Scope of the membership of the Greater EACP Sphere ⇓

“Greater Co-operation” – code for Japanese expansion and economic domination

In 1940 Japan incorporated its Manchurian client-state into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACS). The purported aim of GEACS was that it would be an economically self-sufficient “bloc of Asian nations led by Japan and free of Western powers”. In reality, this veneer of Pan-Asian idealism (regime motto: “five races under one union”) was a front for the Japanese militarists and nationalists to expand south and west and advance its domination of Asia [‘Manchukuo’, Wiki, loc.cit.].

A prized economic asset

Manchukuo (and the Inner Mongolia territory) was incorporated into both the Japanese war machine and the national economy. Rich in natural resources (especially coal and iron), under the Japanese Manchuria became an industrial powerhouse. Japanese citizens, who had been hard hit by the Great Depression, were enthusiastic in their support for the army’s intervention in Manchurian territory right through the period of Japanese occupancy [ibid.].

August 1945: D-day for the Japanese puppet states

August 9, 1945, the day after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, the Soviet Red Army and the Mongolian Army invaded Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, which was to be the final campaign of the Second World War. In a swift operation (Manchzhurskaya Strategicheskaya Nastupatelnaya Operatsiya), Manchukuo, Mengjiang and Japanese (northern) Korea were all liberated, thus culminating in the break-up of the Japanese empire. Manchuria and Inner Mongolia were returned to China, and the Soviets set about orchestrating a communist takeover of North Korea…meanwhile Korea south of the 38th Parallel was occupied by US forces [‘Soviet invasion of Manchuria’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Victorious Soviet soldiers in Harbin ⇓Photo: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/

Footnote: ‘Manchuria’ as a geographic descriptor was first used by the Japanese in the 1600s and later adopted by Westerners in China…the Chinese themselves these days are less inclined to use the term ‘Manchuria’, preferring to describe this part of China simply as Dongbei (东北), the Northeast).

Manchurian malfeasance – for the record: these days the once imperial “puppet palace” of Manchukuo is a history museum – a reminder to Chinese and the very occasional 外国人 (foreign) visitor alike of the aberrant and abhorrent regime imposed on North-East China during the interwar period of the 20th century. Manchukuo (State of Manchuria) comprising northeastern China and part of Inner Mongolia Area: approx 1.19 million km Pop (est) 1940: 30-35 million Ethnic Mix: Han Chinese (majority), Manchus, Mongols, Huis, Koreans, Japanese, Belorussians (minorities)

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✴ in 1932 an independent inquiry with US participation, the Lytton Commission (Ritton Hōkokusho), found that both parties were at fault for the incident. In its Report which led to exposure of the Japanese duplicity, it condemned Japan for its aggression (albeit conceding it had “special interests” in the region), while also criticising China for inflaming anti-Japanese sentiments…the League of Nations subsequently demanded that Japan vacate Manchuria, Japan’s response was to give notice to withdraw unilaterally from the League (effective 1935) [‘Lytton Report’, (United States History), www.u-s-history.com]

✪ Zhang’s father, Marshal Zhang Zuolin, also a Manchurian warlord, had been assassinated by the Japanese Kwantung military in 1928, in an episode in Shenyang known as the Huanggutun incident. Zhang senior was one of the most powerful warlords in the Warlord Era, which saw local military cliques carve out territorial strongholds in different parts of China

ꆤ Manzhouguo in Chinese

ᴥ the Chinese expression for Manchukuo is 虚假帝国 (the “false empire”)

☯️ Zheng, a royalist and close collaborator of Pu Yi, had hoped that Manchukuo would become a springboard for the restoration of Qing rule in China, aims not shared by the Japanese who pressured him to resign in 1935 [‘Zheng Xiaoxu’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. His successor Zhang Jinghui was even more of a powerless figurehead, content to allow advisors from the Kwantung Army run the state, earning Zhang the unflattering sobriquet of the “Tofu prime minister” [‘Zhang Jinghui’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

◘ Kwantung means “east of Shanhaiguan”, ie, Manchuria

ᕡ the Kwantung military also maintained a peninsula naval base at Ryojun (Port Arthur)

ᕤ the charismatic general started fighting against the Japanese, was then induced to swap over to the Japanese side and finally switched back to the cause of Chinese resistance

❅ Stephan summarises Manchukuo as “a producer of beans, bandits and bunk” with the ‘kingly way’ grandiloquence falling under the third of these attributes

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Unifying North Yemen through the Indelible Imprint of Foreign Intervention: A 1960s Civil War between Royalists and Republicans

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, Regional History

Yemen in 1962 was a trifurcated political entity – in the south and southwest was Britain’s eastern and western protectorates beset by tribal insurrection. In North Yemen (which borders Saudi Arabia), the ruler of the Hamid al-Din branch of the al-Qasim dynasty (of the Yemeni Mutawakkilite Kingdom) was about to face his own formidable internal challenge. In that year fighting broke out in the north when the newly elected imam (Muhammad al-Badr) was deposed by Yemeni rebel forces led by army strongman Abdullah as-Sallal.

YAR republican coup leader as-Sallal at military display in 1963 ⍗

An internal war augmented by ‘friends’ with benefits

Al-Badr escaped to Saudi Arabia where he rallied support from the northern Zaydi Shia tribes. Meanwhile the rebels declared North Yemen a republic – the Yemen Arab Republic. With the battle lines of the Civil War drawn, royalists V republicans, it immediately attracted the willing participation of competing foreign elements. Within a very short time, Egypt had entered the conflict on the republic’s side. President Nasser provided as-Sallal with bulk shipments of military supplies and a massive infusion of troops to fight the royalists. Later, the Soviet Union, after switching ‘horses’ in the conflict, contributed to the republicans’ armaments, delivering them 24 Mig-19 fighter planes.

At the same time Md al-Badr’s royalist partisans were receiving military aid from the Saudis and Jordan※, and diplomatic support from the UK – who was also bankrolling mercenaries to fight for the royalists [Stanley Sandler, Ground Warfare: The International Encyclopedia, Vol 1 (2002)]. In addition the Shah of Iran provided advisers for the royalist side, while Israel provided intelligence and its air force to airlift supplies to them.

A regional proxy war: Egypt V Saudi Arabia

There has been much written about Nasser’s motives for involving Egypt in the war (including the haste with which he committed the UAR). Nasser’s ambition to be recognised as leader of the Arab world had taken a hit in the couple of years prior to the war’s outbreak…in 1961 Nasser’s showcase creation, the United Arab Republic had unravelled when Syria, tired of the “second-class treatment” from Egypt, broke away from the UAR. By the summer of 1962 Egypt’s regional prestige had plummeted… only Algeria remained on good terms with Egypt, the UAR had lost control of the Arab League and the other major Arab states were all aligned against Nasser [Nasser’s Gamble: How the Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power, Jesse Ferris, (2012)].

These Egyptian reversals of fortune and an attempt in the same year at a power play by Iraq’s dictator Qasim who threatened to annex newly-independent Kuwait✣, were a wake-up call for the Egyptian president – he was, he knew, at risk of being isolated in the Arab world. Therefore, as has been noted, the Yemen Civil War presented “a foreign policy opportunity for Nasser to become relevant again” [Asher Aviad Orkaby, ‘The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-1968’, (unpublished PhD thesis, Harvard University, Mass.), April 2014]. And the involvement of the region’s leading monarchy, Saudi Arabia, in the conflict on the deposed imam’s side, was impetus for Nasser to do what he could to limit its expansion in the peninsula.

The early phases of the civil war saw initial successes by the royalists commanded by al-Badr’s uncle Prince Hassan, culminating in a drive towards Sana’a to retake the capital for the Imam. The offensive was checked only after Egypt increased its commitment to the conflict, providing essential air support for the republican troops. Estimated numbers vary but all up Nasser is thought to have injected at least 70,000 Egyptian soldiers into the war. As the war dragged on without resolution Egypt unleashed chemical warfare, a series of poison gas bombings of Yemeni villages loyal to the Royalists (1966/67).

UAR military instructors training Yemeni republican soldiers ⍗.

Parallel with the ongoing prosecution of the civil war on the battlefield, international efforts, spearheaded by the UN, were being made to encourage the proxy combatants Egypt and Saudi Arabia to pull back from the domestic conflict.

Yemen, “a cage for Nasser and Arab nationalism”

With regard to the superpowers’ role in reining in the combatants through mediating the conflict, some historians have argued that, behind the scenes, the superpowers were actually not unhappy with the prospect of Egypt being tied up militarily in Yemen for so long. The US and USSR, they contend, were content to see Egypt’s military strength shunted off into the Yemeni imbroglio. Thus preoccupied, the chances of war breaking out between Israel and the UAR (which would lead to the two superpowers intervening and the risk of a dangerous confrontation between them), was headed off. Washington also saw a secondary benefit in Egypt’s preoccupation with the war in North Yemen – it would be less likely to pose a threat to the UK base in Aden and to the US base in Libya [ibid.].


⍐ The Civil War in stamps – royalist & republican

The US had a vested interest in maintaining stability in the Arabian Peninsula … preserving access to vital oil resources was high on its agenda. The Soviet Union also had its own interests in Yemen to consider – it was of geopolitical advantage, making it a potential base for the Soviets to expand into the Arabian Peninsula, as well as a jump-off point into post-colonial Africa to make Cold War gains at the expense of western interests [Orkaby, loc.cit.]. The Soviet-built port at al-Hudaydah (Hodeida) was constructed to give Moscow an influential role in international shipping through the Red Sea.

YAR stamps commemorating the Soviet-built port at Hodeida ⍗

Egypt’s folly – the Vietnam parallel

The conservative western media at the time (Time, The New Republic, etc) was quick to call out Nasser’s military engagement as a monumental blunder [Tharoor, loc.cit.]. Later historians in hindsight have labelled Yemen Egypt’s ‘Vietnam’. Historians such as Michael Oren have attributed Egypt’s abysmal performance in the 1967 Six-Day War in part to the Egyptians’ being seriously understrength owing to the massive over-commitment to the Yemen war [Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, (M Oren), (2002)].

Sana’a (old town) ⍐

The civil war reached its climax in 1967/68. The royalist forces laid siege to Sana’a to try to break the back of the republican heartland. Bolstered by the hefty Egyptian contribution this attempt was resisted by the republicans and proved the war’s turning point. Although pockets of tribal royalist resistance lingered on till 1970, the royalists and al-Badr were effectively defeated. In late 1967 the republicans replaced as-Sallah (who voluntarily went into exile in Baghdad) as president with Abdul al-Iranyi (formerly the YAR prime minister in 1962-63).

Royalist territory in red/Republican territory in black ⍗

Rapprochement

In March 1969 the warring parties – of a conflict that had claimed around 200,000 lives including civilians – held peace talks in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), from which agreement was reached to form a unified government in North Yemen. The government was to represent both royalists and republicans although it would excluded members of the Hamid al-Din family. Subsequently in 1970, Saudi Arabia recognised the Yemen Republic (YAR) [Orkaby, op.cit.].

Wash-up of the war

As suggested from the above, Egypt, despite being on the winners’ side in the civil war, was a loser in the wider, regional political contest. Nasser’s reckless foray into the Yemen adventure expended an horrendous casualty toll on Egypt’s military manpower✪ and left it woefully ill-prepared materially for the pre-emptive, surprise strike from Israel when it came in June 1967. The six-day catastrophe that followed left Egypt with long-term disadvantages, loss of key strategic territories to its enemy and forfeited the ascendency to it in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

⍗ King Faisal – Saudi ruler 1960s-70s

Though a blow to Nasser’s foreign policy ambitions and a setback to the cause of Pan-Arabism, there were nonetheless some positives for Egypt that came out of the foreign venture. The Khartoum Agreement (1967) saw Saudi king Faisal and Nasser “bury the hatchet” and agree that both withdraw their support from the two sides in the war [‘How the 1967 War dramatically re-oriented Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy’, Brookings, (Bruce Riedel), 30-May-2017, www.brookings.edu]. In material terms, Egypt benefitted from the closer ties with its wealthy neighbour – many thousands of Egyptian workers gained employment in the Saudi oil industry. Geo-strategically, the outcome in South Yemen was a plus for Egypt – the British colonials were vanquished from Aden, allowing Nasser to secure the Red Sea approach to the Suez Canal (albeit with the loss of Sinai) [Orkaby, op.cit.].

As the YAR moved to the right (recognising West Germany in return for aid), Saudi Arabia acquired itself a stable ally on its southern flank, one dependent on Saudi financial support. The Soviet Union, despite seeing the YAR moving towards alliances with the West, also benefitted in the Cold War game of “one-upmanship” from the new status quo – the emergence of a Marxist regime in South Yemen saw its influence in the region broaden. The Soviets’ new naval and military base in Aden gave Moscow a convenient haven to launch missions into Africa countries experiencing revolutionary turmoil, (especially Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Somalia) [ibid.].


Footnote: North Yemen tribal politics and coup proclivity
The coup in 1962 would not have come as a surprise to the Hamid al-Din rulers of North Yemen. There had been a history of tribal-centred coup attempts in the kingdom⊡…in 1948 al-Badr’s grandfather Imam Yahya was assassinated by the Hamid al-Din’s Sayyid rivals, the Alwaziris, who briefly assumed the imamate until Yahya’s son regained power for the family after tribal and Saudi intervention. A second coup was launched in 1955 by the Alwaziris and some military officers but was easily squashed [Peterson, J.E. “Tribes and Politics in Yemen.” Arabian Peninsula Background Note, No. APBN-007. Published on www.JEPeterson.net, December 2008].

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※ however the Jordanians severed their material support to the royalist side in 1963 and formally recognised the YAR one year later

✣ prompting Britain and other Arab states to send troops to Kuwait to protect its sovereignty (forcing Iraq to back down)

✪ about 10,000 of which are thought to have died in the drawn-out war. Egypt also incurred massive war debts from its intervention [‘How Yemen was once Egypt’s Vietnam’, Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 28-Mar-2015, www.washingtonpost.com]

⊡ Yemen has been described as perhaps the most tribal-based society and nation in the entire Arab world (Peterson, op.cit.)

Two Competing Strands of Arab Unity During the Cold War: UAR and the Arab Federation

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
International Relations, Military history, Political History, Regional History

Modern Arab nationalism doesn’t begin with Gamal Abdel Nasser✲, but the charismatic Egyptian politician’s bold and assertive leadership in the 1950s provided inspiration and the impetus to give the movement a particular vigour and purpose.

Egyptian hegemony under Nasser?

In 1952 the Egyptian “Free Officers’ Corps” (with Nasser in the driver’s seat) launched a coup, deposing the Egyptian ruler, King Farouk, and installing General Mohamed Naguib as prime minister. The following year the Egyptian-Sudanese monarchy was irrevocably abolished and guided by Nasser, a republic was established. In 1954 Naguib was cast aside and Nasser assumed full control as prime minster and later president. The new Egyptian ruler (Egypt’s first leader NOT emanating from the country’s elite), with a clear nationalistic agenda was determined to rid Egypt of foreign interference, especially from the old colonial European powers.

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 Nasserist brand of Pan-Arabism  

Nasser, a passionate Pan-Arabist, had aspirations beyond Egypt’s national borders and was evolving a strategy for unifying the Arab world in a common struggle against the European colonial powers. One of the first tasks tackled by Nasser was to try to ingrain in his fellow countrymen and women a sense of their unique Arab identity. Accordingly, the national constitution was amended to state that Egypt was an Arab state (as well as a socialist state). The choice of the name “United Arab Republic” in 1958 imported this theme to countries outside of Egypt. To Nasser’s mind, an instrumental factor in unifying the Arab world was a common commitment to the liberation of Palestine [‘Arab Unity: Nasser’s Revolution’, Al Jazeera, 20-Jun-2008, www.aljeera.com].

On the home front Nasser introduced socialist policies, pursuing wide-reaching land reforms to lift Egyptians out of the depths of poverty. The Aswan Dam project was a key component of the reforms with the US committing itself (with the UK) to finance the massive enterprise. The prevailing Cold War intervened at this juncture with Washington reneging on its promise of aid for the project, citing Nasser’s dalliance with the Soviet Union as it’s reason [‘1956: United States withdraws offer of aid for Aswan Dam’, www.history.com].

F6620BDF-F80B-4EE4-9937-AAF2F172F60E

Suez Crisis

The USSR duly rushed in to fill the void left by the US, offering to provide Egypt with the required finance. Nasser’s annoyance at the sudden US pullout led to an audacious  unilateral action in retaliation…he nationalised the Suez Canal. France (owners of the Suez Canal Co) and Britain (the major shareholder) responded by invading the canal in unison with Israel. The US, outmanoeuvred, refused to join in. The ensuing action saw the combined forces inflicting a military loss on Egypt, however under US and UN pressure they were forced to withdraw by 1957. France and Britain emerged from the episode as weakened powers and US relations with the Middle East also took a hit. The diplomatic upshot was a political victory for Nasser.

The Egyptian president, having stood up to the colonial powers, emerged from the conflict with an enhanced reputation as the strongman of the Arab world. Nasser’s  example inspired Arabs in other states to act, such as the 1958 Iraqi Free Officers’ coup d’état against the Hashemite monarchy; radical elements within Lebanon taking on the status quo regime (the 1958 Civil War) [Al Jazeera, op.cit.].

Groundswell for union

During the 1950s Syria underwent an upsurge of support for Arab unity…at the national conference in 1956, Syrian political parties endorsed union with Egypt, concurring with the view that any bilateral agreement between the countries should include economic, political and cultural affairs [Palmer, M. (1966). ‘The United Arab Republic: An Assessment of Its Failure’. Middle East Journal, 20(1), 50-67. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4323954]. Observers at the time noted that the Syrian government  “made all the running” for union. Such was Nasser’s stature and charisma within the Middle East that the incumbent Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli was happy to stand aside for Nasser to be anointed president of the unified republic [T. R. L. (1958). ‘The Meaning of the United Arab Republic’. The World Today, 14(3), 93-101. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40393828].

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Nasser’s first UAR cabinet ⟰ 

For his part, Nasser was initially cool on the idea of unification, his concern was  that the two states had quite different political systems and experiences …Nasser’s preference at this time apparently was for a federation [Al Jazeera, op.cit.]. Under urging from the Syrian politicians Nasser eventually came round to the union idea☯.

28B5647E-A50F-4A6C-9A82-DD6884449219UAR Flag (1958-61) ⟰ 

On the 1st of February 1958 the United Arab Republic (UAR) was proclaimed in Cairo with due fanfare (under the banner of “one flag, one army, and one people”).  Nasser was confirmed as president of the new republic by referendum involving both Egyptians and Syrians. Nasser’s special position as primus inter pares (“first among equals”) was shown in his being given sole selection of the membership of the UAR’s joint assembly [ibid.]. In 1959 Nasser absorbed the Gaza Strip into the UAR.

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⟰ North Yemen – at the southernmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula

UAR/MKY alliance

Later in the same year as UAR formed, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen (MKY) (North Yemen) joined the Syrian-Egyptian union (which had been preceded by a defence pact between North Yemen and Egypt). The new association was called the United Arab States (UAS). The Yemeni motives for allying itself with the UAR were security concerns about it’s larger neighbour Saudi Arabia. North Yemen and Saudi Arabia had fought an war in 1934 over territory and there was still an undemarcated border situation between the two states. The UAS, a different beast to the UAR, was a loose confederation of states only, MKY retained its sovereign independence and its separate UN membership and embassies for the duration of the confederation – which in any case, like the UAR, only lasted a short period❇.

⟱ North Yemen flag

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Rivalry and suspicions: Rifts in the unitary socialist republic 

What harmony there was in the Syrian-Egyptian union at its onset, did not last long. Egypt dominated the UAR, producing a grossly unequal partnership. With Cairo chosen as the UAR capital, Damascus, Syria’s traditional capital, was downgraded to provincial status only. Syria’s leading politicians were required therefore to live in Cairo, which isolated them from what was happening back in their home country.

Syrians across the board had cause to be disgruntled with life under the lop-sided union. Those now working for the UAR government found themselves on lower salaries than they had been as Syrian government employees. The three years of the UAR saw a succession of failures of the Syrian food harvest – resulting in hikes in the price of foods for locals [Arthur Goldschmidt Jr, The Middle East: Formation of a Nation State, (2004)].

With the new administrative structure in place, many Egyptian military and civilian personnel were ‘parachuted’ into Syria, taking over the important public offices that had been filled by local (Syrian) staff. This greviance was compounded by the high-handed, imperial attitudes of many Egyptians towards the Syrian population (as typified by Nasser’s right-hand man in Syria, Abd al-Hakim Amir) [ibid.].

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⟰ A Syrian issue stamp celebrating the formation of the UAR

Another factor adding to Syrians’ dillusionment with UAR was that after three years everyone had come to the realisation that Iraq and the other oil-rich countries were not going to join the union [Goldschmidt, loc.cit.].

Nasser reshaped Syria’s political setup to mirror that of Egypt. Syria’s assortment of political parties were abolished and replaced with a single political instrument (the unicameral National Union) to match Egypt’s one-party state.

Many sectors of society found axes to grind with the new system – Nasser’s sweeping land reforms angered landlords, as his program of nationalisation did for business interests (in Egypt as well) [‘Egypt: Nasser and Arab nationalism’, The Socialist, 08-Apr-2011, www.thesocialist.org.au].

Syria formally disengaged from the UAR in September 1961…despite this Egypt however retained the union name “United Arab Republic” for itself until 1971.

Conservative Arab response to Nasser and proxy Cold War

The advent of Nasser’s left-leaning Arab union prompted an instant reaction from the conservative Hashemite monarchies of Iraq and Jordan (until 1949 Transjordan). In February 1958 King-cousins Faisal II (Iraq) and Hussein (Jordan) formed the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan (AFIJ) as a buffer against the rise of Nasserism. AFIJ, more a confederation of kingdoms than a unification, and UAR, represented two very different versions of Arab nationalism❂. At the same time the two Arab federations, sparring against each other ideologically, were also arranged as surrogates for the Cold War. Monarchist Iraq, the senior partner in AFIJ, took a position opposite Egypt with a clear orientation toward the West, aligning itself with the UK, and with Turkey, Iran and Pakistan as regional cogs in the American stratagem of trying to contain Soviet expansion. In contrast, Egypt, through the acquisition of economic and military aid and friendship agreements, was moving closer to the Soviet Bloc, while professing an orientation towards the Non-Aligned Movement [‘Arab Federation’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

248BACAB-CC21-4F94-9AA0-30D50AD352550CE3A224-D58D-4E35-AD43-7D4ABCA24201 ⟰ Arab Federation of Iraq & Jordan

The Arab Federation bound Iraq and Jordan together in defence and foreign policy while leaving the running of domestic affairs to each country. Though Iraq was clearly the ascendant party in the confederation, it didn’t repeat the Egyptian mistake of making the partnership too one-sided…there were more cabinet posts in AFIJ for Jordan and Amman was allowed to retain its status as a union capital, although Baghdad was de facto the centre of the confederation [Juan Romero (2015), ‘Arab Nationalism and the Arab Union of 1958’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 42:2, 179-199, DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2014.994317].

”14th July Revolution”

As things transpired AFIJ didn’t get a chance to demonstrate if it could become an effective regional force in the Middle East. In July 1958 an Iraqi Free Officers coup led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the monarchy and executed Faisal and some of his senior ministers. The Sunni Arab coup leaders, drawing inspiration from Pan-Arabism and Nasser’s 1952 Egyptian coup, acted (they said) “to liberate the Iraqi people from domination by a corrupt group put in power by imperialism” (the dissidents’ perception was that the monarchy under Faisal had associated its interests too closely with Britain and the US) [1958: Coup in Iraq sparks jitters in Middle East’, ‘This Day – 14 July’, (BBC Home) www.news.bbc.co.uk/]. The Hashemite kingdom was abolished and Iraq was declared a republic.

PostScript: Arab federation redux

In the 1970s Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi tried several times to resurrect the idea of union in the region, first proposing a Federation of Arab Republics (FAR) in 1971◚. Comprising Libya, Egypt and Syria, the proposed merger was approved by referenda in all three countries, but in working through the details the “member states” couldn’t agree on the specific terms of the merger. The union was never implemented and remained effectively stillborn (however the federation was not formally revoked until 1977). The leaders, especially Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat, didn’t follow through because they thought Gaddafi was too radical in his aims [‘The Federation of Arab Republics’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

05CC3634-DF4C-42C8-8ABF-D87E2C3947D8Gaddafi refloated the concept in 1974 with the Maghreb countries to Libya’s west. Agreement (the Djerba Declaration) was reached between Libya and Tunisia to establish the Arab Islamic Republic (AIR) [‘Arab Islamic Republic ’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Tunisia’s leader Habib Bourguiba’s idea was of a confederation that retained the identity of each sovereign entity…which was at odds with Gaddafi’s notion of an seamless, homogeneous “revolutionary movement”.  Algeria and Morocco were later included in the proposed AIR but again the idea never got airborne※. 

There were a number of other Libyan-led proposed “Federations of Arab Republics” during the Seventies (with various combinations of states some of which included Sudan, Syria and Iraq), but all with the same result of not leading to anything tangible.

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Endnote: Common purposes and individual priorities 

The idea and actuality of an “Arab League” predates the rise of Nasser by some 13 years. The original such organisation, the League of Arab States was founded in 1945 with an focus on developing cooperation between Arab states re economic matters, post-colonialism, resolving disputes and coordinating political aims [‘Arab League’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. This last objective has proved wholly elusive given the key different orientations of Arab nationalism of the states of the Middle East◈. Largely because of this, the various Arab federations of the 1950s to the 1970s ultimately failed to deliver on their raison d’etre as vehicles for Pan-Arabism or Arab nationalism.

Flag of the League of Arab States  ⟱7BCD96AC-E8B2-43D6-970D-FCE5ECFC9B98

 

͡° ͡° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡° ͡° ͡° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡° ͡° ͡°° ͡

✲ the seeds of modern Arab nationalism were sown during the Ottoman Empire and the sentiment intensified among Arabs as the empire’s decline gathered pace in the early part of the 20th century culminating in the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule during WWI

☯ the two main status quo political groupings within Syria had their own, separate reasons – Syrian army officers of a pro-Nasserist bent naturally sought to be unified under the Egyptian president, while the rival socialist Ba’ath Party was fearful of internal communist insurgency and thought that merger with Nasser’s Egypt would head off the communists’ challenge and the same time allow them to stay in power in Syria [WL Cleveland & M Bunton, A History Of The Modern Middle East, (4th Ed, 2009)]

❇ the withdrawal of MKY from the Arab Union didn’t end Nasser’s involvement with Yemen. When civil war broke out in North Yemen in 1962 Nasser committed  over 70,000 Egyptian troops to fight with  the Yemeni republicans in the five-year long war against the monarchy

❂ the creation of the Hashemite conferation in fact intensified the Iraqi-Egyptian rivalry [Romero, loc.cit]

◚ once again Nasser was the model exemplar for an aspiring Pan-Arabist leader…Gaddafi followed the Nasser blueprint, seizing power from the enfeebled Libyan monarchy in 1969 through a “free officers’” movement. He formed a one-party Socialist Union in Libya (á la Nasser) and in public repeatedly espoused the broad objectives of Arab nationalism

※ Bourguiba wanted a regional alliance with Gaddafi (not a de facto absorption) …strategically he envisaged Libya as a buffer against potential threats posed by Egypt [‘Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’, (MJ Deeb), in The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa, DE Long and B Reich (Eds.) (4th ed. 2008)]

◈ the historic, default common cause for unity among the Arab states – the need to establish a permanent Palestinian state and homeland – has only occasionally got beyond the realm of rhetoric when the vested self-interests of individual Arab countries are on the table

 

The Franco-British Union Redux …Version Deux

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
International Relations, Military history, Political History, Regional History

The prospect of Britain and France forming a union with each other in 1940 – albeit in the most desperate throes of a world war going horribly wrong for the allies – was of itself incroyable as the French would say, unbelievable, incredible, add any other appropriate adjective. But even more of a shock perhaps was that there was to be a redux, a second go at hoisting the exotic banner of a Franco-British Union (FBU) … in 1956, sixteen years after the first attempt, there was FBU Mach II.

This one, like the plan in the early period of World War II, was born out of a dangerous international crisis, this time over control of the Suez Canal which was vital to Western oil supplies. The year was 1956, the initiative (wholly one-sided on this occasion) came from embattled French prime minister, Guy Mollet. A tentative first step towards Franco-British coordination had been taken with the setting up of the Anglo-French Task Force to take counter-action against Nasser’s sudden act of nationalising the Canal✡.

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The French Fourth Republic was confronted with a string of simultaneous, serious issues, both domestic and external to Metropolitan France. Firstly, on the home front, the country was beset with economic difficulties.

Added to these woes, France was deeply (and seemingly inextricably) mired in an increasingly toxic North African war – its colony Algeria was in a struggle with the French for independence from the colonial power – the Algerian War of Independence. And as already mentioned the Suez Crisis was on the point of escalation as France and Britain found themselves players in a deadly stand-off between Israel and its US ally on one side, and Colonel Nasser’s Egypt on the other.

⇲ The Algerian War (Source: AP)Franco-Algerian War 1960

Adding to Mollet’s Middle East anxieties, in the wake of the Suez Crisis, was a build-up of tensions on the Israeli-Jordanian Border. If that were to escalate, Mollet was worried that it might spill over into fighting between the French (allies of Israel) and Britain (allies of Jordan)…bringing London and Paris together at this time would bring a security measure against such an eventuality [When Britain and France nearly married’, (M Thomson), BBC News, 15-Jan-2007, www.bbcnews.co.uk].

In the midst of all this, Mollet, an affirmed Anglophile, made a huge call…he proposed in secret to his UK counterpart, Anthony Eden, that the two wartime allies (and erstwhile hereditary enemies) establish a political union. Mollet’s proposal entailed a common citizenship for both peoples and he ventured that French men and women would be prepared to accept Elizabeth II as their head of state. Eden and his cabinet immediately rejected Mollet’s offer out-of-hand…but there was a corollary from the French premier.

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British Prime Minister RA Eden ↸

Completely out of left field, the French prime minister made a second request to Eden, this one an even more intriguing, mind-boggling proposition that France become a member of the British Commonwealth! The British PM apparently warmed to the idea of having the French in the. Commonwealth, telling Mollet that it would receive “immediate consideration”, but nothing eventuated from the proposition❉, leaving observers to muse on the curious theoretical conundrum of  what might have been – eg, the exquisite contemplation of the British monarch adding “Queen of France“ to her list of titles! [‘Incroyable, but true … France’s 1956 bid to unite with Britain’, (Angelique Chrisafis), The Guardian, 16-Jan-2007, www.theguardian.com]. The proposal was short-lived in any case…as soon as the disastrous Anglo-French incursion floundered, Mollet abondoned the idea altogether [Thomson, loc.cit.].

The most surprising thing about this extraordinary episode is that nothing was known about it publicly until 2007! The documents relating to it in the possession of the British government were declassified in 1980 and then apparently forgotten more or less completly. They sat, gathering dust, in the National Archives in. London until discovered in 2007. The scoop was unearthed by BBC journalist Mike Thomson and the news met with amusement in the UK –  the BBC scoffed at the notion, dubbing the proposed union ‘Frangleterre’ [ibid; Thomson, loc.cit.].

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French Prime Minister G Mollet ↸

In France the disclosure precipitated an outcry. Responses were, not surprisingly, generally ascerbic. Many politicians and ex-politicians saw the revelation as outrageous, scandalous, and some even thought it amounted to an act of treason on Mollet’s part [Thomson, ibid.]. Intriguingly, a search of the French archives failed to turn up any trace of Mollet’s FBU proposal among the records.

PostScript: In the fallout of the crises, both leaders found themselves politically undone within twelve months…Eden, humiliated by the backdown over Suez, was forced out of the top job, and Mollet’s government collapsed after a public backlash at the disclosure that Mollet had approved counterterrorist tactics including torture against the Algerian rebels [‘Guy Mollet’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Epilogue: FBU: two 20th century manifestations of a desire for unification between France and the United Kingdom, one emerging in global war-time, the other out of an international crisis. In turn, the first initiated by one of the allies and subsequently rejected by the other, with the roles reversed and the same outcome in the second instance.

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✡ this was preparatory to Mollet and British PM Eden combining with Israel to launch an invasion force of Egypt

❉ one year later after the signing of the Treaty of Rome (1957), France became a founding member of the European Common Market (later EU)