Arab Union

The Union of Arab Republics (UAR; Arabic: اتِّحاد الجمهوريات العربية ittiḥād al-jumhūriyāt al-‘arabīyah), informally known as the Arab Union (الاتِّحاد العربي al-ittiḥād al-‘arabī), is a transcontinental country in North Africa and Western Asia. Governed as a federation of 20 republics, each of which share sovereignty equally with the union and are more or less self-governing in their domestic affairs, the state also exercises jurisdiction over a capital district, which unlike the republics functions as a single municipality delegated autonomy unilaterally by the federal government. Egypt is the union's most populous and economically dominant member republic, with a population exceeding 115 million, accounting for over a fifth of the total Arab Union population; Cairo, Egypt's capital, is the largest city in the Arab Union by population, population density and economic output, and the fourth-most populous in the world, and is considered the economic, financial and entertainment capital of the Arab Union as well as an Alpha+ global city. The Arab Union covers a vast, environmentally and culturally diverse landscape of almost 11.9 million square kilometres, making it the second-largest sovereign state in the world by land area after the Russian Federation, and with a population of over 558 million, it is the world's third-most populous country, after China and India. Arabic serves as the mother tongue of at least 90% of the population, and is the sole official language at the federal level, although individual republics are free to recognise minority languages or even recognise official national languages alongside Arabic; for example, Palestine recognises both Arabic and Hebrew as equal official languages, as a third of its population speak Hebrew as their mother tongue, and thus all Palestinian government services are available in both languages, and both Arabic and Hebrew are used on street signs, billboards and other public advertisements, in media, government and public administration, education and legislation. Arabic is also used as a lingua franca to enable communication with and between the different linguistic minorities of the union. The Arab Union is home to a majority of sites considered holy by the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – including the three holy cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem – making it a central destination for both religious pilgrimage and tourism. The country also hosts multiple important and protected archeological areas as well as 86 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Its large territory encompassing several unique landscapes and climate zones also makes the Arab Union one of the world's 18 megadiverse countries.

The Arab Union was originally established in 1958 as the United Arab Republic, a union of revolutionary Arab nationalist republics: Egypt, Syria and, after 1963, Iraq. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the UAR's first president, died in 1970 and was succeeded by Hafez al-Assad, leader of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which has remained in power ever since. Assad led the country during the late 1970 War of Attrition which ended with the defeat of the Zionist occupation and liberation of Palestine, which became the fourth member of the UAR. These four countries remained the only members of a unitary state until the start of the 1986–89 Arab Revolution. Following the rapid rise in popularity and strength of pan-Arabist movements throughout the Arab world during the 1970s and early 1980s, many sovereign Arab governments, ever the more reactionary, took a heavy-handed approach to stabilising the situation involving protests and related demonstrations (the great majority of which were peaceful); the use of lethal force by security forces against demonstrators, strikers and even journalists in several states, which culminated in the 1986 Arab Revolution, became the catalyst to the arming of the pan-Arabist movement, which was organised by the Ba'ath Party's National Command and effected by the party's regional branches, one in each Arab country. The armed pan-Arabist militias answered to a committee of the leaders of each allied revolutionary organisation; the committees and their subordinate armed forces would be funded by the Military Committee of the Ba'ath Party, which also acted as the main strategic planning forum for the war. These militias were either led or directly supported by the Pan-Arab Army, the official army of the Ba'ath Party, which had branches and/or allied militias in each Arab state, and the Arab Army, the conventional military of the United Arab Republic, in virtually all major battles and engagements during the war. Ultimately the President of the UAR (Hafez al-Assad) controlled the belligerents on the revolutionary side in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Arab Army and the UAR security forces. The UAR grew substantially in territory, population and military prowess over the course of the war, at a slow and steady rate during the first year, and at a much more rapid and sometimes exponential rate during the final two years of the war, with virtually all Arab territories ultimately coming under de facto UAR administration before the end of 1989. While many states were annexed via military force, others became part of the Arab Union after internal revolution and/or local elections brought to power the local branch of the Ba'ath Party; most states experienced a mix of both.

Following the official end of the revolutionary war on 10 December 1989, new devolved governments were established in the four original members and the newly-administered members, and the 1990s saw a significant move toward reconstruction and, now that the Arab territories were unified, economic integration. The 1999 constitution reorganised the United Arab Republic as a federation, which was officially renamed the Union of Arab Republics: the devolved governments were replaced by locally elected governments for each republic, which took responsibility of most domestic affairs while the former central government became a federal government, which retained control over foreign affairs and the military, among others. Today, the Arab Union represents the world's third largest economy, with a large industrial and manufacturing sector and rapidly developing consumer goods, research and development, information technology and high tech sectors. All major cities and the majority of smaller cities in the 20 republics are connected by a national expressway system which was funded by the federal government as part of large-scale deficit spending during the late 1990s reconstruction period, which ultimately proved a sound investment, with similar developments including the refurbishment and construction of railways and modernisation of major ports. The Arab Union also has the highest standard of living in both North Africa and Western Asia. Its armed forces constitute the third largest standing army in the world, after Korea and the United States, with the Arab Union often considered a potential superpower. It is a full member of the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Non-Aligned Movement, and is one of the G20 major economies. Since 2000, the Arab Union has been considered by Western powers to be nuclear-capable, although the government denies possessing nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear energy is widely used and officially generates 33.8% of the union's electricity as of January 2020.

Between 2011 and 2019, the Arab Union experienced civil war in many regions, which began following mass civil unrest and armed uprisings in many republics that were put down by the military starting on 15 March 2011; the 2011 unrest was dubbed the "Arab Spring" by media, and the resulting civil war was thus most commonly known as the Arab Winter. The conflict was between the Ba'athist government led by President Bashar al-Assad, and its domestic and foreign allies, and an array of Islamist armed groups funded by foreign sources including Arab expatriates and Western governments; many of the latter, the strongest and most influential of which is currently the Muslim Brotherhood, are at war with each other in addition to the government, with several inter-rebel battles equally destructive as those involving the Arab Army or allied forces. The Arab Union government was supported militarily by Russia and Iran, and many Islamist groups at various times supported directly and indirectly by the United States, making the Arab Winter a global proxy war. The war resulted in nearly 1.2 million casualties, three-quarters of which represented civilian deaths, and also caused a mass exodus of over 10 million people which was the primary contributor to the 2015–18 European migrant crisis. The Russian intervention beginning in late 2015 ultimately turned the tide of the war decisively in the government's favour: the war officially ended on 10 December 2019, with the capture by government forces of the last rebel-held territory in Idlib, Syrian Arab Republic. However, as of July 2020, minor clashes continue between insurgents and government forces or police, limited to relatively isolated regions in the republics of Yemen, Syria and Iraq, with life continuing normally for the overwhelming majority of the population. Over 75% of refugees from the war have since returned to their homes, most of those damaged or destroyed since their abandonment having been rebuilt or repaired via federal reconstruction subsidies and foreign aid, which have also funded the restoration of public infrastructure. As of July 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has not seriously affected the Arab Union, due overwhelmingly to the quarantine policies of the government which had still not ended martial law upon the pandemic's outbreak in the country at the start of 2020; the continuance of martial law enabled the authorities to impose extremely strict quarantine policies, which it would not have been able to effect under the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the Arab Union when martial law is not in effect. As a result, the country has officially reported only 117,844 cases and 5,504 deaths out of a population of 558 million, as of 30 September 2020, making the Arab Union one of the countries the least-affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Politics
There are two main power hierarchies in the Arab Union: the ruling Ba'ath Party, one of the founding parties of the Arab Union; and the Arab Congress, the top legislative institution in the union and the centre of national political deliberation and discourse.

Ba'ath Party
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, one of the founding political parties of the Arab Union and its ruling party since 1970, consists of the National Command, the top policymaking body of the Ba'ath Party between the triennial National Congress, ultimately the top institution in the Party and a gathering of all card-carrying members, its authority delegated between sessions to the National Command, which is elected by the National Congress and accountable to the subsequent National Congress session.

The National Congress elects a Secretary to chair the National Command between sessions, who is usually known as the National Secretary and is the Party's nominee during an Arab Union presidential election. Since the Ba'ath Party came to power in 1970, all National Secretaries have simultaneously held the office of President of the Arab Union, thus controlling the Arab Union federal government.