Joe Cirincione, a very sharp foreign policy analyst here in Washington, has picked up the scent of an Obama Doctrine taking shape in the POTUS's remarks and actions in Russia, viz.:
Obama shifts away from the neoconservative notion that the problem is not nuclear weapons but a few bad states that have nuclear weapons. Obama's threat trio is not countries that may someday have weapons, but the countries that have actually exploded them since the end of the cold war, irrespective of their political orientation: India, Pakistan, and North Korea. This group includes allies, friends and foes.
That is his point. It is the same point made by past presidents including Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan. Obama returns to this basic understanding that it the weapons themselves, not certain regimes, that must be eliminated. In order to prevent a nightmare world of "10 or 20 or 50 nuclear-armed nations" that may not "protect their arsenals and refrain from using them," he says, "America is committed to stopping nuclear proliferation, and ultimately seeking a world without nuclear weapons."
He underlined his core message: "This is not about singling out individual nations -- it's about the responsibilities of all nations."
In Prague, in Cairo, and now in Moscow, we are witnessing the emergence of an Obama Doctrine. A world view guided by universal compliance with democratic norms and the rule of law; policies driven by the convergence of shared interests and responsibilities; and a statecraft that does not shirk from the application of military force when necessary but promotes America's interests with respect for other nations and the strength of joint enterprise.
Yes, yes, yes. All nice and responsible. But it's so much less exciting than the "we call the shots and blow you up if we want to" doctrine! War was war in those days, and men were men, as my old Brit cinematic hero C. Aubrey Smith put it in The Four Feathers (have you taken my advice and rented that yet? Shame on you!).