President Obama’s most significant international victory to date, the daring kill of Osama bin Laden behind ally lines, marks the culmination of a deep change in the American way of war: Tactics and tools that our intellectuals and lawmakers shunned for decades, they now embrace as the future of warfare.

It’s not “mission accomplished” for the entire War on Terror — that struggle won’t end for decades. And, as this landmark strike demonstrates, future victories will depend much more on America’s own wits than on the goodwill of iffy allies.

In past wars, daring actions like the early morning Navy SEALS raid at Abbottabad, Pakistan, would’ve been conducted behind enemy lines. Now we operate behind the backs of “double dealing” allies, as Sen. Lindsey Graham described Pakistan yesterday morning.

Bin Laden was found at a compound built six years ago in the middle of a Pakistani city a mere two-hour drive from Islamabad. Pakistan’s army controls so much Abbottabad real estate, including a military academy a stone’s throw away from bin Laden’s conspicuous compound, that it all but owns the place.

With such “allies,” no wonder US forces conducted the long-planned raid without even informing Islamabad before it was all but over.

This is an important victory — and not “only” a symbolic one: Terrorists do prize symbols.

Sure, of late Osama wasn’t the master organizer, logistical wizard and top strategist of old. But he still served as inspirational leader and ideological glue, holding together the vast al Qaeda conglomerate he’d founded. He’ll be sorely missed by terrorists the world over. (See Hamas’ gushing obituary yesterday.)

And the fervors he had awakened won’t soon die. Bin Laden had spent his last years diversifying the enterprise and creating franchises across the Muslim world.

And often with help, or at least a blind eye, from our supposed friends. Pakistan gets billions in US anti-terror dollars, but it’s still playing footsie with the Afghan Taliban as well as anti-Indian terrorists. It’s not alone.

In exchange for our cash and arms, governments across the region “cooperate” with our War on Terror — indeed, whisper in our ears that they’re essential to the effort. Meanwhile, they conceal their alliance with America from their citizens — and assist and abet a few of their favored terrorists.

Worse: In al Qaeda’s new playgrounds — Yemen, Somalia, North Africa — our onetime allies are too busy suppressing popular revolts to bother fighting our enemies. Our war is no longer theirs — if it ever was.

We may hope that appetites for Islamist violence will wane in the new Mideast. As counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said yesterday, channeling the Arab Spring generation, “Al Qaeda, bin Laden — old news.” But can we afford to bet that this is also the sentiment of, say, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood?

America can’t go to war everywhere at once. Thankfully, however, victories in the War on Terror don’t always require old fashioned all-out war. Sometimes, determined covert operations are enough.

Of course, President Obama “grew up” politically in an intellectual world that since the 1970s has sought to restrict, if not eliminate, such shadowy efforts. As Executive Order 12333 of 1981, which codified the ban on CIA assassinations in foreign lands, put it: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”

We’ve come a long way. Sure, the Obama team still prizes such empty gestures as yesterday’s show of support from a body normally opposed to targeted assassinations, the UN Security Council. But early in his presidency, Obama discovered that the drone-kill and dark-of-night land operation are effective tools in defending America and involve none of the complications of capturing, incarcerating and trying terrorists. After at first dismissing them as a Bush thing, Obama realized they’re less costly forms of warfare that nevertheless win major battles against terrorists.

So the cloak-and-dagger warfare of yore is back, and Obama has regained the respect of America and its enemies.

Now, that’s what you might call leading from up front.

beavni@gmail.com