Shubbiluliuma removed the Harri people from Kissuwadna, confining them to the other side of the Euphrates, where they adopted the lifestyle of riverfolk. In the days that followed, the Hattic king's favorable treatment earned their obedience. The fatal mistakes that monarch-kings often make tend to be leaving problems unsolved, ones that continue to fester, and Shubbiluliuma's handling of Harri in a way that did not result in mass genocide or civil war was something the world took note of.
Next, he traveled to Syria to treat with the princes who ruled from their impressively rich city-states. This entire area bore spheres of influence that included princes aligned with the Mitanni and others with Egypt. In the case of the Mitanni, the Syrian princes were offered protection; with Egypt, innovation; but in the case of Hatta? War.
Shubbiluliuma did not enter Syria with peaceful intentions and carried the near full force of his armies into their lands. The Hattic king wisely chose to leave his internal struggles almost bloodless, but the opposite was true for the external challenge of staking a claim in Syria to form a new dynasty under his one rule. This move was unprecedented and a brutal one, taking Syria itself, along with its new allies in the Egyptians and Mitanni, completely unawares.
It is a fool's bargain to believe in others blindly fighting your battles for you upon nothing more than their word, and when the Hattic soldiers began their raids, Egypt and Mitanni occupied areas also fell to Shubbiluliuma's grasp. The local chieftains quickly submitted and before the Near End knew it, the Hattic nation now possessed all of northern Syria. King Shubbiluliuma's people remembered the old days written and told via oral tradition of the fierceness of the Assyria, and establishing this foothold in upper Syria was considered an effective posture against any notion of western expansion.
Just as one country might absorb another in order to create a buffer of sorts, this was the will of Shubbiluliuma's people, however, his own two reasons were entirely different.
Legacy and power.
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