IT was ironic but not unexpected that the formal announcement of the end of US combat operations in Iraq coincided with news that in the eight months of this year alone, more American troops have died in Afghanistan than in all of last year.

In his speech marking the occasion, US President Barack Obama engaged in a difficult juggling act, wanting to take credit for honouring his election pledge to bring home the American troops without criticising his predecessor for having pushed the country into a war which failed to achieve any of its stated objectives.

Obama reaffirmed his commitment that by next July he would begin transferring responsibility for security to the Afghans. And, leaving no doubt in the minds of his commanders, Obama asserted: “Make no mistake; this transition will begin, because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people's.”

At the same time, to ward off Republican accusations of him going soft on the terrorists, he vowed to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists”.

Obama may wish to withdraw from foreign military engagements and concentrate on the economy, but neither domestic politics nor international commitments are likely to permit him to do so. Afghanistan has not only become his principal preoccupation, it is also likely to define his presidency.

While he may continue to proclaim that his goal remains the destruction of Al Qaeda, how do you destroy a 'network of networks' and a 'leaderless resistance', consisting of relatively independent factions loosely associated throughout the world? Even if there are no more than 100 Al Qaeda activists in Afghanistan, the country is crawling with the Taliban. Many members of the majority Pakhtun appear to consider themselves as Taliban.

This only confirms the urgency of initiating a meaningful dialogue process with all stakeholders, including the Taliban, which explains the growing consensus among Europeans that the year-end Nato summit and Obama's Afghan policy review should reach a defining negotiating strategy for talks with the Taliban.

This appears unlikely because of growing differences within the ranks of the US administration and more importantly between the White House and the Pentagon. While Gen Petraeus's shift from Centcom to the Afghan front had appeared an intelligent move on Obama's part after Gen McChrystal's dismissal, it appears now that Petraeus wants his pound of flesh for his “act of patriotism”.

Increasingly, he has been adopting a questioning attitude about the wisdom of Obama's decision regarding the July 2011 deadline. Recently, he characterised it as an indicator and not an irrevocable decision. Worse, it has encouraged other military officers to chip in with statements challenging the president's view on the start of US withdrawal next July and on giving more responsibility to the Afghan security forces.

Many American scholars are convinced that President Obama is a reluctant warrior, who does not see himself as a war president, but as a manager of inherited conflicts. His priority remains the transformation of America. The transition to being leader of the world's most powerful military has not been an easy one, which explains why he persuaded Defence Secretary Robert Gates to stay on.

Also, his decision to appoint Gen James Jones as national security adviser was partly an 'inoculation' against right-wing critics. In fact, most analysts believe that his decision to agree to a troop increase in Afghanistan was a smart move to placate the generals, while rejecting any open-ended commitment that could undermine his domestic agenda.

In the meanwhile, with the country in the grip of an unprecedented economic crisis, most Americans see the Afghan war as a huge drain on national resources. Consequently, anti-war sentiments in America are growing.

Of greater significance is the fact that the Iraq and Afghan wars appear to have created a paradigm shift in the thinking of defence and strategic analysts, with some asking whether the US has reached the point that the British and French colonial powers found themselves in after suffering defeats in Suez and Algeria.

Obama seemed to allude to this when he called upon Americans to appreciate that this was an age with no clear-cut winner. He also admonished his political opponents for failing to understand that “one of the lessons of our effort in Iraq is that American influence is not a function of military force alone. We must use all elements of our power — including our diplomacy, our economic strength and the power of America's example — to secure our interest and stand by our allies.”

Does this convey a more realistic appreciation of America's strengths and weaknesses? An Obama doctrine, possibly? This may open him up to savage Republican attacks — as already evidenced in the statements of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin — but a trillion dollars spent on Iraq and an equal sum on Afghanistan, with no returns, demonstrate the clarity of Obama's assessment, even amidst the confusion of his aides.

In fact, it recently encouraged Vietnam veteran Prof Andrew Bacevich, to trash many myths about the Iraq war, including Petraeus's famous surge, in his New Republic article, wherein he observed: “The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen obscuring a vast panorama of miscalculation and waste that politicians, generals and sundry warmongers are keen to forget.”

Others too are reaching the same 'revisionist” conclusions, including Michael Mandelbaum, who in his recent book, The Frugal Superpower , writes on what the world will be once a cash-strapped America decides to scale back its foreign commitments. He points out that while for the past 100 years the US believed in “more” of everything, “the defining fact of foreign policy in the second decade of the 21st century and beyond will be less”, which he warns would result in a “a more disorderly and dangerous” world. We need not agree but should nevertheless monitor the developments.