Putin's policy in Ukraine: Strategic patience

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy in Ukraine is increasingly clear for all to see: strategic patience.

This phrase is commonly associated with former President Barack Obama’s North Korea policy. It’s a fancy way of saying, “We plan on putting more pressure on the other side and sitting pretty until they blink.” As history demonstrates, it didn’t work on North Korea — if anything, the diplomatic isolation, in combination with U.S. economic sanctions, merely convinced Kim Jong-Un that prioritizing Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs was the right course of action.