[Short entry] NYT: Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms

Much ado about not so much again, in today's Times. The article roll-out contends that "change," in the form of "limits," is afoot. But in the second paragraph the other shoe drops (usually we have to wait for the last two or three paragraphs in Sanger and/or Baker articles for this denouement). There we find out that "outliers" like Iran and N. Korea -- the only countries who have declared that the best reason they have to seek a nuclear weapons program is because of their fear that the U.S. may attack* -- are excluded from the new "approach."

*Addition: See the report "Situation in the Korean Peninsula -- a North Korean perspective" available via the CSIS website. The first paragraph at the top of the second page of the report:

The DPRK made nuclear weapons and has strengthened its self-defensive war deterrent to maintain the sovereignty and the right to existence of the nation in the face of the increased aggressive threat by the U.S.

Earlier in this article, we find the motivation for using the term "aggressive threat:"

Second, tensions are the result of all kinds of military
exercises and arms reinforcement conducted by the U.S. on the
Korean peninsula. No sooner had the U.S. Administration
taken power than it conducted the unprecedented large-scale
joint military exercises “Key Resolve” and “Foal Eagle” in
and around south Korea in March and thus severely threatened
the security of the DPRK. These were nuclear war exercises
for the preemptive attack on the DPRK entirely in its scale as
well as its contents. This is well known through the fact that a
larger number of U.S. forces than in the past and attackable
military equipment including two aircraft carriers and nuclear
submarines were thrown in the joint military exercises and the
period of exercises was doubled.

Now, these are certainly exaggerated claims, in tenor if not in substance. But the fact remains: the U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula is taken as a threat. Is it necessary to carry out foreign policy in this manner?