시리아 내전 장기화의 배경 고찰

A Study on the Background of the Prolonged Syrian Civil War: The Impacts of Politicization of Sectarianism and Obama s Proxy War Intervention

This study attempts to analyze the internal and external causes of the prolonged Syrian civil war using the analytic concept of politicization of sectarianism and proxy war theory. Internally, politicization of sectarianism can be seen as the cause of the exacerbation of the Syrian civil war by forcing both the Assad regime and the rebels to enter extreme conflict while refusing to search for political compromise. In other words, they tried to achieve their political goals by spreading a discourse of the conflictual identity of sectarianism, thus leading to a zero-sum civil war between the two sides. Externally, it can be said that the Obama administration s passive and inconsistent strategy of proxy war generated unintended consequences in that it created a basis for the survival of the Assad regime and exacerbated conflicts. In particular, Obama s proxy war intervention using a surrogate, the YPG, to defeat ISIS exposed its limitations and weakening the rebel group contrary to Washington s initial intentions. As a result, this study illuminates the prolonged Syrian civil war, which produced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis during the Arab Spring by focusing on the theoretical frameworks of politicization of sectarianism and proxy war.