Obama Doctrine Emerges in Oslo

The headlines on President Obama accepting the Nobel Peace Prize last week focused on the apparent irony: A man who had just ordered 30,000 more troops into war was snagging a trophy as the world's leading champion of peace. Obama tackled the paradox head-on in his Oslo speech. "Evil does exist in the world," he said. "War is sometimes necessary."

But the president's speech was about much more than the regrettable necessity of war. It also contained the fullest exposition so far of Obama's evolving approach to global diplomacy, including his attempts at "engagement" with hostile regimes in places such as Iran, North Korea and Sudan -- in other words, the emerging Obama doctrine.

"I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation," he said. "But I also know that . . . no repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door."