ELYA AGHAJANYAN
country through economic sanctions and the isolation of the country through diplomatic means playing on time and waiting for a significant change in the country ’ s leadership . This approach was called “ strategic patience ” by the Obama team as claimed by the White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction Gary Samore . 15 Woodward identifies the policy of strategic patience with the following formula : “ negotiate , prevaricate , escalate , renegotiate ”. 16 The main aim of this policy is to make the country have a starker choice : either end the conflict on the terms suggested or “ face ever-increasing pressure ”. 17
The involvement of multiple means is intended to prolong the conflict resolution process , depending on the intentions of one of the conflicting sides . However , many questions arise while dealing with this concept . As the notion implies , its key strategy is patience while trying to utilize various methods until the resolution of the dispute . Nevertheless , one may ask , is it better to wait for some time and prolong the conflict until a proper solution is found or one of the sides agrees to make concessions ? And , even if they are common , what was the result of using such strategies ? Have they ever been successful ? Thus , it is worth understanding whether strategic patience can be observed as a policy or set of strategies intended to manage the conflict for a time . The answer to this question allows one to find the responses to the questions mentioned above as well . Additionally , it will enable understanding the applicability of the concept to the case at hand . To find the answer to that question , this section tries to put strategic patience in a broader framework , which is conflict management , and analyzes strategic patience from that perspective by discussing the case of Israel-Palestine as well .
Notoriously , scholars even claim that these types of strategies may be implemented by one of the parties of enduring rivalries , where various methods have been used to manage the conflict and prevent it from becoming a violent one . 18 Identifying the causal chain between the conflict management strategies and the strategies that the US utilized towards North Korea for decades , it can be concluded that strategic patience can be analyzed in the framework of conflict management and
15 Gary Samore , International Perspectives on the Nuclear Posture Review , Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace , last modified April 22 , 2010 , https :// carnegieendowment . org / files / 0422carnegie-samore . pdf . 16 Bob Woodward , Obama ' s Wars ( New York : Simon & Schuster , 2014 ), 41 . 17 Jaffrey Bader , Obama and China ' s rise : An insider ' s account of America ' s Asia strategy
( Washington , D . C : Brookings Institution Press , 2013 ), 39 . 18 Paul Diehl & Gary Goertz , War and Peace in International Rivalry ( Ann Arbor : The
University of Michigan Press , 2000 ), 195 . 56