Back to Gideon RachmanThe British news at the moment is dominated by the sad sight of coffins returning from Afghanistan. For the first time for ages, there is a sign of the political consensus behind the mission beginning to fracture. The Conservative line is that the war is still essential, but that the military are being under-resourced. It has been left to the Liberal Democrats, the third party, to question the underlying rationale of the mission. But Nick Clegg their leader cannot quite bring himself to call for a pull-out. Instead he is arguing that the mission is over-ambitious in seeking to create a democratic Afghanistan. I sympathise with his desire to open up debate about the war. But it seems an odd criticism for Clegg to make. First, its an out-of-date argument - both the Americans and the Brits have already adopted a more “realist” security-based approach. Second, if there was any party that I would expect to stick up for human rights and democracy, it would be the Lib Dems.
But there is a broader peculiarity to the British debate. We are so (understandably) fixated on the losses of UK troops, that there seems to be very little attempt to understand how what Britain is doing fits in with the broader coalition strategy.
All our politicians insist that British troops have been doing a magnificent job. There is no doubting their willingness to take on some of the hardest fighting. But the sad fact is that the Americans concluded some time ago that the Brits had taken on more than they could competently handle in Helmand province - and that as a result the coalition was losing the fight. There is an upsurge in fighting in Helmand at the moment because the Americans have put in a lot of their own troops and taken the offensive. The British have been given a smaller part of the province to deal with and their own offensive - hence the sudden surge in British casualties.
There is a legitimate question about why, at the moment, the British are taking heavier losses than the Americans. Is it bad luck? Bad equipment? Bad strategy? But the broader picture is that, for all the insistence of British politicians that “we” are winning and that the troops sacrifices will not be in vain, the success or failure of the Afghan operation is now a question of the success or failure of an American-designed and American-led “surge”.
This blog covers a variety of topics from US foreign policy to European politics and the Middle East - and whatever else happens to be in the news or catch my attention. I joined the FT as chief foreign affairs commentator in 2006, after a 15-year career at The Economist which included stints as a correspondent in Brussels, Bangkok and Washington. I write a weekly column on foreign affairs, which appears in the paper on Tuesdays. Occasionally my FT colleagues contribute posts to this blog.
Geoff Dyer is the FT's China bureau chief. He has been a correspondent in Shanghai and in Brazil and has also covered the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries from London.
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James Blitz is the FT's defence and diplomatic editor. He has been the FT's political editor, based in London, and Rome bureau chief. James is a former Moscow bureau chief for the Sunday Times.
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Victor Mallet is the FT's Madrid correspondent. He is a former Asia editor of the FT, and, in more than 20 years at the organisation, has also worked in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. In 1990 he escaped from Kuwait after being one of the few foreign correspondents there when Iraq invaded. 
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