Why China Is Not the Solution to the Korean Crisis

An analysis of China's influence over north Korea extending back to the Korean War.  An important conclusion (and one with which I largely agree based on much of the historical analysis as outlined in this article):

None of this, of course, is intended to suggest that China is not a critical player in the region, or that the U.S. can simply ignore China in its quest for solutions in Korea. But it is vital that policymakers in the U.S. and beyond recognize that China’s influence on Pyongyang is much more limited than conventional wisdom holds. Looking to Beijing for a solution is hence not only an abdication of American leadership but will also likely prove futile even as it distracts policymakers from making the more serious choices that have to be made. It is an embrace of easy rhetoric at the expense of hard reality, and accepting the hard reality is an imperative first step towards a resolution of the Korean crisis.

V/R

Dave

Why China Is Not the Solution to the Korean Crisis

PREVIEWNORTH KOREA

May 31, 2013

By Mitchell Lerner

http://thediplomat.com/2013/05/31/why-china-is-not-the-solution-to-the-korean-crisis/?all=true

Beijing calls the shots in North Korea? History shows that thinking is misguided.

1. Would China Block Korean Unification?
2. How Kim Death Risks China Crisis
3. Patience, Not Preemption, on the Korean Peninsula
4. The Information Age:N. Korean Style
5. The Dangers of Korean Unification

As tensions on the Korean Peninsula have grown, much of the relevant conversation within the United States has focused on China, the one nation that, according to many American policymakers, can control the North Korean leadership. “China does hold the key to this problem,” explainedSenator John McCain, who described the Chinese “failure to rein in what could be a catastrophic situation,” as “disappointing.” Many otherpolicymakers and media outlets agree.

This thinking is, however, fundamentally flawed on numerous levels. To begin with, it abdicates American leadership, deferring to a rival in an area of great strategic and economic interest. It also embraces facile solutions at a time when difficult decisions are needed. The U.S. may not have many good options on the Korean peninsula, but the nation’s long-term interests require its leaders to make some hard choices, rather than fall back on rhetorical nostrums that distract and delay without offering any substantive vision. Most significantly, however, the current approach suffers from a fundamentally flawed understanding of the true nature of the Sino-North Korean relationship.

Over the past decade, the world has finally begun to gain insights into DPRK policymaking, largely through materials obtained from former communist bloc states, most of which have been collected by the North Korea International Documentation Project. On a most basic level, these materials do confirm that China has been both North Korea’s most consistent ally and a vital provider of assistance in many forms. At the same time, these archival documents also suggest that the Sino-North Korean relationship has always been much more complex than Mao’s famous claim that the nations were “as close as lips and teeth” suggests.

These new materials point to four additional aspects of the relationship that policymakers must also consider. They suggest, first, that the alliance is rooted in strategic self-interest rather than strong fraternal or ideological bonds; second, that the closeness of the relationship has waxed and waned dramatically based on changing internal conditions and the evolving international environment; third, that DPRK leaders have often seen China as too expansionist, too assertive, and too unreliable to be fully trusted; and finally, that throughout the past half-century, the DPRK leadership has firmly and consistently resisted Chinese efforts to influence their policymaking.

These realities were on display as early as the Korean War. In the months preceding the North’s surprise attack against South Korea in 1950, China strongly discouraged the DPRK from launching a military campaign and refused Kim Il Sung’s suggestions for greater intelligence collaboration. A resentful Kim thenfailed to provide China with information about his war preparations, and did not even send a representative to brief the Chinese until three days after the attack. Mao was furious, venting that, “They are supposed to be our next-door neighbor, but they did not consult with us before taking military action, and they did not even notify us of the outbreak of the war until now.” The Chinese, of course, later intervened to save the North, but they did so because of Soviet pressure and a desire to protect and expand their own influence, not because of any genuine commitment to Kim. For his part, Kim was also reluctant to accept the Chinese as equal partners for fear of sacrificing his political control, leading to tensions over strategy and decisionsranging from the organization of the military command through control of railroads to the specific tactics to be implemented. In these cases, Kim almost always had to defer to the Chinese, given his need for their military support and Josef Stalin’s frequent interventions on the Chinese side. Nevertheless, Kim clearly resented the way the great powers made critical decisions without regard to his wishes, steadily fought against allowing his patrons to control internal matters, and constantly sought to minimize Chinese influence.

(Continued at the link below)

http://thediplomat.com/2013/05/31/why-china-is-not-the-solution-to-the-korean-crisis/?all=true

When Does North Korea Get Re-Listed as a State Sponsor of Terrorism?

A good question from Claudia.
V/R
Dave

When Does North Korea Get Re-Listed as a State Sponsor of Terrorism?

Posted By Claudia Rosett On May 31, 2013 @ 1:00 am In Uncategorized | No Comments

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/when-does-north-korea-get-re-listed-as-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/?print=1

Iran’s global extravaganza of state-sponsored terrorism is getting some well-deserved attention this week ^[1], with the release of the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism ^[2], plus the sentencing of dual national Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar (for conspiring with Iran’s Qods force to try to bomb the Saudi ambassador in Washington), plus the massive indictment issued by Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman (whose investigation of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center, AMIA, in Buenos Aires, has uncoveredIranian terror network ^[3]s throughout Latin America).

But spare a thought, also, for Iran’s partner in proliferation and exemplar of evil — North Korea. The State Department roster of State Sponsors of Terrorism ^[4] is weirdly short, with just four countries listed: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Why isn’t North Korea on the list?

The short answer is that from 1988-2008, the U.S. did indeed list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism — a distinction that North Korea had richly earned, with its career of bombings, abductions and weapons traffic and training for fellow terror-sponsoring states.  The Bush administration removed North Korea from the list in late 2008, in a desperate last-ditch attempt to salvage the ill-conceived, duplicitously conducted and utterly failed 2007 nuclear freeze deal piloted by special envoy Chris Hill.

Since then, North Korea — in its official Non-Terrorist-Sponsoring incarnation — has carried out a slew of missile tests (including long-range ballistic missiles); conducted two nuclear tests,  in 2009 and 2013; torpedoed and sunk a South Korean frigate, the Cheonan (killing more than 40); shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong (killing four);  dispatched weapons shipments to Iran and Hezbollah; and threatened nuclear strikes on Washington, Seoul and the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

In addition, according to the State Department, North Korea has yet to provide a full accounting for at least 12 Japanese citizens believed to have been abducted by North Korean “state entities” in the 1970s and 1980s. (Think about that — being kidnapped and held in North Korea for more than 30 years. At what point, for the abductees and their families, is that no longer supposed to qualify as state-sponsored terrorism?).

And then there are the reports of North Korea expert and political scientist Bruce Bechtol, a former senior analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose new book “The Last Days of Kim Jong Il ^[5],” includes a full chapter on North Korea and Support for Terrorism.  Bechtol argues that “North Korea has shown throughout its history that it is intent on engaging in rogue behavior and providing support for terrorism.” At a seminar this week in Washington, at the Heritage Foundation, he charged — as this Chosun Ilbo account ^[6] details — that among North Korea’s terrorist clients are Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Somalia’s al-Shabab, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and al Qaeda.

(Continued at the link below)

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/when-does-north-korea-get-re-listed-as-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/?print=1

N.Korea 'Supplies Arms to Terrorists'

Something very much overlooked.
V/R
Dave

N.Korea 'Supplies Arms to Terrorists'

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/05/31/2013053100738.html

North Korea continues to give military assistance to terrorist organizations around the world under new leader Kim Jong-un, an American academic claimed Wednesday.

At a seminar at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, Prof. Bruce Bechtol of Angelo State University, a former analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, said its Cold-War network allows the North to keep supplying weaponry to several countries and terrorist organizations.

He named Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Somalia's al-Shabab, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, and al-Qaeda.

(Continued at the link below)

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/05/31/2013053100738.html

Naming America's Nameless War

Dr. Bacevich brings up the unhelpful trend of spending more time trying to name the war/conflict rather than trying to understand it.  We have spend more than a decade trying to name the war and at the same time trying to put new names on old concepts for dealing with the threats we face.  We can argue about names but I would rather we expend the intellectual capital on trying to understand the threats and develop effective policies, strategies, and plans to address the war/conflicts that threaten us and our friends, partners, and allies.  Once we understand the character of the war or conflict then perhaps we can come up with a useful name that will accurately represent the threat and/or our response to it.  We should keep in mind that the threat goes beyond terrorism.

V/R
Dave

May 29, 2013

Naming America's Nameless War

By Andrew Bacevich

http://www.realclearworld.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2013/05/29/naming_america_nameless_war__105192-full.html

For well over a decade now the United States has been "a nation at war." Does that war have a name?

It did at the outset. After 9/11, George W. Bush's administration wasted no time in announcing that the U.S. was engaged in a Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT. With few dissenters, the media quickly embraced the term. The GWOT promised to be a gargantuan, transformative enterprise. The conflict begun on 9/11 would define the age. In neoconservative circles, it was known as World War IV.

Upon succeeding to the presidency in 2009, however, Barack Obama without fanfare junked Bush's formulation (as he did again in a speech at the National Defense University last week). Yet if the appellation went away, the conflict itself, shorn of identifying marks, continued.

Does it matter that ours has become and remains a nameless war? Very much so.

Names bestow meaning. When it comes to war, a name attached to a date can shape our understanding of what the conflict was all about. To specify when a war began and when it ended is to privilege certain explanations of its significance while discrediting others. Let me provide a few illustrations.

With rare exceptions, Americans today characterize the horrendous fraternal bloodletting of 1861-1865 as the Civil War. Yet not many decades ago, diehard supporters of the Lost Cause insisted on referring to that conflict as the War Between the States or the War for Southern Independence (or even the War of Northern Aggression). The South may have gone down in defeat, but the purposes for which Southerners had fought -- preserving a distinctive way of life and the principle of states' rights -- had been worthy, even noble. So at least they professed to believe, with their preferred names for the war reflecting that belief.

Schoolbooks tell us that the Spanish-American War began in April 1898 and ended in August of that same year. The name and dates fit nicely with a widespread inclination from President William McKinley's day to our own to frame U.S. intervention in Cuba as an altruistic effort to liberate that island from Spanish oppression.

Yet the Cubans were not exactly bystanders in that drama. By 1898, they had been fighting for years to oust their colonial overlords. And although hostilities in Cuba itself ended on August 12th, they dragged on in the Philippines, another Spanish colony that the United States had seized for reasons only remotely related to liberating Cubans. Notably, U.S. troops occupying the Philippines waged a brutal war not against Spaniards but against Filipino nationalists no more inclined to accept colonial rule by Washington than by Madrid. So widen the aperture to include this Cuban prelude and the Filipino postlude and you end up with something like this: The Spanish-American-Cuban-Philippines War of 1895-1902. Too clunky? How about the War for the American Empire? This much is for sure: rather than illuminating, the commonplace textbook descriptor serves chiefly to conceal.

Strange as it may seem, Europeans once referred to the calamitous events of 1914-1918 as the Great War. When Woodrow Wilson decided in 1917 to send an army of doughboys to fight alongside the Allies, he went beyond Great. According to the president, the Great War was going to be the War To End All Wars. Alas, things did not pan out as he expected. Perhaps anticipating the demise of his vision of permanent peace, War Department General Order 115, issued on October 7, 1919, formally declared that, at least as far as the United States was concerned, the recently concluded hostilities would be known simply as the World War.

In September 1939 -- presto chango! -- the World War suddenly became the First World War, the Nazi invasion of Poland having inaugurated a Second World War, also known as World War II or more crypticallyWWII. To be sure, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin preferred the Great Patriotic War. Although this found instant -- almost unanimous -- favor among Soviet citizens, it did not catch on elsewhere.

Does World War II accurately capture the events it purports to encompass? With the crusade against the Axis now ranking alongside the crusade against slavery as a myth-enshrouded chapter in U.S. history to which all must pay homage, Americans are no more inclined to consider that question than to consider why a playoff to determine the professional baseball championship of North America constitutes a "World Series."

In fact, however convenient and familiar, World War II is misleading and not especially useful. The period in question saw at least two wars, each only tenuously connected to the other, each having distinctive origins, each yielding a different outcome. To separate them is to transform the historical landscape.

On the one hand, there was the Pacific War, pitting the United States against Japan. Formally initiated by the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, it had in fact begun a decade earlier when Japan embarked upon a policy of armed conquest in Manchuria. At stake was the question of who would dominate East Asia. Japan's crushing defeat at the hands of the United States, sealed by two atomic bombs in 1945, answered that question (at least for a time).

Then there was the European War, pitting Nazi Germany first against Great Britain and France, but ultimately against a grand alliance led by the United States, the Soviet Union, and a fast fading British Empire. At stake was the question of who would dominate Europe. Germany's defeat resolved that issue (at least for a time): no one would. To prevent any single power from controlling Europe, two outside powers divided it.

This division served as the basis for the ensuing Cold War, which wasn't actually cold, but also (thankfully) wasn't World War III, the retrospective insistence of bellicose neoconservatives notwithstanding. But when did the Cold War begin? Was it in early 1947, when President Harry Truman decided that Stalin's Russia posed a looming threat and committed the United States to a strategy of containment? Or was it in 1919, when Vladimir Lenin decided that Winston Churchill's vow to "strangle Bolshevism in its cradle" posed a looming threat to the Russian Revolution, with an ongoing Anglo-American military intervention evincing a determination to make good on that vow?

Separating the war against Nazi Germany from the war against Imperial Japan opens up another interpretive possibility. If you incorporate the European conflict of 1914-1918 and the European conflict of 1939-1945 into a single narrative, you get a Second Thirty Years War (the first having occurred from 1618-1648) -- not so much a contest of good against evil, as a mindless exercise in self-destruction that represented the ultimate expression of European folly.

So, yes, it matters what we choose to call the military enterprise we've been waging not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in any number of other countries scattered hither and yon across the Islamic world. Although the Obama administration appears no more interested than the Bush administration in saying when that enterprise will actually end, the date we choose as its starting point also matters.

Although Washington seems in no hurry to name its nameless war -- and will no doubt settle on something self-serving or anodyne if it ever finally addresses the issue -- perhaps we should jump-start the process. Let's consider some possible options, names that might actually explain what's going on.

The Long War: Coined not long after 9/11 by senior officers in the Pentagon, this formulation never gained traction with either civilian officials or the general public. Yet the Long War deserves consideration, even though -- or perhaps because -- it has lost its luster with the passage of time.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.realclearworld.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2013/05/29/naming_america_nameless_war__105192-full.html

Ready, Fire, Aim: Why the U.S. should have launched an ICBM during the North Korean crisis.

Although I have stated (and still believe) that what has been most useful in managing this current north Korean provocation cycle is the fact that the ROK/US Alliance did not blink and that the north's strategy to split the Alliance has not been effective this time around.  I also think that the demonstration of Alliance strength and resolve has been critical to influencing the decision making of the Kim Family Regime.  That said, I do believe that it was a mistake to not conduct the ICBM test (or more precisely it was a mistake to announce it would be delayed).  Not conducting it does not influence north Korea in a positive way, the regime interprets it as weakness especially when there are reports assessing the reason is to prevent provoking the regime.  I think this is the only significant mistake we made in terms of dealing with north since since last December (and the announcement of the delay more so than the delay of the test itself).

V/R

Dave

Ready, Fire, Aim

Why the U.S. should have launched an ICBM during the North Korean crisis.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/28/ready_fire_aim_north_korea_missile

BY ANDREA BERGER | MAY 28, 2013

Even good intentions can backfire, as the Pentagon has just been reminded. In April, amid constant threats of nuclear war from Pyongyang, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel decided to postpone the regularly scheduled test-firing of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base. North Korea, it was feared, could misinterpret the launch either as a blunt show of resolve, which could have further escalated the crisis, or, less likely, as an actual attack which could have provoked god-knows-what. But, ironically, the decision to delay -- and to announce it very publicly -- may have created more problems for Washington than it solved.

At the time of Hagel's directive to stand down, North Korea was threatening to strike U.S. territories and allies with nuclear weapons, and it was taking its mobile-missile launchers for a joyride. During the crisis, the United States intentionally used military maneuvers as deterrence messages to Pyongyang. In response to these moves, such as B-52 overflights of the peninsula, the Kim regime's tantrum grew louder and louder. So it is understandable that the Pentagon would have been eager to avoid having one of its Minuteman launches perpetuate this escalatory spiral.

But, despite the Pentagon's insistence that the routine Minuteman test had nothing to do with North Korea and could therefore be delayed without consequence, the postponement created the opposite impression. Minuteman launches don't usually make a splash (at least not outside the South Pacific, where they come down), but international media attention to the test, which finally took place on May 22, has been unusually high. In South Korea, news of the test flight crept into reporting of North Korea's recent short-range missile launches and even of North Korean envoy Choe Yong-hae's visit to China. The Associated Press, Reuters, and RIA Novosti also covered the Minuteman launch in the context of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. All of this is exactly what the United States did not want.

The unintended link prodded Pyongyang to respond with more fiery words. Since the Pentagon's announcement, the North Korean propaganda machine has painted the planned launch as yet another demonstration of the U.S. imperialists' relentless adherence to their "hostile policy." It asserted that a U.S. Minuteman test will bring "dark clouds of a missile race to hang over North East Asia" and warned that "intercontinental missiles [are] by no means a monopoly of the U.S."

This may seem like typical North Korean posturing, but it's not. Between January 1996 and April 2013, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) mentioned the Minuteman only once -- in relation to details leaked from the 2002 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review. (When slamming U.S. "warmongering," North Korean propaganda usually references the specific weapons system being brandished. However, even searches for general mentions of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles yield only around a dozen results.) However, since the Pentagon's delay, there have been three specific mentions of the "Minuteman." All berate the decision to proceed with the launch.

In contrast, from January 1996 to the present, KCNA condemned the B-2 approximately 52 times and the B-52 approximately 126 times. References to U.S. ballistic missile submarines are slightly more difficult to count, as North Korean propaganda happily muddies the distinction between nuclear-powered and nuclear-weapons submarines. KCNA citations of U.S. "nuclear-powered submarines" number in the hundreds, and they often refer to ballistic missile subs. In addition, there are 17 references to Ohio-class submarines -- most of which carry ballistic missiles -- and to specific submarines within that class.

Apparently, North Korea has not been scared of all U.S. nuclear weapons equally. Platforms that have been directly linked to U.S. extended deterrence guarantees for Japan and South Korea, or that can be theater-deployed, seem to be the ones that keep the Korean People's Army up at night. Bombers and submarines can be incorporated into U.S.-South Korean military exercises in the region, which North Korea allegedly fears might be used as a veil for a sneak attack against them. After all, military exercises are the cover Kim Il-Sung used to start the Korean War. KCNAspelled out its concerns with the air and naval legs of the deterrent in March: "What should not be overlooked is that the U.S. picked up B-52 and nuclear-powered submarines out of these nuclear strike means... for a nuclear strike drill under the simulated conditions of actual war against the DPRK."

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/28/ready_fire_aim_north_korea_missile

(Yonhap Interview) In new book, Bechtol says Kim Jong-il still matters in N. Korea

If you have an interest in north Korea, read Dr. Bechtol's book.

V/R

Dave

2013/05/28 08:25 KST

(Yonhap Interview) In new book, Bechtol says Kim Jong-il still matters in N. Korea

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/n_interview/2013/05/28/13/4801000000AEN20130528000100315F.HTML

By Lee Chi-dong

WASHINGTON, May 27 (Yonhap) -- Bruce Bechtol, a prominent North Korea expert in the U.S., believes it's important to revisit the final years of the Kim Jong-il regime to fathom the strategy of the current leadership of Kim Jong-un.

   "I think that everything that's going on right now in North Korea was set up by Kim Jong-il before he died," in December 2011, he told Yonhap News Agency in a phone interview.

   Bechtol, an associate professor of political science at Angelo State University in Texas, said that's why he authored a 223-page book, titled, "The Last Days of Kim Jong-il: The North Korean threats in a changing era." It's his third book on North Korea.

   "My assessment is that Kim Jong-il made a number of policy moves during the last years of his rule that will have a profound effect on how North Korea evolves in coming years," Bechtol said in the book.

   A defiant foreign and military policy, a track record of proliferation and the development of a nuclear weaponization program point to the conclusion that Kim's plan was for North Korea to continue operating as an aggressive, authoritarian state, he added.

   Writing such a book focusing on the policy of the late North Korean leader is rather unusual, as the world is paying attention to almost every word and act of the new young leader Kim Jong-un.

   Under the junior Kim's leadership, the North has shown a mixed signal by talking about economic reforms, churning out military threats and hinting at an intent to talk with Washington.

   The North fired two long-range rockets in 2012 and carried out a nuclear test earlier this year.

   Most recently, however, North Korean envoy Choe Ryong-hae told Chinese leaders that Pyongyang was willing to return to the dialogue table, including the long-stalled six-way nuclear talks with South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.

   Bechtol, formerly a senior intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, doubts Pyongyang will avert its course.

   "Because the primary motivation behind North Korea's nuclear proliferation is money - not ideology - and because the regime's isolation is inclined to make incoming funds an ongoing issue, this highly dangerous proliferation policy is probably going to continue under the new regime," he said.

(Continued at the link below)

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/n_interview/2013/05/28/13/4801000000AEN20130528000100315

In Terror Shift, Obama Took a Long Path

Quote:

“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle,” Mr. Obama said, “or else it will define us.”

I concur and that is why I argue it is wrong to define the struggle in terms of terrorism alone.  Our enemies are conducting the most comprehensive, holistic, and sophisticated form of warfare that is at once subversive, psychological, and political in nature with terrorism as one visible violent element.  We need to understand that our enemies are conducting unconventional warfare and we must develop and execute a strategy that will counter unconventional warfare.

V/R

Dave

May 27, 2013

In Terror Shift, Obama Took a Long Path

By PETER BAKER

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/us/politics/in-terror-shift-obama-took-a-long-path.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON — The pivot in counterterrorism policy that President Obama announced last week was nearly two years in the making, but perhaps the most critical moment came last spring during a White House meeting as he talked about the future of the nation’s long-running terrorism war. Underlying the discussion was a simple fact: It was an election year. And Mr. Obama might lose.

For nearly four years, the president had waged a relentless war from the skies against Al Qaeda and its allies, and he trusted that he had found what he considered a reasonable balance even if his critics did not see it that way. But now, he told his aides, he wanted to institutionalize what in effect had been an ad hoc war, effectively shaping the parameters for years to come “whether he was re-elected or somebody else became president,” as one aide said.

Ultimately, he would decide to write a new playbook that would scale back the use of drones, target only those who really threatened the United States, eventually get the C.I.A.out of the targeted killing business and, more generally, begin moving the United States past the “perpetual war” it had waged since Sept. 11, 2001. Whether the policy shifts will actually accomplish that remains to be seen, given vague language and compromises forced by internal debate, but they represent an effort to set the rules even after he leaves office.

“We’ve got this technology, and we’re not going to be the only ones to use it,” said a senior White House official who, like others involved, declined to be identified talking about internal deliberations. “We have to set standards so it doesn’t get abused in the future.”

While part of the re-evaluation was aimed at the next president, it was also about Mr. Obama’s own legacy. What became an exercise lasting months, aides said, forced him to confront his deep conflicts as commander in chief: the Nobel Peace Prize winner with a “kill list,” the antiwar candidate turned war president, the avowed champion of transparency ordering operations over secret battlegrounds. He wanted to be known for healing the rift with the Muslim world, not raining down death from above.

Over the past year, aides said, Mr. Obama spent more time on the subject than on any other national security issue, including the civil war in Syria. The speech he would eventually deliver at the National Defense University became what one aide called “a window into the presidential mind” as Mr. Obama essentially thought out loud about the trade-offs he sees in confronting national security threats.

“Americans are deeply ambivalent about war,” the president said in his speech, and he seemed to be talking about himself as well. Mr. Obama said the seeming precision and remote nature of modern warfare can “lead a president and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism,” and it was not hard to imagine which president he had in mind.

“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle,” Mr. Obama said, “or else it will define us.”

In a sense, that had already happened to Mr. Obama. Somehow he had gone from the candidate who criticized what he saw as President George W. Bush’s excesses to the president who expanded the drone program his predecessor had left him. The killing he authorized in September 2011 of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen tied to terrorist attacks, brought home the disparity between how he had envisioned his presidency and what it had become. Suddenly, a liberal Democratic president was being criticized by his own political base for waging what some called an illegal war and asserting unchecked power.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/us/politics/in-terror-shift-obama-took-a-long-path.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0&pagewanted=print