Nathan Madien said:
Karelian, I am a bit confused by this. How does Lebanon fit into the whole Baathist picture and how does eliminating Baathism in Lebanon lead to the end of Baathist rule in the Middle East?
Here´s what has happened so far:
The decline of the French colonial rule and the early years of independence in both Syria and Lebanon were politically rather active in both countries, as the old parties were challenged with new political organizations such as the SSNP and Ba´ath (just like in OTL.) Then the local Baathists (who are still political minority in the whole region) begin to receive funding and support from Germany, where certain groups within the new leadership of the Reich want to expand the fascist influence to the Middle-East.
Meanwhile the situation in Palestine descended into low-scale civil war, and the British troops withdrew, practically ending the Mandate but leaving the political future of the country open.
Then Nasser and Free Officers rose to power in Egypt in 1950, and their junta quickly established diplomatic contacts to the Reich, signing profitable arms deals. Their next step was the nationalization of the Suez Channel area.
By this point the Baathist ideology was gaining more support among Sunni Arab population everywhere in the Middle-East. German and French intelligence services analyzed the new situation and provided Berlin a new report about the geopolitical situation of the region.
This document recommended covert action and support for local Baathists in Lebanon and Syria, and initiated a prosess where Germans recruited Arab volunteers and veterans of war-era Muslim SS-units with the pretext of sending them back to fight in Palestine. The real goal of this project was to provide support for the coups of Syrian and Lebanese Baathists.
The actual operation was codenamed Zedernholz, and it begun on 5th of August 1951. The Baathists had good initial success. Syria and Lebanon fell under their control with Sunni Arab part of the population acting as their main source of support in both countries. This also ment that the other religious and ethnic groups in both countries had to choose their side, and many aligned themselves against their new government.
As a response to the German activity in Middle-East, United Nations issued UNSC Resolution 42, urging the member states to "restore order in British Mandate of Palestine, end the violence and restore peace to the area."
In October 1951, British and American troops returned to Middle-East with force. British PM Eden and US President Truman hoped that a quick military intervention would end the violence in Palestine, free Suez for international traffic and stop the expansion of German sphere of influence in the Middle-East. They were bitterly disappointed. Allthough Suez was soon open again and the Egyptian Navy and air force no longer posed a credible threat to the shipping in Mediterranean, Palestinian question was still unresolved and Lebanese and Syrian Baathists refused to enter negotiations since the number of Western troops in the region was initially too small to pose a credible threat to their regimes.
Now President Truman was in a sense "stuck" to Middle-East: His earlier remarks about a quick show of force and the hostile additude of the Congress prevented him from reinforcing this theatre or expanding the US strategic aims to the "rollback of Baathism. And then came the presidential elections of 1952. Republican Robert Taft managed to win, and when he unexpectedly died on July 31st, his Vice-President Douglas MacArthur became the 35th President of the United States in August 1953.
The prestige of the old general and the growing frustration of the continuing "phoney war" in Middle-East allowed MacArthur to revise the US strategic objectives in Middle-East. Fresh reinforcements were sent to the region, and in 10th of September 1953 a new offensive broke the period of trench warfare in northern Palestine. During the next month American troops pushed the Syrian and Lebanese forces northwards, and after a succesfull amphibious assault Beirut fell to US troops. The Lebanese junta lost it´s credibility, and it seemed that the next stop for US troops would be Damascus.
Hopefully this clarified the overall situation?