News Analysis

WASHINGTON >> It would have seemed surprising from any other president but has become practically routine for President Barack Obama in his final year in office: acknowledging the unsavory U.S. history in a country he was visiting.

This week, it was the CIA-led bombing and paramilitary campaign that devastated Laos during the Vietnam War. While the president stopped short of apologizing, he was, in his words, “acknowledging the suffering and sacrifices on all sides of that conflict.”

Obama had similarly confronted U.S. misdeeds this year in Cuba, Argentina, Vietnam and Japan, each time raising decades-old but still sensitive actions, framed in the language of reconciliation. In comparison, the last Democrat in the White House, President Bill Clinton, did so twice, admitting CIA support for Guatemala’s campaign of terror during that country’s civil war and, in a speech delegated to his secretary of state, the United States’ role in Iran’s 1953 coup.

(Clinton also signed Congress’s joint resolution apologizing for the U.S. role in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1993.)

Obama’s series of speeches reviewing historical trouble spots highlight several unusual facets of his worldview. They fit within his larger effort to reach out to former adversaries such as Cuba and Myanmar. They assert his belief in introspection and the need to overcome the past. And they highlight his perspective that U.S. power has not always been a force for good.

The White House is not eager to call attention to this practice. The administration is still sensitive after being accused by conservatives of “apologizing for America” in 2009, after Obama spoke critically of his Republican predecessor during visits to Egypt and France.

But in a recent briefing with reporters, Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, said, “A hallmark of the president’s tenure has been to face and acknowledge our history.”

That history has included “points of departure” from the United States’ “overwhelmingly positive” role in the world, Rice said.

“Where that’s the case,” she said, “we should acknowledge it.”

This practice, she added, “serves our interests and our relationships in our ability to move beyond the past in some of these places.”

Jennifer Lind, a government professor at Dartmouth College and the author of “Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics,” said these comments serve a specific function beyond cultivating good feelings.

In March, for example, Obama told a Cuban audience that the United States had previously tried to “exert control over Cuba” and treated it as “something to exploit.” By tacitly rejecting past U.S. behavior, Obama signaled that he would not repeat it. By opening himself up to criticism at home, he showed his willingness to make sacrifices for improved relations.

In May at Hiroshima, he cited the suffering caused by the atomic bombs. This communicated more than Obama’s concerns about nuclear weapons. It signaled that Washington understands Japan’s needs and will commit resources to meet them — in this case, a presidential visit that risked domestic blowback. This could help convince Tokyo that it can count on U.S. support when it comes to, say, naval confrontations with China.

Lind stressed that none of Obama’s comments constitute apology. But nor is the controversy around them without substance. Rather, these speeches touch on a long-standing domestic political divide over the nature of U.S. power.

“It gets back to this issue of national identity,” she said.

Some Americans, including Obama, emphasize democratic ideals of humility and self-critique. Others believe U.S. power is rooted in unity, celebration of positive deeds and shows of strength.

“Democracies have to have the courage to acknowledge when we don’t live up to the ideals that we stand for,” Obama said in March in Argentina, referring to a 1976 military coup that had received tacit U.S. approval. “The United States, when it reflects on what happened here, has to examine its own policies, as well, and its own past.”

Critics worry that Obama’s statements undermine the United States’ image as an intrinsic force for good in the world — an image that, to them, is central to U.S. identity and power.

Jeremy Shapiro, the research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said this idea, though widespread in the United States, is something of a fallacy. Only Americans believe that the United States’ power is inherently virtuous; elsewhere, people see this idea as not only false but dangerous.

“The disjuncture in the way that this is seen abroad and at home is one of the huge problems in U.S. foreign policy,” said Shapiro, who is American. “This is an image that Americans have of themselves but is simply not shared, even by their allies.”

This self-conception developed over the past century as a way to overcome the country’s physical isolation. As U.S. presidents sought domestic support to intervene in faraway crises, from World War I to the 2011 Libyan civil war, they have “always had to infuse foreign policy with a much stronger moral tint than do most countries,” Shapiro said.

After World War II and decades of Cold War-era interventions, that message — of U.S. power as inherently virtuous — became ingrained in U.S. identity. This constrained presidents from admitting past mistakes or compromising on current policies. Foreign countries came to associate the United States’ moralizing rhetoric with its greatest missteps, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and with a refusal to meet even its allies halfway.

Obama is breaking that pattern. When he hints that the United States has caused harm abroad and perhaps even made mistakes, it squares U.S. rhetoric with reality as the world perceives it. Supporters see this as sending a message to foreign states that they can trust Washington to hear their concerns and even compromise, encouraging allies and adversaries alike to invest political capital in the relationship.

There may be another, more personal factor driving Obama’s statements. From even before his presidency, he has emphasized the importance of confronting painful history, frequently returning to a favored William Faulkner quotation: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In addressing issues from race relations to foreign conflicts, he has repeatedly argued that present-day progress cannot be made without first overcoming past traumas.

“We have a responsibility to confront the past with honesty and transparency,” he said in his March speech in Buenos Aires, only barely rephrasing Faulkner. “What happened here in Argentina is not unique to Argentina, and it’s not confined to the past.”

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