WASHINGTON — It would have seemed surprising from any other president, but has become practically routine for President Obama in his final year in office: acknowledging the United States’ unsavory history in a country he was visiting.

This week, it was the C.I.A.-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.”

Mr. Obama had similarly confronted American 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 C.I.A. 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.

Mr. 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 American power has not always been a force for good.