Arab socialism in the context of "Arab Cold War"

The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region (Arabic: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي – قطر سوريا Ḥizb al-Ba'th al-'Arabī al-Ishtirākī – Quṭr Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Regional Branch (Arabic: الفرع القطري السوري), was a neo-Ba'athist organisation founded on 7 April 1947 by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar and followers of Zaki al-Arsuzi. The party ruled Syria from the 1963 coup d'état, which brought the Ba'athists to power, until 8 December 2024, when Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus in the face of a rebel offensive during the Syrian civil war. It was formally disbanded in January 2025.

The party was founded on 7 April 1947 as the Arab Ba'ath Party through the merger of the Arab Ba'ath Movement led by Michel ʿAflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar and the Arab Ba'ath, led by Zaki al-Arsuzi. The party espoused Ba'athism, an ideology mixing Arab nationalist, pan-Arab, Arab socialist, and anti-imperialist interests. Ba'athism calls for the unification of the Arab world into a single state. It quickly established branches in other Arab countries, although it would only hold power in Syria and in Iraq. Following their ascent to power in 1963, neo-Ba'athist officers proceeded to stamp out the traditional civilian elites in order to construct a military dictatorship operating on totalitarianlines; wherein all state agencies, party organisations, public institutions, civil entities, media and health infrastructure were tightly dominated by the military establishment and the Mukhabarat (intelligence services).

Ba'athism, also spelled Baathism, is an Arab nationalist ideology which advocates the establishment of a unified Arab state through the rule of a Ba'athist vanguard party operating under a revolutionary socialist framework. The ideology is officially based on the theories of the Syrian intellectuals Michel Aflaq (per the Iraqi-led Ba'ath Party), Zaki al-Arsuzi (per the Syrian-led Ba'ath Party), and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. Ba'athist leaders of the modern era include the former president of Iraq Saddam Hussein, and former presidents of Syria Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad.

The Ba'athist ideology advocates the "enlightenment of the Arabs" as well as the renaissance of their culture, values and society. It also advocates the creation of one-party states and rejects political pluralism in an unspecified length of time—the Ba'ath party theoretically uses an unspecified amount of time to develop an "enlightened" Arab society. Ba'athism is founded on the principles of Arab nationalism, pan-Arabism, and Arab socialism, as exemplified by its slogan "Unity, Freedom, Socialism".

Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was an Egyptian military officer and revolutionary who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and introduced far-reaching land reforms the following year. Following a 1954 assassination attempt on his life by a Muslim Brotherhood member, he cracked down on the organization, put President Mohamed Naguib under house arrest and assumed executive office. He was formally elected president in June 1956.

Nasser's popularity in Egypt and the Arab world skyrocketed after his nationalization of the Suez Canal and his political victory in the subsequent Suez Crisis, known in Egypt as the Tripartite Aggression. Calls for pan-Arab unity under his leadership increased, culminating with the formation of the United Arab Republic with Syria from 1958 to 1961. In 1962, Nasser began a series of major socialist measures and modernization reforms in Egypt. Despite setbacks to his pan-Arabist cause, by 1963 Nasser's supporters gained power in several Arab countries, but he became embroiled in the North Yemen Civil War, and eventually the much larger Arab Cold War. He began his second presidential term in March 1965 after his political opponents were banned from running. Following Egypt's defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, Nasser resigned, but he returned to office after popular demonstrations called for his reinstatement. By 1968, Nasser had appointed himself prime minister, launched the War of Attrition to regain the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula, begun a process of depoliticizing the military, and issued a set of political liberalization reforms. After the conclusion of the 1970 Arab League summit, Nasser suffered a heart attack and died. His funeral in Cairo drew five to six million mourners, and prompted an outpouring of grief across the Arab world.

This is a list of non-communist states that self-identify as socialist states. That means this list includes African socialist states, Arab socialist states, Ba'athist states, and other unique socialist state formations.

Nasserism (Arabic: التَّيَّار النَّاصِرِيّ, romanized: at-Tayyār an-Nāṣiriyy) is an Arab nationalist and Arab socialist political ideology based on the thinking of Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the two principal leaders of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and Egypt's second president. Spanning the domestic and international spheres, it combines elements of Arab socialism, republicanism, secularism, nationalism, anti-imperialism, developing world solidarity, Pan-Arabism, and international non-alignment. According to Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Nasserism symbolised "the direction of liberation, socialist transformation, the people’s control of their own resources, and the democracy of the peoples working forces."

Many other Arab countries have adopted Nasserist forms of government during the 20th century, most being formed during the 1960s, including Algeria under the FLN and the Libyan Arab Republic under Muammar Gaddafi. The Nasserist ideology is also similar in theory to the Ba'athist ideology which was also notably practiced under Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist Iraq (1968–2003) and under the Assad family's Ba'athist Syria (1963–2024).

Pan-Arabism (Arabic: الوحدة العربية, romanized: al-waḥda al-ʿarabiyyah, lit. 'Arab unity') is a pan-nationalist ideology that espouses the unification of all Arab people in a single nation-state, consisting of all Arab countries of West Asia and North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, which is referred to as the Arab world. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts the view that the Arabs constitute a single nation. It originated in the late 19th century among the Arab regions of the Ottoman Empire, and its popularity reached its height during the peak of Nasserism and Ba'athism in the 1950s and 1960s. Advocates of pan-Arabism have often espoused Arab socialist principles and strongly opposed the political involvement of the Western world in the Arab world. It also sought to empower Arab states against outside forces by forming alliances such as the Arab League.

Saddam Hussein (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the president of Iraq from 1979 until he was overthrown in 2003 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He previously served as the vice president from 1968 to 1979 and also as the prime minister from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. A leading member of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, he was a proponent of Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism. The policies and ideologies he championed are collectively known as Saddamism.

Born near the city of Tikrit to a Sunni Arab family, Saddam joined the revolutionary Ba'ath Party in 1957. He played a key role in the 17 July Revolution that brought the Ba'athists to power in Iraq and made him vice president under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. During his tenure as vice president, Saddam nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company, diversified the economy, introduced free healthcare and education, and supported women's rights. He also presided over the defeat of the Kurdish insurgency in the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War and signed the Algiers Agreement with Iran in 1975, thereby settling territorial disputes along the Iran–Iraq border. Following al-Bakr's resignation in 1979, Saddam formally took power. During his presidency, positions of power in the country were mostly filled with Sunni Arabs, a minority that made up only about a fifth of the Iraqi population.

Waḥda, Ḥurriyya, Ishtirākiyya (Arabic: وَحْدَةٌ، حُرِّيَّةٌ، اِشْتِرَاكِيَّةٌ, lit. 'Unity, Freedom, Socialism') is a Ba'athist slogan and key tenet associated with the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. The slogan served as the national motto of Ba'athist Syria from 1963 to 2024 and Ba'athist Iraq from 1968 to 1991. The slogan expresses the basic principles of the Ba'ath Party, reflecting its revolutionary, Arab socialist, and pan-Arabist doctrine. The slogan was a central topic of discussion in the main ideological document of Ba'athism, known as the Muntalaqat.