Some may find the title of this article surprising, and others may wonder about the occasion that calls for discussing such a topic now.
To the first group of readers, I would say that we are accustomed in most cases to speaking of the West as having historically worked to fragment and divide the Arab World into smaller entities.
There are, of course, many well-documented historical cases supporting this point of view. However, there have also been cases when the Western countries, under certain circumstances and during specific historical periods and for particular reasons, whether related to the West as a whole or to individual Western nations, have supported projects aimed at uniting more than one Arab country or enabling one Arab country to expand by annexing another Arab country or parts of it.
These instances had justifications from the perspective of the Western country involved.
As for the second group of readers, who may be wondering why this topic is being discussed now, the reason is the recent remarks made by US Envoy to Syria and Lebanon Thomas Barrack during one of his recent visits to Lebanon. Barrack hinted that if the Lebanese authorities did not hasten to meet US, Western, and perhaps also Israeli demands regarding the disarmament of Hizbullah, the disarmament of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and Lebanon’s accession to the so-called “Abraham Accords” sponsored by the current US Administration to normalise relations between Israel and the Arab countries, then Washington might consider supporting ideas of “reunifying” Syria and Lebanon under Syrian leadership or of Syria annexing parts of Lebanon.
The reports of these comments came amid others suggesting that the current Syrian political leadership could be convinced to relinquish its sovereignty over the Occupied Golan Heights in exchange for incorporating parts of Lebanon into Syria as compensation for the loss of the Golan.
It is a well-established fact that Britain supported the launch of the Great Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula during the First World War. The revolt was led by Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the then Sharif of Mecca. Britain’s justification was to weaken the Ottoman Empire, which had sided with Germany against Britain and its Allies in the War. Britain even went so far as to promise Sharif Hussein bin Ali its support in his pursuit to establish a unified Arab state encompassing most of the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent under his rule and that of his family, if the war ended in a victory for the allies.
However, as is well known, Britain failed to honour this promise after the war ended and instead a mandate system was introduced by the League of Nations, the predecessor to the United Nations, as a way to legitimise British and French colonial control over the Fertile Crescent at that time.
Similarly, Britain played an active and important role in encouraging the establishment of the Arab League in 1945, coinciding with the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War between the Western bloc led by the US and the Eastern bloc led by the former Soviet Union. It was in the interests of the Western alliance, particularly Britain, to secure the support of the then governments in the independent Arab countries that had founded the League.
These governments were seen as key allies of the capitalist West in its upcoming confrontations with communist East. Another goal was to protect these governments from internal uprisings or revolutions that could bring to power anti-Western or even pro-Soviet elements, such as Arab communist parties.
While it is true that the Arab League later evolved and began reflecting popular Arab desires for pan-Arabism and unity, even Arab solidarity and joint Arab action, and occasionally adopting anti-Western positions, the British support for its founding in 1945 remains a historical fact that cannot be denied.
Continuing the historical sequence, we should mention here that between the establishment of the state of Transjordan under Hashemite rule on 11 April 1921 and the revolution against Hashemite rule in Iraq on 14 July 1958, Britain strongly sought to unite Iraq and Jordan under the Hashemite crown. Although British politicians at the time justified this by saying that it was a “reward” for the sons and grandsons of Sharif Hussein bin Ali for his cooperation during the Arab Revolt, the historical facts confirm that the primary motive was to serve British and Western interests.
The aim was to establish a strong Western ally in the Arab East. Such British and Western endeavours were reinforced, especially in the mid-1950s, by political struggles to establish Western-backed alliances in the Middle East, most notably the Baghdad Pact, which officially aimed at countering Soviet influence in the region but in practice also aimed at countering the rising tide of the pan-Arab nationalist tendencies at work at the time. These were led by Egypt under late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser and by Syria, at the time led by political and military figures with pan-Arab tendencies. These British and Western efforts only came to an end with the fall of Hashemite rule in Iraq in July 1958.
Moving from Britain to the United States, and from the Iraq-Jordan case to the Syria-Lebanon one, we find that Washington supported and backed Syria’s military intervention in Lebanon in June 1976. This was part of a deal under which the US accepted Syria’s de facto control, lasting for three decades, over Lebanese affairs. In exchange, the Syrian intervention aimed at shifting the balance of power in the Lebanese Civil War to prevent the decisive defeat of the right-wing Lebanese forces at the hands of the alliance between the Lebanese National Movement, led by the late Lebanese leader Kamal Jumblatt, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), led by the late iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
This deal was successfully implemented on the ground. The military situation turned around completely, and both the Lebanese National Movement and the PLO suffered successive blows from the Syrian Army, which entered Lebanon on the orders of former Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad at the invitation of the then outgoing Lebanese president Suleiman Frangieh.
These blows enabled the Lebanese right-wing forces to regain their strength and even become the stronger side, both militarily and politically. The US action at the time was taken not out of a desire to “reunify” Syria and Lebanon, but rather to prevent the emergence of a new political regime in Lebanon that would combine Arab nationalism with democratic and progressive tendencies.
From the four historical cases cited above, it is clear that throughout the modern and contemporary history of the Arab World and its relations with the West, the West has never held a “principled stance” either for or against Arab unity projects or the ambitions of some Arab countries to annex other Arab countries or parts of their territories.
The West’s primary motive has always been to secure its own interests and realise its own strategic, political, economic, security, or cultural objectives in the Arab region.
The writer is a diplomat and commentator.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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