Casualties are rarely an accurate measure of success in military operations.

The Duke of Wellington used to call it the "butcher's bill", recognising that the only thing worse than paying the price of victory was paying it for failure.

In the current British-led offensive in Helmand - Operation Panther's Claw - there are worrying signs that the loss of life in recent days may not produce the lasting success most people in Britain would hope for.

These indicators have little to do with the willingness of the British (and Danish) troops to suffer and bleed in carrying out their orders.

They are to do with concerns that the hard won gains of these house to house fights, in terms of clearing out pockets of Taliban resistance, will not be sustainable.

This is why Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been on the phone to President Hamid Karzai, urging him to send more Afghan security forces to the troubled province.

The US model of "clear, hold and build" envisages tough fighting.

I was an eyewitness to this in the bitterly contested Baghdad suburb on Doura in April 2007.

The platoon I was embedded with lost three of its 36 soldiers, and had a further 10 wounded. The figures for the battalion to which they belonged were 18 killed and 60 wounded.

The unit which followed them lost nobody - by then the success of the new US tactics and surge had made the neighbourhood dramatically less dangerous.

But the Iraqis were ready to step in rapidly behind the Americans in newly established Joint Security Stations. Now they run Doura and the US troops no longer patrol.

General David Petraeus, architect of those tactics, and now overall commander of US troops in the wider Middle East, predicted that this summer's fighting in Afghanistan would bring heavier casualties to Nato and indeed to local civilians.

But, like commanders through history, he expects the hard fighting to produce results.

The problem with Operation Panther's Claw is this. There are 3,500 British and 500 or so Danish troops involved. There are about 250 members of the Afghan National Army (ANA).

Another two companies of ANA soldiers are supposed to arrive in August and a few hundred police too.

Even being charitable, it is unlikely that the Afghan security forces will top 1,000 in an area where the population is believed to be between eighty thousand to one hundred thousand.

There will not be enough Afghan troops to sustain security, unless of course, the Taliban give up the game entirely in the area.

Nato's options in this will be - to pressure the Afghan government into sending more, to take much of the strain locally with Nato troops, or to accept that some of the gains of recent fighting will be lost.

We are already witnessing the pressure on Mr Karzai to send more.

But if foreign troops end up sustaining a lasting presence in the area they will be "fixed", and unable to operate elsewhere.

Senior British officers are very reluctant to accept that they will clear areas they cannot hold in the long term, and even suggest that Operation Panther's Claw will stop if the Afghans do not provide sufficient forces to safeguard the gains.

But in truth the British brigade commander leading this operation will probably have to decide how far to push his advance long before he really knows how many Afghan forces will eventually turn up.

Even when they come, the police in particular are likely to be of dubious quality.

Then add another grim cloud on the horizon - that the British Army's local partners in two summers of heavy fighting in the province, the ANA 3rd Brigade of the 205th Corps, will soon come to the end of a three year enlistment period.

A large proportion of them are expected to take their opportunity to quit the grimmest part of the country.

The answer to these problems lies in growing larger, more professional, Afghan forces.

This is an explicit part of the new US strategy, which has set itself the ambitious total of more than doubling the ANA's size in less than two years.

But pressing problems, like securing this August's Afghan elections, keep intervening before the ANA is really ready.

Nato - and even the Americans with mid-term elections looming in November 2010 - does not feel it has time on its side.

On an admin note, I'm sorry to have broken off the blog after embarking on my leave. This one will probably be my solitary entry before my return to Newsnight duties in late August. In the meantime I'll be doing the usual family summer holiday thing, but also continuing with some unpaid leave, which I am devoting to a research project.

A few years ago, I was told about extraordinary US contingency plans to recover Pakistan's nuclear weapons, in the event of a collapse of law and order or an extremist coup in that country.

My informant gave me considerable detail. A super-secret agreement had been put in place early this decade following confrontations between India and Pakistan, two nuclear armed nations, over the disputed Kashmir region.

In order to stabilise an otherwise potentially highly volatile situation, Pakistan would tell the US where its nuclear weapons were.

India had been promised, that in the event of some Pakistani national cataclysm, the Americans would move in to remove the nuclear weapons.

The "loose nukes" nightmare would thus be avoided, and India would not be tempted into a first strike on Pakistan's atomic arsenal.

Sometimes stories, even from people who have held senior positions in Western governments, are a little too good to be true.

This one seemed to smack of Tom Clancy. Nobody would ever confirm it, and indeed some of those I checked it out with were openly sceptical. So I never ran the story.

Perhaps, after all, my original informant had been trying to plant it.

Now that the Obama administration is openly voicing its concern about the threat to Pakistan's nuclear weapons from rising militancy in that country, some aspects of that original tip off have come back into sharp focus.

In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a US senate committee, that the US spent a lot of time worrying about Iran getting nuclear weapons, but that Pakistan already had them, and that, "they've adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities".

In this phrase, "adopted a policy" I detected a possible inference that Pakistan had moved away from an earlier procedure of keeping their bombs in a small number of locations.

My further inquiries suggested this inference was deliberate.

So here at last was a measure of confirmation for something I had heard years earlier.

As to what exactly Pakistan had told the US in the time of president (and former army chief) Pervez Musharraf, we are once again in hazier territory.

We do know however that Mr Musharraf knew far more about the country's nuclear complex than any civilian leader has ever been allowed to learn.

We also know that in the first years after 9/11, there was intimate strategic co-operation with the US.

Of course any suggestion that the US might, in the past, have had plans to sweep up these weapons is politically sensitive in Pakistan.

The country revels in the status that its arsenal has given it. Any suggestion that there were plans to "secure" the bombs, even in a state of anarchy, would strike many Pakistanis as a US plot to emasculate an Islamic nuclear power.

Some feel the nuclear danger is being exaggerated in Washington in order to build support for the Obama administration's Af-Pak policy.

There may be something in this, given that the chance of Taliban storming some nuclear weapon storage point is remote.

But the real danger at present lies in subversion.

Pakistan's nuclear establishment produced the unhappy example of AQ Khan, who sold nuclear weapons technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

He is said to have acted from a combination of ideological and financial motives.

The chance currently is less of a complete collapse of order, the kind of circumstance under which possible secret plans of yesteryear would have come into play, but of one or more individuals working inside the system providing Islamic militants with nuclear materials or, sum of all nightmares, an entire atomic weapon.

Yes, sometimes even a journalistic cliche is justified.

He is a supreme practitioner of the "politics of the personal" - just read his books - and on Thursday we saw this approach introduced to the Middle East.

Inevitably the speech will be scrutinised for the detail of his language - referring to the Israeli "occupation" of Palestinian territory or America's "unbreakable" bond with that Jewish state.

The spinning about such themes is already in full swing, but it misses the wider point.

The real significance of this address was in telling the Arab and Muslim worlds that a quite different sort of person now occupies the White House.

The US president wants everybody to understand that he sees comparisons between the Palestinian struggle and the black civil rights movement in the US or that he is appreciative of the Islamic contribution to modern civilisation.

All of this was couched in personal, almost intimate, terms. There were allusions to the education of daughters, his father's journey as an immigrant from the African continent and to his own childhood experience of hearing the prayer call in Indonesia.

Repeated quotations from the Koran drew enthusiastic applause from his Egyptian audience.

His careful forays into sensitive Egyptian topics such as the rights of Coptic Christians or the universality of human rights were likewise gleefully received.

In terms of the broader politics, my own view is that there were two salient novelties in this speech. The descriptions of the "daily humiliations, large and small", of Palestinians and of "Palestine's" "right to exist", mark an important departure for an occupant of the White House.

This latter phrase, deliberately exploiting the power of words normally associated with Israel has great rhetorical, and therefore political power.

The emphasis on the US and Muslim countries working together on the basis of what binds them might seem like and example "diplomatic phrase making 101", but it also marked a strong difference from President George W Bush's approach.

Mr Obama has effectively today rolled out the negative philosophical image to his predecessor's War on Terror.

The Bush approach, and I witnessed this at the UN General Assembly in New York last September, was to give the bulk of a speech to what divided America from the Muslim world - how best fight terrorism.

Today Mr Obama did not use the T word at all, instead referring to "violent extremism".

Rather than threatening reprisal against state sponsors of that violence he gave the ultimate soft power presentation.

This ranged from promising US backing for female education projects to excoriation of Arab leaders who talked a good game about democracy when seeking power but soon abandoned it in office.

I can already guess the lines of attack that will be used against the speech. We got a flavour in an Osama bin Laden audio tape released on Wednesday.

But just as the president couched his arguments in terms of the personal, so we can expect those who oppose him or who are cynical about his motives to adopt the same tactic.

They will say that Mr Obama may be a decent man but he is a "prisoner of the Zionists" or a "puppet of the oil companies".

The Arab world, after all abounds with tales of good emirs surrounded by evil viziers.

However the real challenge for America's opponents - particularly those who play the traditional regional game of basing their attitude on what the president can do to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem - will be to explain away the fact that a man of the convictions expressed by Mr Obama today now resides in the White House.

Back in 1990, when trying to pressure Israel into negotiations, US Secretary of State James Baker famously announced the White House phone number and told them to call when they were interested in talking about peace.

Today Mr Obama has effectively told the Arabs and wider Muslim world, "I'm listening".

Imre Hegedus wants more rain, and he worries about the health of his herd of 1,700 dairy cattle, but the thing that really drives him to distraction is the buying power of the big supermarkets.

Names familiar from British high streets dot the landscape between Budapest and this village about 50 miles (80km) to the south west.

Complaints against the likes of Tesco, Spar or Lidl are widely heard in Hungary these days, where the power of the "multi-nationals" and its perceived effects on traditional rural life, are a hot election issue.

Mr Hegedus tells me that he is losing 8 cents (just under 8p) on ever litre of milk his farm produces - and that adds up to around 2,000 euros each day.

The dairy farmer is currently expanding his farm with a European Union (EU) grant. He is trying to achieve the economies of scale and production methods needed to compete with the Slovak and Polish dairy producers who also sell milk to the foreign owned supermarkets in Hungary.

Like many Hungarians, Mr Hegedus will vote for nationalists in the European elections - it is just a case of how far to the right he feels like going.

The Fidesz party is expected to poll around 60% of the vote. Jobbik, a newly established group to the right of Fidesz hopes for more than 5%. This would give Fidesz around 14 of the country's 22 European parliamentary seats and Jobbik one.

In recent weeks Jobbik has received much press attention. The party has a uniformed wing, the Magyar Guard, which it says stands ready to combat crime by the country's Roma minority.

Having attended one of its election meetings, the echoes of the 1930s are clear.

Mr Hegedus says that he has not yet decided whether Jobbik is a serious party worthy of his vote.

Many of its slogans, for example about combating the power of the multinationals or protecting Hungarian rural land ownership appear to address the diary farmer's concerns directly.

But he is sceptical about whether these policies could be delivered while the country remains subject to EU rules and regulations.

Neither Jobbik nor Fidesz proposes leaving the EU or even re-negotiating Hungary's membership.

Given the limits that staying within the Union would place on any policies that might be challenged as uncompetitive or discriminatory, the answer might lie with Mr Hegedus making common cause with dairy producers in surrounding countries.

But while he has led protests by local dairy producers against Tesco, he has not yet investigated that possibility.

I couldn't help wondering as I left the farm whether they might not challenge the supermarkets more effectively and make the EU work for their interests rather than against them if they organised in Hungary and its surrounding countries.

UPDATE - 16 JUNE 2009

One reader contacted me offline to tell me that Etyek was not remote and was as close to the capital as Surbiton is to London. I'm kicking myself both because I didn't check out the distance I'd been given but also because, if I'd realised how close it was, I would have headlined the blog "The Suburbia of Buda".

I count myself very lucky that I was able to see first hand the looking glass world of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) before the Wall fell.

It was the only city in the world where you cleared passport and customs control at the exits of underground railway stations.

Today there are quite a few commemorative exhibits marking the fall of the wall - the protest movement increased in pitch during the course of 1989.

But watching some teenagers go around the open air display in Alexandersplatz it was striking how quickly memories fade.

They were from the Karl Bosch upper school in former East Berlin and their teachers told me the kids had absolutely no understanding of what life in the GDR had been like.

A recent poll across all of Germany revealed that more than half the population did not realise the GDR had been a one party state.

The photos in the Alexandersplatz exhibition show dissidents - greens, Christian groups, and human rights protestors. I am reminded of their bravery and wonder what they would make of this remarkable national amnesia.

Germany, under the spectre of recession, is seeing a drift to the extremes. Both "browns" of the extreme right like the BVU and NPD and reformed socialists of the Linke (or left) PDS are expected to do well in the Euro elections and September's national polls.

In some former areas of the GDR the extreme right and left parties combined are expected to get anything up to one third of the vote.

I met up with Lothar Bisky, a senior figure in the Linke PDS, and onetime leading GDR film maker.

Although prominent in East German society, he was not a party member back then. He explains, that, "we have learned from our history". Mr Bisky is talking about the failures of the East German communist state.

Although some old "Ossis" will clearly vote for his party because they are nostalgic, the Linke PDS is doing well in the polls (with an expected vote of around 10% nationally) because of widespread concern about the failure of free market economics.

Although Mr Bisky is sure that nobody wants to recreate the GDR, he does not appear quite so certain that Germany has learnt from its earlier history.

He voiced great concern about the growth in support for the "browns" of far right as Germany's unemployment climbs.

Most people here believe that the effects of recession are just starting to make themselves felt - that the "tsunami" of unemployment will come later this year or in 2010.

At that point many expect an even more polarised debate here, with a diminished centre, and new battle lines drawn on the far right and left.

UPDATE - 16 JUNE 2009

continentalman - thanks for those insights about the state of play in the former East. I agree with you that the current importance of the "browns" should not be over-played.

hdrafael - thanks for that information about SED membership. I had been told otherwise, but I'm glad you've put the record straight.

The country has such poorly developed ties with other countries that it might be argued the best response is to ignore the latest atomic test and complete the isolation of Kim Jong-il's regime.

The timing of a ballistic missile test in April and the weekend's nuclear blast may be connected with the arrival of a new US president. Certainly the Pyongyang government has jettisoned nuclear understandings before - having apparently agreed to renounce nuclear weapons projects under former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

Could it be that with each new White House incumbent, the North Korean leadership wants to see if it can get a better deal? The motivation appears to be to get more financial or aid compensation for halting the nuclear programme.

One thing you can say for Kim's people is that they seem to be improving their technology. The latest blast, the country's second known test, was assessed by Russian defence officials to have been caused by a Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb of up to 20 kilotons, whereas the first went off with a force of only around 1kt.

Missile technology has come on too - with April's launch being described as a satellite launch vehicle - a significant technological hurdle (although Western experts believe the rocket failed).

These latest provocations have drawn condemnation from the United Nations Security Council. China - the only country with any real leverage over North Korea voted for the resolution and criticised Kim's government outside the council too. Some commentators suggest that the council will be too divided to vote for additional sanctions against North Korea.

This case though is not like those other perennially difficult bits of Security Council business - such as Iran, Zimbabwe and Sudan - where Chinese or Russian backing for a regime not to America's liking paralyses collective action.

The North Korean economy is in such desperate straights - with millions on the brink of starvation - that nobody is enthusiastic for further sanctions. Even the kind of "smart sanctions" tried against leadership figures or banks would have little effect on North Korea - their leaders hardly travel, and their banks do no international business to speak of.

There's another respect in which the North Korean diplomatic equation is different. China was a central party in the Six Nation agreement to de-nuclearise North Korea that Kim is now flouting.

This makes it harder for anyone to driver a wedge between China, the US and other countries but also effectively puts China in the driving seat over what should be done next.

Some have flagged this up as the kind of "deadline" that his Israeli visitor, Mr Netanyahu, would have liked.

However Monday's statement from the president seems designed more to address those in this country and others who have suggested that his policy of dialogue with Iran is interpreted in that country as a sign of irresolution, something that buys them additional time to work flat out on their military nuclear capability.

Mr Obama indeed bridled when one of the Israeli journalists marched into the Oval Office yesterday and accused him explicitly of weakness in this regard.

The best way to read the president's remarks on Iran is not so much that he is giving Iran a deadline of the "or else" variety.

He has refrained from statements of the "military option remains on the table" kind, speaking instead only vaguely of a "range of steps" open to the US if Iran does not respond favourably by the end of the year. Instead he is saying that his patience is limited.

When it came to timetables it became obvious in Monday's public remarks by president and prime minister that Mr Obama sees 2009 unfolding quite differently to his Israeli visitor.

Whereas Mr Netanyahu wants Iran dealt with before meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians, Mr Obama told him, in front of the cameras, that he wants things the other way around.

The president's Middle East plan for 2009 might therefore go something like this: early June, outreach to the Arab world during visit to Cairo; then await the result of the Iranian presidential elections to calibrate a new diplomatic overture to Tehran; convene a Middle East peace conference some time in late summer or autumn; finally, having gained agreement between Israel and various Sunni Arab regimes to pursue regional peace efforts, increase the pressure on Iran to place their nuclear programme under tight international supervision.

In Monday's meeting it became quite clear that Mr Obama has little patience for Mr Netanyahu's stalling tactics. The president's call for a halt to Jewish settlement activity in the Occupied Territories was pointed, as was his reminder to his Israeli visitor that a Palestinian state must emerge from any peace process.

Since previous Israeli governments signed up to these principles (for example, at the Aqaba Summit of 2003), Mr Netanyahu's attempts to step back on those pledges violates the long standing principle that Israeli governments will honour their predecessors' agreements.

So while Monday's meeting was not quite a train wreck, it certainly marked a public dressing down for the Israeli prime minister. It also showed us quite clearly that Mr Obama's patience will be limited - not just with Iran, but with countries that obstruct his geo-political vision for the Middle East, including Israel.

President Barack Obama's attempt to create a new peace process effectively begins today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit.

In the coming days the president will greet the Egyptian and Palestinian leaders and on 4 June make a speech in Cairo aimed at winning over the Arab world.

Nobody is quite sure about the timings but at some stage before, during, or after the Cairo visit, Mr Obama is expected to call for a Middle East peace conference.

Strong-arm tactics

It will mark a significant shift in diplomatic emphasis - putting the search for solutions onto the wider level, involving countries like Jordan, Syria and Egypt, instead of just leaving it to the Israelis and Palestinians as the last administration often did.

This "comprehensive" approach to regional peace is not a new idea, but you have to look back to the Madrid peace conference of 1991 to find the last time it was really given a try.

Back then George Bush Snr's administration strong-armed a right wing Israeli government to the table by withholding US loans. The Madrid conference, by the way, was not a great success, but it did set the scene for the 1993 Oslo agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Quite a few observers feel that history may repeat itself, not just in diplomats taking the search for peace to a regional level but also in producing a bust up between the US and Israel.

Mr Netanyahu came to power earlier this year on a wave of right wing, nationalistic, support following his country's fight with Hamas in Gaza. Many in his party and wider coalition have set their faces against any concessions to the Palestinians.

Urgent duty

Mr Obama on the other hand is a man proud of the fact he spent part of his childhood living in a Muslim-majority country (Indonesia), and who believes he has an urgent political duty to reach out to the peoples of the Middle East.

King Abdullah of Jordan has warned recently that time is short for the new president to convince the Arab public that he is ready to overturn former President George W Bush's pro-Israeli policies.

So will we see fireworks today at the White House? A newly empowered president telling a wily Israeli political maneouvrer that the rules of the game have been changed?

It probably won't happen today, but many think it is coming.

It is in Mr Obama's interest to signal soon and publicly the new realities of the US/Israeli relationship. How else will he convince the Arab world?

Equally it may be in Mr Netanyahu's interest to show his coalition partners that he is being pressured into attending a Middle East peace conference, where Israel can expect the condemnation of serried ranks of its neighbours.

Flak from the right

The Israelis have already been deploying delaying tactics prior to this meeting. They insist its main purpose is to discuss what the two countries should do about the Iranian nuclear issue.

They have also implied that Mr Netanyahu cannot go the whole way in conceding full Palestinian statehood.

Mr Obama will underline his commitment to finding a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue that would prevent the use of force.

But as to Mr Netanyahu's reluctance to embrace the two state solution, we can expect the US president to pressure him into a rapid change of position.

The acceptance of previous Israeli governments of this principle will make it hard for the prime minister to hold out for too long, and it appears that Mr Netanyahu, mindful of the flak it may earn him from the right, is trying to do no more than buy himself time.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates dismissed him with some modern management speak about the need for, "new thinking and new approaches", but his departure after less than one year in the job has more of a feel of World War I or II about it, when generals were routinely "broken" or "came unstuck" in the febrile atmosphere of total war.

Gen McKiernan was widely respected for his intellect. Having interviewed him shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq (the ground element of which he masterminded) I can attest to his soft spoken, cerebral presence.

But it also became clear, when my questions about the wisdom or otherwise of disbanding the Iraqi army visibly nettled him, that he was a man uncomfortable with press scrutiny.

Last year, someone who had seen the general in action in Kabul told me, "he doesn't get on well with Afghans". His downbeat pronouncements about the progress of the military campaign had annoyed people in Washington too, where some regarded him as verging on the defeatist.

Gen McKiernan did not look or sound like a man of the "Yes We Can" school. His fall reminds us that in the modern age people who cannot get on with foreign leaders or get their media message across are simply unsuited to high command.

The US will now send General Stanley McChrystal to take over the command of its war in Afghanistan. Gen McChrystal manages to combine the unlikely attributes of a smooth media operator (having been a Pentagon spokesman), with the fearsome battlefield reputation of being a key player in the secret world of special operations, turning the tide in Iraq.

Those who worked with Gen McChrystal as commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), running America's elite counter-terrorist forces such as Delta Force, say he was like a soldier monk, taking just 10 days off a year and often accompanying his operators on "door kicking" raids in the worst parts of Iraq.

In 2005-6, when even many of the generals running the US war there seemed to be giving up hope, Gen McChrystal increased the pressure on al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Iranian-backed Special Groups.

Will Gen McChrystal apply his relentless, aggressive, approach to Afghanistan? We will be watching out for the signs of any change in strategy or message. The "Af-Pak battlespace" is of course quite different to Iraq.

Gen McChrystal will already be calibrating just how different.

The emphasis on combating militancy is a key part of Mr Obama's foreign policy - some indeed would say it is the central issue of it. The Washington meeting though has brought to the surface all kinds of tensions about the Obama approach.

A defiant, bellicose upland people have already made their anger felt - I'm referring to the US Congress. During Tuesday's hearings on Capitol Hill, Richard Holbrooke, the administration's "Af-Pak" envoy, came under fire from Congress men and women who believe America's aid to Pakistan looks too much like a blank cheque.

They want "conditionality", linking the flow of dollars to Pakistani co-operation on everything from fighting the Taleban, to reining in the ISI (the country's military intelligence organisation), securing nuclear weapons and gaining access to AQ Khan, the scientist accused of proliferating nuclear technology to several countries.

The US gives Pakistan around $2bn each year in military aid and is now increasing its civilian aid package to $1.5bn annually. Over the next five years US aid could total $17.5bn, and help from international financial institutions another $14bn.

During Mr Holbrooke's session he came under fire both from congressmen like Ron Paul, who expressed broad doubts about the wisdom of the new US strategy, to others like Robert Wexler, who are closer to White House thinking, but want guarantees about the spending of US funds.

Mr Holbrooke said the administration did not believe in conditionality but accepted that benchmarks are required to measure Pakistan's performance. Whether or not the US aid is linked to specific yardsticks, many Pakistani officials find the approach patronising.

Since those who believe in co-operating with the US are already characterised by the opposition as foreign hirelings, the conditionality policy might offer further political ammunition to the militants.

If Congress is reluctant to bankroll Pakistan unconditionally, their decision stems in part from the experience of the past five years. Despite billions invested, the Pakistani army remains inept at counter-insurgency operations, causing large civilian loss of life and suffering high casualties of its own.

As for other issues, even Mr Holbrooke described the refusal of the last Pakistani government to let US agents interview AQ Khan as "inexplicable".

From the Pakistani side, the government was nettled at being called "fragile" by Mr Obama. It feels also it must reflect public anger about US airstrikes in the tribal areas - although Pakistan actually facilitates these attacks in various ways - and it regards US pressure to confront the militants militarily as unwarranted.

At a US State Department session with Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari placed great emphasis on the democratic values shared by Pakistan, the US and Afghanistan.

And in truth democracy and sovereignty may provide Pakistan's best counterweight to those Americans who call for conditionality of aid.

Talking to the Taleban and attempting local truces are after all policies that the dominant political party in the tribal areas ran on during last year's elections. US pressure for military responses in these places, it can be argued by Mr Zardari, flies in the face of the people's will.

Watch Mark Urban's full report on the Obama administration's 'Af-Pak' strategy on Newsnight at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

Pretty much all authorities agree that the problem of militant Islamic insurgency in those two countries is intimately linked, and of course the US has already rolled out its new policy for the region, or Af-Pak in Obama administration shorthand. This linkage makes strategic sense but is far more difficult politically for Britain than for the US.

British policy makers are aware of the sensitivities of the large Pakistani diaspora community in this country and of their home government. There's some language in the new British document that talks about the differences between the Afghanistan and its neighbour but that's unlikely to soothe a government already angry about the arrest and release of Pakistani students accused of plotting terrorism in the UK.

The other issue, crudely, is that Pakistan needs the US far more than it needs UK help. The Obama plan promised $1.5bn a year in aid for the next five years - Britain's contribution is far more modest.

So the first point about the UK's new strategy is that it grasps the Pakistani nettle - which according to one's perspective is either a recognition of obvious connections both with the security of the UK and with what goes on in Afghanistan, or is a risky step, changing the basis of an already difficult relationship into one that is subtly more adversarial.

The next salient feature of the UK's strategy is that it commits this country to "reducing the insurgencies on both sides of the Afghanistan and Pakistan border to a level that poses no significant threat to progress in either country".

This is a big mission - fighting guerrillas in one of the toughest battlegrounds on Earth.
Some might argue this is what we have obviously been doing anyway. But that's not how it started.

Back in April 2006, John Reid, then defence secretary, wrote to me and some other journalists, saying "our mission is firmly centred on the reconstruction effort and UK forces are there to protect this progress... our forces will defend themselves if attacked".

We are nailing national colours to the mast with a counter-insurgency - but many British soldiers and officials are worried by the possibility that a large part of the rebellion in Helmand, for example, is itself a local reaction to the dangerous presence of foreign troops rather than something directed by "al Qaeda head office".

There's plenty of other detail in the paper, for example about building up the capacity of the Afghan government. The Brits also deserve some credit for putting more flesh on the bones of a counter narcotics plan than President Obama did. But ultimately it isn't really clear whether Britain is prepared to shut down the opium farmers of Helmand, thereby swelling the ranks of Nato's enemies.

Britain's strategy is "comprehensive" alright. But is it defining broader aims than even the US would, only with the UK's lesser resources?

Some American media have interpreted this as de facto Iranian acceptance of a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Given some of Mr Ahmadinejad's previous rhetoric that would indeed mark a policy shift of considerable importance.

Equally, there have been those who have been quick to rubbish the story. Since the Iranians back Hamas as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, it's hard to see that radical movement and a right-wing Israeli government agreeing anything in a hurry. Iran, the argument goes, does not expect its acceptance of any two state deal to be tested.

The timing of this statement though is most interesting. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is due to see President Obama on 28 May. Other White House meetings, with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president are also expected around the same time.

This will not be a full scale Middle East summit in the sense of face to face peace talks. But it is clear that President Obama wants to push forward his ideas for restoring some hope - to the Palestinians in particular.

It's best then to see President Ahmadinejad's remarks not as evidence of some fundamental re-think in Tehran. He would have to go further and be more explicit for that to be the case. His interview was however a sign, faced with President Obama's charm offensive, that Iranian leaders realise they must deploy new language.

Setting one's face too obviously against an attempt to forge a new peace process is something that even the Iranian firebrand does not wish to do. In that sense his remarks do mark a small but interesting diplomatic shift.

General Ray Odierno, the American Commander of Multi-National Forces here, says his UK allies were "brilliant". But twice during a recent trip to Washington I heard seasoned players of the power game there use the word "defeat", to describe the experience of the troops sent to southern Iraq by Tony Blair in 2003. I have heard one or two British senior officers use the same word.

So how to sum up an experience in which 179 British servicemen and women lost their lives, hundreds were maimed and billions spent? In the first place I will not use the word "defeat".

During an interview in Baghdad last September with Gen Odierno's predecessor, General David Petraeus, he pointedly refused to characterise his achievements in transforming the overall security picture in Iraq as "victory".In fact, when I pushed him to say whether he would ever use that word, he answered that he didn't think he would. His argument, essentially, was that Iraq was too complex a conflict to be characterised in that way. So if General Petraeus declines to use the "V word", I cannot use the "D word" to describe what has happened in the four provinces of southern Iraq that initially composed the British area of operations.

As we visit, during these final days of the British presence here (some naval training teams will remain and perhaps special forces will make the odd visit, but essentially it is over), we hear much about the recent transformation of Basra. Since the launch of a major Iraqi security operation in March 2008 (Operation Charge of the Knights) the power of the Shia militias has been smashed. The people of this ancient city have breathed a collective sigh of relief.

The cannier type among the British forces still here point out their share in this success; many of the Iraq troops that took part in that operation were British trained; that training those forces was a big part of the UK mission; and that when push game to shove with the militias, the Iraqi army received British air and artillery support. All of this is true.

It is also true though that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki unleashed the Charge of the Knights at his own initiative; the vast majority of troops involved were Iraqi; that the key 'enablers' during the difficult early days of the Iraqi army's fight were American not British; and that many ordinary people in Basra had lost all faith in the British army because it had left them to the mercy of the militias.

How did this happen? One senior British officer I spoke to before leaving London, put it very succinctly: "In Basra we did not go there to win. We went to create the best conditions we could for withdrawal and that is not winning". The key document used to build support in Washington DC for America's surge strategy was entitled, "Choosing Victory". For several reasons Britain's leaders (political and military) were incapable of choosing a positive strategy, whether we call it "success", or "security" let alone "victory".

In the first place and most obviously, lay the circumstances under which Tony Blair took Britain to war. It was deeply divisive and, as casualties mounted, very unpopular. It meant that when matters became critical with the Shia militias (and this happened in 2004, then later, in both 2006 and 2007) Mr Blair's government lacked the confidence to send substantially more troops to Iraq. Downing Street could not allow the long, slow, withdrawal to be reversed if a sense of 'progress' was to be maintained. With just a few thousand combat troops among a few million local inhabitants, military commanders could not cope.

As for those senior officers, they too share responsibility for what happened. In the first place they allowed personal opinions to govern their conduct of operations, and the generals were as divided as the wider British nation. This meant, as one commanding general followed another each six months that the troops went from leaders who simply wanted to get British troops out of harm's way, (and no matter what the Basrawis thought of them for giving the streets to the militias) to those who did actually want to win.

Major General Richard Shirreff who launched an operation to try and break the power of the militias late in 2006 was arguably the last of the latter kind to serve in this part of Iraq. He understood that the successful exit London craved for required the Mehdi Army and other paramilitary gangs to be broken but London would not give him the extra troops for a "British surge". It must be noted too that Mr Maliki, the prime minister, was very nervous about the general's plans and gave only lukewarm support.

Maj Gen Shirreff attempted his clearing operation with the limited forces allowed, and blew up the city's Jamiat police station for good measure. The Jamiat symbolised the nexus between militias, mafias and the city's bent police, but some other British commanders had pussy-footed around the issue of what to do about it. Whatever the willpower or bravado symbolised by these steps, they could not turn the situation around.

For long before this last fling, the British leadership (political and military) had determined upon a major deployment in Afghanistan. In doing so they violated basic strategic theory for as one British battalion commander in Iraq told me at the time: "We cannot have two 'Main Efforts'". The need to divert scarce resources to Afghanistan put paid to the possibilities of success in Iraq, compounding the under-confidence that had been there from the start.

Britain lacked the infantry and equipment to match the American troop surge in Iraq while ramping up UK operations in Afghanistan. The noble exception in this case of drawing down just when the Iraq conflict was coming to its decisive moment lay in the area of special operations - in which Britain, with a tiny number of troops played a key role, of which I will write here at some future point.

As for Basra and the south of Iraq, when I interviewed Maj Gen Shirreff at the time of his 2006 operations in the city, he said: "We are here until the Americans call 'game over'." But this has not proven to be the case. British troops are leaving well before their US allies, indeed those soldiers are now taking over the facilities at Basra air base. The strategic linkage between America and Britain may therefore have been undermined by the experience of Iraq rather than boosted by it, as Mr Blair so earnestly hoped when he committed the country to war.

For all of the under-confidence with which Britain approached Iraq, it cannot be said that it ending its operations at the time of its own choosing. That is happening because the Iraqi government wants it to.

Many among those who believed Britain still had a responsibility to the people of southern Iraq argued, to quote one of them who spoke to me last year, "that there is still much to do". And indeed there is - from training the police to stabilising elections. It's just that now the Americans are going to be doing it.

When the time came (last summer) to negotiate a new basis for Coalition forces to stay once their United Nations mandate ran out things became clear. The Iraqis wanted the Americans to stay and drew up a treaty accordingly. They were not much interested in prolonging Britain's awkwardness.

The lessons to British prime ministers about the terms upon which they commit forces to future wars are clear enough. But there are plenty of pointers too for the military leadership. As for the Iraqi government, they appeared to allow national pride and historical grievances to govern their attitude to the British.

In this Mesopotamian prescription of a plague on all their houses we must not forget though the opponents of the war back home as well. For while many may feel vindicated by what subsequently happened, it was their hand wringing and magnification of every set back or mis-step that played a key role in undermining the political will to achieve more in southern Iraq.

The lesson there is salient too - protest had a righteous place in trying to prevent what many considered an unjust and illegal war. But once British troops were engaged, the success of their mission should have become an issue of broad national consensus. For if the confidence of Britain's armed forces is damaged by this experience, then that will have its own consequences if troops ever have to perform the kind of missions that do command the support of those who marched against the war.

Anti-war Brits, or the reasonable ones at least, should have rallied around the so-called 'pottery shop' argument - we owned Iraq because we (helped) break it. I heard American soldiers use this justification for the surge as they were risking their lives during the peak of the violence, and to me it has undeniable force. It is precisely because Britain let the Iraqis lead the Basra security drive and is suspending combat operations before its American ally that it has lost some of its prestige in southern Iraq.

I do not believe that Britain was defeated here. I do believe though that the nation faltered, that it lacked he necessary determination to bring about a successful conclusion to its six year fight in southern Iraq. That meant the hard toil and blood sacrifice of British forces in Iraq could never reap their full dividends.

Lord Mandelson and 25 suited and booted captains of British industry flew in for an investment conference at the airport here. It was described as the highest ranking British trade delegation to Iraq in more than 20 years.

In the terminal's function hall generals, businessmen and imams mingled. It looked a little like some Chomsky-ite nightmare of Middle Eastern oil, armies and politics coalescing into a seamless web of common interest. But I suspect the attitude of many people in the UK to chasing business opportunities in Iraq is more complex than some ideologists would allow.

Should not the sacrifice of 179 British lives, hundreds seriously wounded and billions of pounds buy the UK some kind of consideration from the Iraqis? If you believe strongly that it shouldn't, then should British companies be at some kind of disadvantage to those of other countries that contributed nothing to stabilising the post-Saddam mayhem or creating the mood of cautious optimism that now prevails in this great trading city? Should Britain get nothing at all for its trouble?

The Governor of Basra, Mohammed al-Waeli, launched the conference by describing his province as the "Paradise of Investment". Leaving aside hyperbole that may strike many at home as comical, it's remarkable to see this man, who was once one of the British army's loudest critics, roll out the red carpet for Lord Mandelson and his delegation. Talking to the governor afterwards his attitude might be paraphrased as, "let's let bygones be bygones - now we'll do business".

Some people here feel that the locals and Brits are not quite on the same page - that essentially many Basrawis expect Britain to come in and re-build their neglected infrastructure, including paying for it, as a further act of generosity or perhaps penance for invading. British businessmen on the other hand have grasped that Iraq is a major oil state with tens of billions of dollars in cash that can afford to pay foreign companies to upgrade everything from oil pipelines to ports or railways.

At the official level though there is a common understanding that if Iraq wishes to secure its future and put the estimated 30% unemployed in this province to work, it will have to start laying out lots of cash. For recession-hit western economies it is therefore an attractive opportunity.

The real issue for those in Britain whose jobs might be under threat might not then be whether the UK is going to get some grubby payback from a "war for oil" but whether the government is doing enough to seize its chance. Hence Britain dispatched this week's trade delegation.

One of the presentations was on the modernisation of Umm Qasr port. We heard that Japan had provided $500m in soft loans, that Turkey had won a contract to clear sunken ships from the shipping lanes, and that French and US companies were now getting to work modernising some of the jetties. Hearing discussions like this, I and others wondered not whether Britain was right to be seeking such contracts, but whether it has actually been slow out of the starting blocks, with various countries already stealing a march in the competition for business?