The first month of a new United States administration is a time for setting the policy agenda over a four-year term. Donald Trump came to power promising to take decisive action to defeat ISIS and curb America's armed interventions abroad. Beyond the day-to-day turbulence in Washington, military setbacks to the US's partners in Iraq and Afghanistan are already testing those key objectives.
The Iraqi army’s assault on Mosul has run into repeated problems, while the security situation in Afghanistan continues to be dire. Some in the US military are even arguing for another "surge" of troops there, whatever the strategy in Iraq and Syria turns out to be.
Afghanistan, relatively neglected in the media as it has become, is worth watching. Barack Obama committed 30,000 extra troops to the country during his first term in office. That brought the total number deployed by western states to around 140,000, with 40,000 of them coming from Nato allies. The intention was to suppress the Taliban by a degree sufficient to negotiate a Nato withdrawal that would leave Afghanistan reasonably stable. The strategy failed, but most troops were withdrawn anyway by the end of 2016 in the hope that the Afghan security forces could take over. As a result only 8,400 US forces remain in the country, plus 5,000 from Nato partners,
