In itself Mr Karzai's statement might seem like little more than a pious hope - given the fact that his forces lose so many to desertion (around one quarter each year) that they are struggling hard enough just to maintain their current strength.

But his words follow those of Gordon Brown on Tuesday in his Mansion House address, when he hinted that an international conference might be held in London which might begin to set a timetable for the transition to Afghan control.

In between the Brown and Karzai statements came one from Barack Obama, saying that he did not intend to make the US military presence an open ended commitment that would need to be solved by his successor.

Combine the recent words from these three players and what starts looking likely is a conference at which the US troop reinforcement could be presented as part of a wider package that includes charting a pathway to Afghan security control, sets out reforms to the government of Afghanistan, launches an anti-corruption drive, possibly the formation of a new more broadly based government, and coordinates all of this with pledges of development assistance.

This may well mean that early next year there could be a big international moment - a conference of Afghans, donors and troop contributors that would set the future course in a way that has not been done since the 2001 Bonn Conference.

Mr Brown said on Tuesday that he was offering London as the venue. Whether this will appeal to the other participants is a moot point, since it smacks of Downing Street trying to set the international agenda in the run up to an election.

So will the US troop announcement have to wait until this conference, possibly in January? The ominous possibility that President Obama might leave it five months between receiving the McChrystal Report and endorsing the reinforcements needed to make it work seemed a little more real yesterday when he said that he would be announcing his decision in the next 'several weeks'.

Equally, it may be that Mr Obama (as many are predicting) makes an announcement after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend near the end of this month, or indeed before it upon his return from his Far East tour.

However, if the precedents of this long and tortuous policy re-think are followed he may well want to know more about how the international conference is taking shape, even if he does not wait for the event itself, before announcing his reinforcements.

However, on Sunday the British Army rolled out its new blueprints for how UK forces might work to stabilise a foreign country and what steps the forces should take to do so.

Some see a preoccupation with doctrine or strategy as a profane thing - a game of power point and smooth talking while the ugly reality of war blasts its way across Helmand.

But in truth, the sacrifice of those fighting an insurgency is likely to be in vain unless commanders and politicians know what they are trying to achieve and how they might reach what the soldiers call their "end state".

The bitter fight against the Iraqi insurgency provides simply the most recent and vivid example of what happens when a coalition trying to stabilise a situation proceeds via a series of blunders to make things worse and worse.

The US military however showed an ability to learn from its early mistakes, set out a new doctrine for counter-insurgency (in 2006, co-authored by General David Petraeus and General James Mattis), and implement it, bringing about a dramatic turnaround in security.

For the British the experience was doubly painful, because for quite a time in Iraq, their approach to the Americans was frankly patronising.

But after a while, with militia power growing under the British in Basra, while the Americans began to turn around some of the toughest places in Iraq, the "we wrote the book on counter-insurgency" attitude started to wear a little thin.

So now they have re-written the book, or rather put out two weighty volumes designed to make use of those difficult recent experiences and chart the way ahead in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Major General Paul Newton, who oversaw the writing of the manual Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution, had to put forward theories about how to deal with chaos and conflict.

Since most authorities agree, these situations require an ad hoc approach, the very idea of a manual on how to do it is tricky.

"Clausewitz had it about right", said Maj Gen Newton on Monday, referring to one of history's great military theorists, "warfare is the realm of the uncertain".

He also conceded that, "there's no such thing as a pan-Whitehall doctrine" on stabilisation.

Some worry that this is still the problem - the UK government is still not good enough at putting together what the forces do with what other agencies such as the Department for International Development or World Bank do.

The manual reflects then the Ministry of Defence's view about how this tricky business of stabilisation is best done.

As to the specifics, best follow the link, but if I tell you that the manual's definition of "stabilisation" alone runs to 54 words, you'll understand that it's no simple matter.

It is about bringing about a more orderly society without actually nation building.

The other publication - Field Manual Volume 1 Part 10, Countering Insurgency - is full of the more practical stuff about running military operations in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

It is not on the MoD website yet, but you can read it here.

For those who seek it out, it actually provides essential context to why the forces fight the way they do in places like Helmand.

These two publications then represent a shedding of some past confusion or complacency about how the British military should attempt to leave ungoverned space a little more orderly by the time it departs.

How well these ideas will work, we will see in the unforgiving atmosphere of Afghanistan during the coming years.

But although he did lay out some new ideas, such as setting five benchmarks for improved performance by the Afghan government, the prime minister was limited to spinning the rhetorical rotors without actually taking flight.

The thing that has grounded him and other Nato leaders is the continued absence of a clear line from Washington.

How could Mr Brown have been more adamant about the current counter-insurgency strategy or the need for more troops to execute it, if he knows that at any time the White House might change its mind?

President Barack Obama received the McChrystal report calling for a troop surge on 30 August, and with each week that passes without a decision the political difficulties of his allies across Nato multiply.

When Britain announced in mid-October that it would, if certain conditions were met, send another 500 troops to Afghanistan, Whitehall felt it was on a promise from the Obama team.

As Newsnight reported at the time, one top insider suggested not just that Britain had been promised there would be a substantial US reinforcement, but that it would be General Stanley McChrystal's option of around 45,000 troops, and that its announcement was imminent.

So what does he say now? When asked recently, my contact characterised the continued lack of a clear statement of the way ahead from Mr Obama as, "disgraceful".

These views, given non-attributably, are simpler a stronger version of what one can see in the public domain.

Back in October Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Britain's senior serviceman, insisted that the Allies were still all committed to the counter-insurgency strategy and that he was, "confident" he knew which way the US would go on the troop increase question.

In the absence of an announcement, confidence in ministries from Ottawa to Berlin is faltering.

"What is the goal? What is the road? and in the name of what?" asked French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner earlier this week, adding menacingly, "Where are the Americans? It begins to be a problem".

Field Marshal Lord Inge, speaking in a defence debate in the House of Lords earlier on Friday said the US' delay sent, "a very bad message".

Talking to Nick Horne earlier this week, home after several years working as an official for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in Kabul, he reckoned the Obama administration had carried out seven different reviews of Afghan policy.

From their electoral victory one year ago to the present, Afghan policy has been in a state of flux.

The criticism is not simply code for "Why doesn't Obama just get on with the troop increase"?

There are plenty in European governments who would be delighted if the president announced that the US intends to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

What people want is a decision.

Now the White House is suggesting that there could be an announcement in a fortnight's time. So the present limbo is set to continue.

It is all the stranger because Mr Obama has not yet endorsed the strategy set out in the McChrystal report, something Nato defence ministers did at a meeting two weeks ago.

The US' own defence secretary, Robert Gates, has called publicly for the matter to be resolved swiftly.

Some Obama supporters have stressed the importance of measuring such vital life and death decisions carefully.

Gen McChrystal himself has been loyal enough to his commander in chief to echo them, remarking that it is better it be done properly than rapidly.

The shambolic outcome of the Afghan presidential elections has complicated matters politically, but it hardly de-railed some great policy juggernaut that had been careering along smoothly until then.

Looking though at the succession of reviews and the tangled logic in the one definitive presidential statement on "Af-Pak strategy" given back at the end of March, it is evident that the administration has had great difficulty deciding what it thinks about the Afghan conflict.

Instead we have witnessed what people in Whitehall describe with increasing frankness as a failure of leadership.

The numbers involved give some idea of how making Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs has become a major industry on Helmand Province.

During the first nine months of this year, British forces dealt with more than 4,000 IED incidents.

Thousands more bombs were either dealt with by other Nato forces, or blew up those planting them or locals and livestock.

As for those that remain undiscovered, it is anyone's guess how many there might be.

The next wave

Staff Sgt Schmid had defused 64 IEDs during the first five months of his tour.

Bomb disposal operators (that term covers officers and NCOs, men and women) are working flat out, more intensively even than at the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles.

Recently, Newsnight filmed with the next wave of bomb disposal people bound for Afghanistan.

They were training at the Felix Centre at Kineton in Warwickshire.

Unusual people

Talking to instructors who had returned recently from Afghanistan, such as Staff Sergeant Stu Dixon who won the George Medal there, it is the rudimentary nature of so many of the Afghan devices that makes them so difficult to deal with.

Sometimes the pressure pads or trip devices made with bare bits of wire, and old lumps of wood will result in the slightest movement making an electrical contact, leading to the explosion.

Dealing with this threat on an almost daily basis requires a very unusual type of person as we discovered during our filming.

The leading contenders in Afghanistan's presidential election certainly have shown cunning.

Unfortunately their skills have helped their country little and brought the elections into disrepute.

President Hamid Karzai has been re-elected after his leading challenger, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out.

Mr Karzai thereby did what the international community asked for - conceding the need for a second round of voting after claims of widespread vote rigging in the first - without having actually to fight it.

Dr Abdullah meanwhile has managed to tarnish his rival's victory by making a hue and cry about voting fraud in the first place.

When sufficient Karzai votes were disallowed to make a second round necessary, and the president had conceded that, Dr Abdullah withdrew.

Abdullah 'tarnished too'

The challenger himself had 300,000 votes disallowed so he was hardly blameless in first round rigging.

What is more few experts think that he would have won, even if the second round had been staged to the best international standards.

So rather than enhancing the sitting president's credibility by losing against him, Dr Abdullah has withdrawn, claiming fair elections were impossible.

Both men have displayed the Afghans' remarkable talent for nihilism.

Many foreign models have been trashed in Afghanistan, but their own governance only ever produced one of the world's poorest, and in recent decades, most war torn countries.

Strategic options

So where now? Mr Karzai has been congratulated on his re-election and the international community must now get along with him.

There will be some ideas about making further aid conditional on his rooting out corruption and getting the government to function better, but it will be very hard to compel him to do so.

Threats of withdrawing foreign forces are not credible - not yet anyway. In fact the logic of the strategic options now being considered suggests committing more troops and aid.

Since the president knows this, he will make the right sort of noises towards the Western powers, and maybe accept a national unity government or some constitutional reform.

But will he really follow through?

The Americans will have to work Mr Karzai hard, but carefully, during the coming weeks in order to get the best looking result they can.

But even if his government is no more than the vehicle for raising much larger security forces in order to make Nato's withdrawal from combat possible, Mr Karzai knows he is indispensible once more.

BRUSSELS: The prospect of the Lisbon Treaty coming into force has touched off a flurry of back room negotiations here.
None of it is going to boost the image of the European Union as a democratic, accountable, international body.

Next week's probable ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by the Czech Republic (the last it needs to come into force) has produced a classic Brussels dog fight over who should get the plum jobs of president and high representative for foreign and defence policy.

The treaty is meant to streamline the larger union and gets its process working better, but the fact that so many countries have felt unable to put their endorsement of the treaty to a popular vote hardly boosts the sense that Europeans are longing for it.

In its previous incarnation, the constitution, it was demolished by referendum "No" votes in France and the Netherlands.

So now many of the features of the constitution, such as those two new top jobs, have come in via the treaty, the diplomats are engaged in much febrile discussion on the margins of this summit.

Ripples from the sidelines

The people running this occasion would like it to concentrate on the issues of climate change and saving European jobs.

But now that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is being mooted by some for the president's job, and Foreign Secretary David Miliband for that of high representative, there is only one story as far as the British press is concerned.

Certainly many journalists from other countries would rather cover the business of this summit straight, but the ripples emerging from meetings on the sidelines of the European socialists and centre right groups - in which each bloc has already started the horse trading needed to come up with a unified candidate - means that almost everyone here is now showing interest in this issue.

Some suggest that the centre-right bloc, as the dominant one in European politics at the moment, will expect to call the shots on the president's appointment and the socialists, as their consolation prize, on the high representative.

British hopes

This is clearly better news for Mr Miliband than Mr Blair, for one thing is clear, Britain cannot expect to get both plumb jobs.

So Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has enthusiastically backed Mr Blair's candidacy, did not look too pleased about it this afternoon when rumours leaked out about the apparent popularity of Mr Miliband in the socialists' group.

Mr Brown denied that his foreign secretary had been put on any kind of shortlist for the high representative's job.

Even Mr Miliband has denied he is a candidate. If he were to show enthusiasm for it, Mr Blair could easily be undermined in his quest for the bigger job.

All of this though simply strengthens the impression that the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty will not usher in some great change in the way the Union does business.

Rather the back room dealing that has typified the Brussels process is continuing in grand style and that, incidentally, may well finish off Mr Blair's chances of gaining the president's post.

The idea is not a new one. Under the proposed agreement, Iran would send most of its enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be boosted to a higher level and made into fuel rods. The rods would then be returned to Iran unsuitable for use in a weapons programme.

Not only would such a deal sooth foreign concerns about what was happening to Iran's uranium but it would also be a good commercial project for Russia. The returns appear so attractive that France has been insisting that it too be part of the re-processing scheme.

The International Atomic Energy Authority is insisting that a deal be done by Friday. If it happens, tensions could be considerable reduced but there will still be some important outstanding issues.

IAEA inspectors are due to travel on Sunday to the facility near Qom which the US/UK and France alleged last month is a secret nuclear enrichment facility that has been hidden from international supervision. They are hoping to find out whether the Qom plant is associated with other undeclared facilities. These inquiries could produce a new confrontation with the Iranian authorities.

It is also clear that Iran wishes to retain its ability to enrich uranium on home turf and will not put all of its fissile material onto the planned reprocessing scheme. So there could still be scope for argument about whether some of it was being diverted into a weapons programme.

If however the Iranians agree to reprocessing in Russia and close IAEA supervision of their facilities then we might be witnessing a diplomatic breakthrough. The Obama administration will then hail it as a victory for positive diplomatic engagement.

The commission, which is funded by the international community, has disallowed hundreds of thousands of Mr Karzai's votes, under suspicion of fraud.

Yesterday the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said that the US would not move ahead with US troop reinforcements unless Mr Karzai resolved the issue - either by accepting there must be a further round of voting with the leading challenger, Dr Abdullah, or sharing power with him.

The issue has turned into a highly unusual public diplomatic battle of wills.

Last Thursday Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador in Washington, appeared to indicate publicly that Mr Karzai had accepted the need for a second round.

This brought comments from White House sources that if he did so, the embattled Afghan leader would "wipe clean" the slate after the disputed first round of elections.

The way would then be clear for the US to increase its military and civilian commitment in Afghanistan.

The White House knows that Mr Obama's Democratic party base regard Mr Karzai as a figure tainted by the allegations of electoral fraud.

This is why it is so important for the Afghan leader to accept either another round of voting, or power sharing, before the troop announcement is made.

Washington had already assured the British government that it intended to increase its troop strength in Afghanistan substantially.

Newsnight's revelation of this last Wednesday drew repeated denials from Mr Obama's spokesman.

After Mr Jawad's comments it is apparent that the BBC's revelation threatened to ease the pressure on Mr Karzai, which was the last thing the White House wanted at that moment.

So where does this leave us now? There is a Plan A in which the apparent understandings communicated to people in the British government and the Afghan ambassador in Washington get back on track:

Mr Karzai agrees to share power with his rival, Dr Abdullah, or fight him again at the polls, paving the way for the US to announce it will boost its commitment to the country.

But if Mr Karzai refuses, a Plan B will be needed.

There was a further White House meeting on the subject on Wednesday, but nothing has yet been announced officially in Washington.

Meanwhile Britain has said it will send 500 more troops, and in the run up to this announcement, Whitehall has received reassurances from the US president that the UK will not be left out on a limb.

According to some of those in the know, the US reinforcement could be as large as 45,000. This would amount to a dramatic endorsement of the counter-insurgency strategy proposed by General Stanley McChrystal and a reversal for Vice-President Joe Biden who questioned the value of sending more men and women.

Although Gen McChrystal has been widely reported as asking for 30-40,000 more troops, insiders say he actually looked at a variety of options that ranged from no boost (which would have involved giving up certain areas in order to concentrate existing numbers) to a thumping 60,000 more.

Announcing Britain's increase today the country's senior serving officer, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup hinted that although he did not want to pre-empt the US Joint Chiefs, "I'm pretty confident how it's going to come out".

He revealed that although the Kabul government had honoured a promise to send more Afghan troops to Helmand after this summer's Panther's Claw offensive, they had actually dispatched disappointingly under strength units. The most serious doubts in Washington and London now centre on the Afghans' ability to deliver. They are waiting for a clear result to emerge from August's presidential poll and for President Karzai, assuming he is confirmed in power, to put in place an effective anti-corruption programme.

It's also one that makes a great many people uncomfortable.

In terms of precedent, or the lack of it, there is a recent one and a historical one, but neither quite matches these circumstances.

Admiral Sir Alan West, formerly head of the Royal Navy, was appointed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2007 as security minister and elevated to the House of Lords.

Lord West though followed the "decent interval" principle (one year and four months in his case) between leaving the forces and taking up his ministerial post.

The same rule is usually applied to service chiefs seeking lucrative jobs with defence contractors.

It is also true that Lord West's ministerial job is located outside the Ministry of Defence, so does not concern the narrow interests of his former service.

Going further back in time, one has to think back all the way to 1914 and Lord Kitchener's appointment as secretary of war.

He was a field marshal with a distinguished record, who was co-opted into the war cabinet as the nation entered a total war.

He was the architect of the mass mobilisation of three million men (hence the iconic recruiting poster) which arguably allowed Britain to win World War I.

Kitchener achieved great things, although his appointment was resented by a great many politicians.

Loss of a generation

As for his former colleagues, when Gen Sir William Robertson took over as head of the Army one year into the war, he did so only on condition that he, rather than Kitchener would give strategic advice to the Cabinet.

He was also regarded by many as the man who sent an entire generation to its doom - and my late grandfather, a survivor of the Somme, certainly saw Kitchener in those terms.

Serious as the situation in Helmand is though, it's hardly comparable to that moment in 1914 when the lights were going out all over Europe.

During World War I almost one quarter of all the men in Britain ended up serving in the Army - a degree of national mobilisation never equalled before or since (not even in World War II).

In those circumstances, drawing Field Marshal Kitchener into the cabinet was an understandable step - and in accepting his job he made clear he would not play the role of a party politician.

Division of power

Go further back into history and the examples of Wellington and Marlborough can be given, but the unwritten constitutional rules about separating powers were different then.

At one point in the Napoleonic wars there were more than 70 serving Army officers in the House of Commons, for example.

More importantly, despite their extraordinary success on the battlefield, Marlborough and Wellington were divisive political figures who are still viewed, centuries later, through the prism of party prejudice.

Even today the Tory will argue that Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo, whereas modern day Whigs still insist it was the Prussians who saved the day.

This then is the underlying lesson about the way power is divided in Britain.

Once a general enters the political arena, however successful he is, his achievements or reputation become the subject of a factional dispute.

Problems with prejudice

The possibility of Gen Dannatt as Lord Dannatt, with a junior defence ministerial portfolio entering the corridors of the MoD fills some with concern.

Will it prejudice the position of his successor, General Sir David Richards? Or of the Chief of Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup?

These are the men who are meant to provide ministers with military advice. They are also meant to be shaping the forthcoming defence review. For this reason, although there were reports earlier in the day that Gen Dannatt would join the ministerial team, later on, the more nebulous term "adviser" was being used.

There are those who welcome Gen Dannatt's step towards a job with the Tories - be it ministerial or something less formal - and I have been following their arguments on the blogosphere: the general is a man of integrity, and wisdom; he knows the forces inside out, unlike most ministers.

All of this is true, and any unprejudiced observer would admit it.

The problem is that once you accept a party political role, so many observers will be prejudiced.

In the meantime, while the basic direction of the war is debated in Washington, the man sent to take command of the war, General Stanley McChrystal, will have to "pound sand" as they say in the military.

Appearing at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies last week, the general parried questions aimed at probing any discomfort he might be feeling at his position.

For having appointed Gen McChrystal to sort out the US and Nato approach to the war, the president is now apparently reluctant to endorse his recommendations.

Better the right decision than a quick one, said the general at the IISS.

While the battle to define the new approach continues, it would be a foolish military commander indeed who showed any disrespect to his commander in chief.

So long as the strategic direction coming from the White House is clear, coherent, and well informed then everything will pan out.

The problem is that many people involved in trying to fight the war do not believe there is leadership of that kind.

Reminiscent of Bush administration

There has been a flurry of leaks and newspaper stories about divisions in the administration.

To an extent this is part of the normal rough and tumble. But there is something reminiscent of the dysfunctional early Bush administration decision making about Iraq in all this chewing over of the Afghan issue.

Washington's power politics soon rushes to fill the vacuum created by presidential indecision.

As if in a negative image of the first Bush term, where there was a vice-president (Cheney) who pushed hard for the military option, now there is one (Biden) who seeks to reduce the US' exposure.

Vice-President Joe Biden's judgement is suspect to many in the US military because in June 2007 he publicly declared the Iraq troop surge to have failed just as it was starting to deliver important results.

Impossible position?

Afghan strategy was meant to have been cast more than six months ago when the president issued his Af-Pak plan.

But it showed obvious signs of the tension between those who believe in applying the military's preferred approach - a counter insurgency campaign to secure the people - and those like Mr Biden who think the US can protect its security interests by mounting strikes against al-Qaeda bases.

When he took up his command in June, Gen McChrystal was told he needed to deliver a tangible improvement in security within 12-18 months.

Many colleagues thought this was already an impossibly difficult target in a country like Afghanistan, but how much more so when the strategy apparently set in March has been in a state of flux?

Some in Washington and Whitehall believe Gen McChrystal has been placed in an impossible position.

Could he resign if the president brushes aside his recommendations? There are those certainly who think that would put him in an impossible position.

There are a couple of pointers about how serious the military's concerns about the direction of the war have become.

In the first place, the leaking of Gen McChrystal's report a couple of weeks ago to the Washington Post showed how discontented people at the Pentagon might make life even more difficult for the administration.

'Lack of presidential interest'

Another indicator of the military's disquiet came in an interview last month with Gen McChrystal on CBS.

He revealed that during his first two-and-a-half months in the job as commander of the Afghanistan war (and prior to their consultations last week), he had only spoken to Mr Obama once.

Even allowing for the fearsome challenges of the economy or his healthcare reforms, and even allowing for the fact that his Defence Secretary Robert Gates likes to manage things himself, it seems remarkable that the president should show so little interest.

If Mr Obama is unsure that the US has chosen the right strategy, surely you'd expect more contact with the field commander rather than less?

Millions of Americans turned to Mr Obama because they blamed the Bush administration for rushing to war.

Careful deliberation is surely a good thing in these life and death matters.

But while the argument about the means that should be applied to achieve the president's goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a dynamic and continuing thing, it seems remarkable that in all the time from his election through transition to the enunciation of his Af-Pak strategy in March and the current series of war cabinet meetings, that Mr Obama still seems unsure as to what the aim should be - building up the Afghan state or simply neutralising al-Qaeda?

The Prime Minister has suggested that Britain might reduce its nuclear forces "as part of an agreement by non nuclear states to renounce them". The idea is that the Trident submarine fleet might be reduced from four to three boats.

This new offer comes in the context of UN talks on nuclear non-proliferation. Emerging atomic powers have long complained that those already in the club have never taken seriously their commitment under the Non Proliferation Treaty to work for the abolition of their own arsenals.

So in essence, the British offer, conditional upon others moving at the same time, is to take a step in the direction of cutting its submarine force, in the hope of playing its role in improving global karma. Just as those who believe in the UK having nuclear weapons have often talked about 'sharing the burden' of ownership with the US, so the idea of joining them in disarming seems sensible enough.

How likely is it that North Korea or Iran are really going to be influenced by the UK example? It is also important to remember that a number of the emerging nuclear powers that might worry this country are outside the non-proliferation regime anyway.

Even so, the idea of renewing the treaty and of the US and Russia negotiating further cuts in their arsenal is not pie in the sky. But the UK offer is a conditional one. It remains hypothetical for the moment.

At home, Mr Brown's offer was welcomed by the Conservatives. They've pointed out that a 2006 government paper on replacing Trident had already suggested that the idea of a three boat fleet rather than a four boat one was being actively investigated.

Many in the UK will see the New York offer in terms of domestic political and budgetary struggles. Everybody knows there will be pressure to cut Trident in the Defence Review which is expected to be underway by the middle of next year.

This will not be a choice between having the bomb or not - as some backers of Trident such as the former defence secretary, John Hutton, appear to suggest. It will be a choice between different nuclear systems, and one about the degree of strategic risk the UK is willing to accept if it moves away from a four boat Trident replacement. All of these options, from cutting one submarine to opting for a different nuclear system such as cruise missiles launched from hunter-killer submarines, will be cheaper than the current one.

Will the public spending climate be so dire by next year that Britain will cut back its nuclear forces even if there is no agreement on renewing the Non Proliferation Treaty? I have my suspicions - but for the moment I'm not going to answer a hypothetical question.

In between these polarised views, there have been steps by the new administration that can be cited by either side in the debate. Establishing diplomatic ties with Syria, reaching out to Iran, seeking deep cuts in nuclear weapons with Russia, conciliating China, or insisting that Israel adhere to its promise under the international road map to stop building settlements in the occupied territories.

So far both sides in this argument tend to set these decisions in the context of the president's personality or political philosophy. The real weakness though in American foreign policy now derives from economics.

Whether the US had elected Obama or McCain some large scale belt tightening was inevitable in the wake of the financial crisis. The Pentagon in particular was bound to feel the pinch.

President Obama kept Robert Gates, the Bush administration's defence chief, in place and John McCain probably would have done too. The need to trim hundreds of billions out of defence spending is the most obvious symptom of America's weakness.

The US relationship with Russia has been soothed by the need to cut strategic nuclear programmes and missile defence ones - both horribly expensive. China too can read the writing on the wall, that the US no longer feels it can afford strategic competition.

As the US tries to stimulate its own economy and bail out Wall Street, the growing mountain of national debt cuts the ground from aid programmes - soft power as well as hard. The White House has characterised its policy as multi-lateralist but so far multi-polar might be a better word.

Why multi-polar? Because in these difficult economic times western democracies are very reluctant to accept American leadership, for example on Afghanistan. The scope for multi-lateralism is strictly limited.

On the other hand, big powers such as China and Russia with their UN Security Council veto, are being conciliated. As the G20 becomes more important in international economic affairs, countries like India and Brazil are also gaining in status.

In the multi-polar world, America must concede influence in order to reach an international consensus on anything from Iran, to climate change or global finance. It looks less like a multi-lateral Woodstock and more like the 19th Century world of ruthless realpolitik.

So Poland or the Czech republic - both of which had agreed to accept US missile interceptors until the programme was shelved last week - got trampled as Washington changed course to save money and conciliate Moscow. Traditional US allies like South Korea or Taiwan can expect short shrift too, as the US cedes growing regional influence to China.

The only real alternative to this multi-polar, diminished US was the path of diplomatic isolation and maintaining huge debt-funded military programmes - the Bush alternative in other words.

As last year's election emphatically showed, the American public had lost its appetite for that option. So it's easy to portray the new administration as weak, but really it simply has to accept the waning power of the US.

The United States and United Nations, among others, are pushing for a rigorous investigation of hundreds of reported irregularities.

Does the president owe the re-election to hundreds of thousands of questionable votes?

Some complaints point to districts where almost nobody voted for his rivals, others to ballot boxes being stuffed with votes without any voters having gone to the trouble of visiting the polling station.

Inevitably there are quite a few observers who believe the US and others will make a fuss because some of the rigging has been brazen, and they feel their public demands such protests, but that ultimately they will baulk at forcing Mr Karzai from power.

The vote will thus have gone ahead at great cost in lives and money but reassured nobody that the president has an authoritative new mandate.

It might be worth asking who, on the international side in particular, thought pressing ahead with this election was a good idea?

Back in February I wrote that the question of whether or not to hold it was an "elephant in the room" for the new Obama team.

Apparently key civilians like Richard Holbrooke and his British counterpart Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles favoured the poll, but some of the military figures like General David Petraeus did not.

Clearly there would have been a political cost to abandoning the exercise - the Taliban would doubtless have crowed that the president was afraid to hold it.

If however the authorities had cited the security situation for a postponement of the election, and convened a Loya Jirga - a grand assembly of local leaders of the type that originally confirmed the president in power - to confirm him in office for two years then it might well have been better for all concerned.

Instead we face months of investigation of the irregularities, with the choice of deposing Mr Karzai or leaving him in power as a damaged president at the end of it.

As the Army fights it out for diminishing resources in the Defence Review widely expected to start in the next year, it will now be headed by a man who believes that some of the major weapons or capabilities needed for inter-state warfare may have to be sacrificed in the interests of gaining success in southern Afghanistan.

It is not as if his predecessor, General Sir Richard Dannatt was indifferent to success in the field nor did he want to spend money on a load of white elephant weapons.

But Gen Richards' time spent commanding Nato troops in Afghanistan has given him intimate knowledge of the country, excellent contacts with its leaders, and a passionate sense that the mission cannot be allowed to fail.

In some of his statements, Gen Dannatt appeared to imply that foreign interventions in Muslim countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, could not produce success.

Gen Richards on the other hand has been frank with his colleagues that he thinks Britain was defeated in southern Iraq due to half measures and that the same cannot be allowed to happen in Afghanistan.

The debate within the British Army about how this might be done has been sharpened by the sense that US forces achieved a dramatic security turn around in much of Iraq and are now committing greater resources to Afghanistan.

An influx of US marines into Helmand this summer, taking over large parts of the province, shows that the US colossus is watching even more closely and that failure would be highly damaging to the British army's wider reputation.

Gen Richards though cannot single-handedly garner the resources needed to defeat the Taliban.

The Whitehall battle over how many troops to send to Afghanistan this summer - one where the wider MoD endorsed the view that a substantial reinforcement was needed only to have Downing Street reject its advice - was instructive.

The formal powers of the CGS are quite limited, with little influence on the actual conduct of operations.

It was frustration with the constitutionally defined limits of the job that led Gen Dannatt into his occasional outbursts of public advocacy.

The great challenge of his tenure as CGS was getting the Army the funds to make sure it was not broken by the simultaneous strain of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now that Iraq is over, the allowances, pay and some equipment issues have been addressed, the future challenge will be about insuring operational success while protecting the Army's long-term position in the Defence Review.

Gen Dannatt gained a reputation as a plain speaking soldiers' general.

His successor is more likely to use Whitehall black arts - cultivating opinion formers, using his international contacts, and undermining the case of the other two services in the forthcoming Defence Review.