The question of what to do about Syria's civil war has rumbled away in this city's foreign policy establishment for the past two years, without reaching any sort of conclusion or touching off military intervention, but in recent weeks the ground has been shifting.

Whereas for much of last year it was a couple of venerable Republicans on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who argued the US could not afford to let the situation in that war-torn country slide, there are now signs that a broader swathe of opinion is adopting these arguments.

Does this matter when President Barack Obama seems set against getting involved militarily, reflecting the public opinion of a war-weary America?

It seems that it does, with White House briefing suggesting Mr Obama's administration is now actively looking at sending weapons to the anti-Assad opposition and indeed taking further action if large scale use of chemical weapons emerges.

There have been a number of way points in this change.

There was a significant moment last year when the president's defence secretary and CIA director revealed they had both been over-ruled by their boss on the question of arming the opposition.

More importantly events on the ground such as the reported use of chemical weapons have stirred the debate and created an expectation of action after President Obama's talk of "red lines" for the Assad regime.

It appears it is only the prospect of possible peace talks in Geneva that have stalled the move towards more direct US involvement.

Yet this may simply be buying a reluctant president a little more time to consider unattractive options since at Monday's press conference with David Cameron he showed little faith the diplomatic track would produce something.

In the Senate now other voices, including senior Democrats, are driving the move towards greater action.

Last week Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, launched a bill to arm the opposition.

Senators Bob Casey (a Democrat) and Marco Rubio (a rising Republican star tipped for the 2016 presidential race) have put forward another, which would mandate the administration to go further, planning to secure Syria's stocks of chemical and biological weapons.

How do these leading lawmakers justify this stance given the experience of Iraq and the marked reluctance of the US public to get more deeply involved?

"We can't just delegate this to others", Sen Casey told me, "we have to have more of an impact on the outcome".

He believes it is a vital US interest to check Iran and Hezbollah (President Assad's allies) in Syria, that the huge refugee flows generated by the conflict are destabilising the region, and America must insure it empowers the moderate Syrian opposition.

Most of these senior people on Capitol Hill who now speak of the need for intervention still hold sacrosanct the principle that there should be no US "boots on the ground".

Yet now that he is gaining broader support for his quest to arm the opposition Sen McCain is urging his colleagues to consider that under certain circumstances, such as a widespread use of chemical weapons, the US and its allies must be ready to send in troops.

"We cannot do this on our own," Mr McCain told us, suggesting that in the nightmare scenario in which nerve gas bombs were falling into the hands of militant groups, a multi-national coalition would have to enter Syria to secure them.

Others, such as Sen Casey, disagree about sending in ground troops, arguing that even under these circumstances, the US would have to limit itself to airstrikes while indirectly helping the Syrian opposition to secure the stockpiles.

So the attempts to halt the conflict by peace talks could hardly be more urgent.

But there are signs that the west's allies in the Syrian opposition could be as reluctant to sit down with President Assad's representatives as they have in the past.

Could a sense that the ground is shifting in Washington be emboldening them to carry on their military struggle?

For a president who has until now been deeply reluctant to fuel the conflict, that could be a bitter irony.

There will be more from Mark Urban in Washington on Newsnight on Wednesday 15 May 2013 at 2230 on BBC Two and then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.

They are reminiscent of some earlier conflicts where those who sought engagement on one side or the other wanted to portray the protagonists in simple good-versus-evil terms.

White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted Ms Del Ponte was wrong, and that the Assad regime was probably guilty of using such weapons, although the US has still not reached a definitive conclusion on the matter.

The US position is a complex one to be sure, since it requires Mr Carney and others to sound dismissive of the idea that the Syrian opposition might have done such a thing, while not stating with complete certainty that the government was guilty, lest such a conclusion be seen to demand action under the "red lines" previously formulated by President Barack Obama.

Some journalists have suggested that the veteran Swiss human rights investigator had been quietly rubbished by her colleagues on the UN panel on Syria. But as far as their official, collective, position is concerned, this is not right since they have simply noted the committee had, "not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict".

The White House has cited the mistakes of Iraq as a reason for not jumping to conclusions. Perhaps the UN panel, which still hopes to convince the Syrian government that it should be allowed access to the country, has its own agenda too.

One chemical weapons expert with whom I discussed recent reports about the possible use of sarin by the Syrian regime underlined the difficulty of being sure who had unleashed these weapons and reminded me of the Balkan wars of the 1990s when the besieged forces in Sarajevo had been accused of massacring their own citizens in order to galvanise international intervention.

I never found the theory that they had shelled their own markets convincing, but in reporting that conflict I did come across other circumstances where the UN, foreign governments, and indeed journalists, had suppressed information that undermined the "bad Serb", "good Bosnian" narrative.

The Armija, the army of Bosnia-Hercegovina, had for example on occasions shelled UN troops, killing several at Sarajevo airport, yet they chose not to make an issue of it.

On one occasion at that spot, I had to take cover during a fire fight started by a Bosnian soldier who crawled to just beneath a UN position, opening fire on the Serbs so they thought it was the UN and fired back at the peacekeepers. His intention presumably, was to get the Serbs to kill more Frenchmen.

When Bosnian Muslims and Croats - up until that point allied against a common Serbian enemy - started fighting one another in central Bosnia in the autumn of 1992 one of my colleagues managed to file an exciting action-packed report that did not actually mention who was firing at whom.

The negative narrative about the Serbs had taken root so deeply by then, for example after the shocking pictures of starving prisoners at the Omarska camp, that many reporters did not want to "confuse" people about the new violence.

In the case of the recent attack near Aleppo in northern Syria where several people were thought to have been gassed with sarin, there are still many unanswered questions.

Some experts find it odd that the Syrian government would take the risk of triggering US intervention with such small scale, piecemeal use of these weapons.

And there are other oddities about some of the reports including a lack of clarity about whether the chemical agents were delivered by aircraft, shells, or some other method.

Some have even suggested that the gasses came from plastic containers left on the ground - a method of delivery that might suggest some opposition group was responsible.

Ms del Ponte says her views about possible opposition use of sarin are based upon eyewitness reports and adds that she has seen no evidence that the Assad forces have employed such poisons. What makes her critics so certain she is wrong?

There are suggestions that the US views about this issue, echoed in the UK and France, are based upon a broader range of intelligence sources including defectors from the Syrian army and intercepted communications.

But this is precisely where the Iraq precedent feels so awkward, for it was this type of secret information that formed the basis of Colin Powell's ill-fated 2002 briefing.

We know also that the Pentagon, CIA, and White House have in the past been at odds over the issue of whether the US should intervene militarily on behalf of the Syrian opposition.

The chemical weapons issue appeared to provide a rallying point around which reservations and differences might be set to one side. Perhaps Ms Del Ponte's mistake is to have spoken too frankly and threatened that consensus.

What exactly has this investment bought, three years on?

Speaking on and off the record to insiders - from the government, intelligence agencies and security industry - it is apparent that the achievements in defending the UK from this threat have disappointed many.

Much of the available funding may actually have been directed at improving the UK's ability to target other countries' computer secrets.

Some point out that even if everything had gone to plan, an investment averaging £162.5m per year over four years could only have a limited effect on such a huge problem.

Security experts estimate that there are about 50 million cyber attacks a year in the UK, a number which they say is growing rapidly all of the time, and they put the damage to the UK economy at up to £27bn last year.

Yet, even according to government plans, less than half the total money committed has so far been spent.

There are suggestions that early strategising consumed many precious months and that the Cabinet Office, which is supposed to be giving overall direction to the project, has not yet allocated much of the money to specific projects.

"Some people have… said we're saving money for a rainy day," Mark Phillips, who helped draught the government's strategy, and is now at the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) think tank, says. "To which my response is that we already have a rainy day, we have a high threat already with cyber."

Francis Maude, the minister responsible for cyber security, disputed this interpretation in a statement to BBC Newsnight, saying:

"Far from abdicating our responsibility on funding, to date we have spent over one third in the first two years of the programme. We are on target and in line with our public spending forecasts. The rapidly changing nature of cyber threats to the UK demonstrates the need for a flexible cyber security response so we reassess our spending priorities on a regular basis as was always the case. This is a prudent, sensible, smart approach as we move forward into the final two years of the programme."

Even if the full £650m is spent, as those close to the policy insist it will be, it is apparent that this will be done over five years rather than the originally promised four.

The other striking thing about the capability that has been taking shape is its offensive character; official figures show that 59% of the planned spend is meant to go to the intelligence agencies.

"We can achieve a tremendous amount these days through remote exploitation rather than face to face meetings with agents," says an MI6 officer referring to attacks on computer networks.

"GCHQ's offensive capability gives the UK an edge," a former senior officer at the eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham told me, adding, "a large proportion of that money has [therefore] gone into those capabilities".

John Bassett, now at RUSI and formerly GCHQ's Senior UK Liaison Officer in Washington, adds that much of the new government funding has gone on, "existing programmes... designed to get a really strong grip on global situational awareness".

Is this just a polite way of referring to stealing others' secrets?

Mr Bassett suggests that understanding the threat to UK computer security requires the exploration of adversary capabilities.

This argument, that the UK's defence requires the penetration of other countries' computer networks makes it hard to define whether most of the British cyber-security spend is actually going on offensive work - hacking for want of a better term - or whether that activity only accounts for some of it.

However, everybody one speaks to within the circle of secrecy assumes that this type of activity has consumed a significant proportion, measurable in the tens of millions, of the UK's total spending on cyber elements.

That emphasis on offensive work is remarkable given that the SDSR and the government cyber security strategy published in 2011 explained the rationale for the new spending almost entirely in terms of protecting the UK economy and government from attack.

Indeed, at an SDSR press briefing in 2010 a senior government official who I asked whether the UK even had an offensive cyber programme declined to confirm that it did, although another official subsequently contacted me to say that there was such an effort.

Mark Phillips, who was present at many of the meetings that formulated both policies, told us that the offensive programme was "one of the two unstated objectives" of the cyber security plan. The other, he implied, was providing support to allies, which in an intelligence context is usually taken as a reference to the US.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) meanwhile has taken 14% of the new money for cyber security, spreading it more or less evenly between offensive and defensive roles, insiders suggest.

It has launched Project Watchtower - a series of programmes designed to crated a super secure cyber architecture for the MoD -in an attempt to secure the military's computer networks from sophisticated attacks, with experts suggesting some good progress has been made.

On the offensive side, the MoD has established its Joint Cyber Unit, based at Cheltenham. The impetus for the creation of this outfit, several dozen strong, came from Nato's bombing campaign in Libya, says one Whitehall player.

Ministers asked why the MoD did not have the capability to switch off the Libyan air defence system from afar by means of cyber attack.

One MoD insider argues that the UK is some way from being able to take action of this kind, or match the unleashing of the Stuxnet virus on Iran's uranium enrichment plant, widely believed to have been carried out by the US, although they have not officially admitted it, but that the hold-up is on the policy and legal front rather than the issue of technical ability.

There has been a lively discussion among Whitehall law officers about whether the use of such a cyber attack would constitute an act of war or could under certain circumstances, for example switching off power to a hospital, be construed as a war crime.

Increasingly it is in this area, the development of cyber weapons or disruptive malware, rather than in the long established game of stealing secrets - state or commercial - that attention is focussing in the security community.

In 2011-12, for example, the US Department of Homeland Security tracked 23 cyber attacks on companies related to the national gas pipeline system. They assessed that the targeted information would have allowed an intruder to blow up hundreds of compressor stations, blacking out the US energy grid, "at the click of a mouse". Oil installations in Iran and Saudi Arabia have also had their control equipment hit by malware.

Mr Maude stressed to us that the UK's programme is "not just about securing government systems, though it helps do that too, but underpins all our objectives in tackling cyber crime, protecting our critical national infrastructure and making the UK one of the safest places in the world to do business in cyberspace." He noted that the Economist Intelligence Unit has put Britain top among the G20 countries for creating a secure environment for networks.

Notwithstanding this accolade, there is widespread concern about the vulnerability of the UK's national infrastructure to attacks of this kind.

"I don't think anyone is any more secure than they were," said Rashmi Knowles, Chief Security Architect at RSA, a leading cyber security firm, when I asked her whether Britain's infrastructure is any better protected than when the government launched its initiative in 2010.

In part this stems from constant evolution of the threat, with hackers far more dynamic, constantly evolving new techniques, than the government bureaucracies that try to stop them. As for the work that has been done to thwart them, some sectors, such as banking, have a far greater interest in investing in secure networks than the likes of public utilities.

Nightmare scenarios such as hijackers taking control of an aircraft via its computerised systems, or shutting down a national power system or a country's entire internet, appear feasible in the light of the US gas pipeline case. To what extent such risks are exaggerated by security firms touting for business is open to argument.

What almost all parties in the cyber security sector agree is that awareness of the risks is growing. For the government experts trying to devise a response, the risk is that their solutions may be judged inadequate to the scale of that challenge.

And actually there is a message in what happened here centuries ago about people believing the truths they choose to.

Some link the Boston marathon bomb attack to that earlier event believing the date, Massachusetts State's Patriots' Day holiday, which commemorates what happened at Lexington and the revolution more widely, was a significant part of the attacker's message.

Revolutionary themes - from the citizen's obligation to stand up against tyranny, to the right to bear arms, or the famous dumping of tea in Boston harbour - are central to the ideology of the radical right here, be it the broad-based non-violent activists of the Tea Party movement or the fringe elements who argue that force may be justified to confront their federal government.

Instant theories about who might have placed Monday's two bombs that killed three and wounded more than 170 have centred on someone who might have been inspired by the ideology of al-Qaeda or the same type of American extremists that placed explosive devices at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics or blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

If it was that second brand of terrorism, then the revolutionary symbolism will have been a central part of what happened, but even if the act was motivated by different factors the 18th Century history of this place may still have played its part in determining the target.

Throughout Wednesday there was febrile speculation about the identity of a suspect caught on security cameras depositing a bag at one of the bomb sites. It built even to the point where hundreds of people thronged at a court in the south of the city believing that a man was about to be charged - but that all proved to be an ill-founded rumour.

However, passing the court four hours after the "suspect under arrest" report had been comprehensively denied by everyone from the Boston Police Department to the White House, I noticed that many of the TV satellite trucks from the networks were still there.

Was it "just in case", or was there a desire to keep on broadcasting from that place because the events of earlier, including the building being cleared because of a suspect package, were so dramatic that they were still being repeated on air and never mind the facts?

And what role precisely does hard information, as opposed to emotional certainty; play in the processing of an act of terrorism?

For most people the eventual conviction of someone for the crime, assuming that happens, will resolve the issue of who did it and why.

Even so, there are bound to be a vocal minority of deniers or questioners though who will not accept this version of events. There is a tendency to hold one's own personal demons responsible.

On Wednesday the shock jock Rush Limbaugh was voicing outrage at the theories that the marathon bombing had been perpetrated by the extreme right, and asking rhetorically why the news media he excoriates for being impossibly liberal were not saying that it might have been a left wing terrorist.

The huge blast overnight at a fertiliser plant in Texas is likewise the subject of rampant speculation and conspiracy theorising on Twitter. There were immediate suggestions that it could be a bloody commemoration of the Waco siege, which also happened at this time of year, not so far from the stricken factory.

At Lexington Green, about 10 miles (16 km) from the centre of Boston, "the shot heard around the world" on 19 April 1775 is commemorated by several monuments.

Americans are taught that it was the British soldiers sent there to confiscate weapons who opened fire, sparking the revolution that brought independence to the United States.

A lofty flag pole commemorates it as "the birthplace of American freedom", while a plaque on a nearby obelisk thunders about the blood of Lexington's martyrs, and notes of the significance of that day, "the die is cast".

Having read every eyewitness account of what happened there in 1775 that I could find when writing a book about America's war of independence, I would argue that there is pretty good evidence that the locals fired first - albeit when the British redcoats were running towards them, intent upon assault.

Most Americans would disagree with my view - some might even regard it as cranky. The point though is that the act of violence is still open to dispute centuries later, and many people tend to fall back upon emotional rather than factual certainty.

Even assuming that somebody is charged over the Boston marathon bombings, we should expect a discussion to carry on about whether it was really them and why they did it - and the freedom to engage in such talk is one of the liberties that people here hold so dear.

"We have reduced our profile to such an extent that we don't do ground combat type operations anymore," Brig Bruce said.

While Nato forces will, in theory, remain in Afghanistan for the next year and a half, in the country's once rebellious south they are all but confined to their bases, begging the question why the drawdown cannot go even faster.

After years of blistering combat in which 440 Britons died, hundreds lost limbs, and billions of pounds were spent, public consciousness about the ending of the mission seems to have lagged behind the reality of bases closed and troops confined increasingly to camp.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) seems to have been reluctant to publicise its departure, one senior figure explains this in terms of, "tensions", between military leaders and politicians over the pace of withdrawal.

The simple facts though are these: while three years ago the British had 120 bases in Helmand - many of them patrol bases or small forts - the figure had fallen to 37 by November last year, and is now down to 12.

Since Nato agreed in principle a decision known as 'Milestone 13' last month, it has stopped launching ground operations in central Helmand, although speaking to British soldiers it is apparent that many have not been "outside the wire", since December.

So, what on Earth will British troops be doing then between now and the end of 2014?

"[The] Afghans with whom we work still like to know that they can call upon us," says Brig Bruce, suggesting that UK forces will stand ready to help their allies if things escalate out of control.

However, among the Afghan commanders we spoke to, there appears to be a determination not to ask for British help in operations.

"In terms of combat", said Brigadier General Shirin Shah, commanding the Afghan National Army Brigade in central Helmand, "we did not need any help with that and we have not asked for any".

British troops are still engaged in some risky activities - including running road convoys to evacuate equipment from their remaining bases, providing some bomb disposal back up, and sending helicopters on supply runs.

The UK special operations task force, which is generally employed away from Helmand, still mounts some raids.

It is perhaps the fear that a soldier may lose their life on such a mission that has led ministers and generals to avoid using explicit language about the UK's war in Afghanistan being over.

Away from the south, US troops still face hard fighting in the east of the country, along the Pakistani border.

And even in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, the southern one-time Taliban strongholds that were the main focus of Nato operations during 2010-11, there is still a good deal of lawlessness, only it is mainly the Afghan forces that deal with it.

British commanders portray this change as the success that now allows them to scale back.

During the current six month troop rotation - now coming to its end - around 900 troops were sent home early, bringing the total down to around 7,000. There are plans to cut back to 5,200 by the end of the year, both figures exclude the special forces group of around 1,000.

How many of these people are really necessary given the fact that they are no longer mounting combat operations is open to question.

Commanders argue that maintaining certain capabilities, like the state of the art combat hospital at Camp Bastion or the helicopter force leaves them no option but to maintain a garrison that will be measured in the thousands rather than hundreds until very near the end.

A Nato spokeswoman adds: "NATO has not halted combat operations. In a matter of months, we will reach a milestone, when the Afghan forces will move into the lead across the country, while ISAF's (International Security Assistance Force) main effort will shift from combat to support. This is part of the transition plan, and ISAF will remain combat-ready until the end of 2014."

Watch Mark Urban's latest film from Afghanistan on Newsnight on Tuesday 19 March 2013 at 10.30GMT on BBC Two, and then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.

The Rome meeting, which the SNC had threatened to boycott, comes at a moment of real uncertainty for the opposition.

Diplomacy and exhaustion seem to have brought the warring parties to a point where they are nearly ready to sit down together - something both sides have baulked at doing so far.

A meeting, slated for Moscow next week, involves the Assad regime setting aside its refusal to talk to the armed opposition, and the SNC close to abandoning its insistence that the president step down as a precondition for negotiations.

I say "close" because there is some uncertainty about whether the SNC leader, Moaz al-Khatib, has the backing of his wider movement on this.

Frustratingly for those who have favoured intervention in support of the uprising, such as US Senator John McCain, or former UK prime minister Tony Blair - the change in mood is a direct result of recent reverses for the opposition on the battlefield and of the disparity of weapons employed by the two sides.

A senior diplomat says there was recently, "an interruption of lethal supplies from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey", while the Assad forces have benefitted from the arrival of several large shipments of Russian weapons.

As a result, rebel claims late last year that they were about to take Damascus have been confounded, government forces have reportedly won back some small areas, for example in Homs, and up to four Scud missiles per day have been pounding anti-Assad neighbourhoods in the northern city of Aleppo.

The question of how or why weapons supplies to the SNC and more militant groups were interrupted is a mystery, but it appears to have happened at the end of last year and early 2013.

Normal service has apparently been resumed now, with the querulous Saudis and Qataris agreeing to focus on the southern (via Jordan and Lebanon) and northern (via Turkey) supply routes respectively.

Rivalry between these two external actors is intense, as is that between the Syrian groups vying to receive the arms, and the temporary halt may have been necessary to prevent internecine conflict breaking out between these armed factions.

Where does this leave the West? If the notion that both sides have now come close to negotiating because of setbacks on the battlefield is right, would not arming the rebels now simply re-ignite the fight and torpedo talks?

The White House, it is clear, does not wish to send weapons, let alone bomb President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Sen McCain's questioning in recent hearings has exposed that President Barack Obama feels so strongly on this issue that he overruled advice from his defence secretary, Leon Panetta, and the former director of CIA, David Petraeus, who favoured sending arms.

As for the British, they have long-standing legal objections to arming insurgent groups, something that manifested itself from Bosnia in the 1990s to Libya more recently.

They, and the US have already been sending medicines, generators, and other equipment to help refugees, so what more can they do?

The current debate, I have learned, surrounds sending armoured cars, and equipment such as heavy diggers and lorries to help deal with the consequences of Scud strikes in northern Syria, some of which have buried dozens of people. There has also been a discussion about sending night vision equipment.

The US and UK are thus tip-toeing very close to the line of arming their chosen allies in the SNC.

Armoured land rovers sent for use as ambulances or to ferry around the leaders of the opposition might soon be photographed with a machine gun bolted on top or simply used as troop transporters. Diggers and other construction equipment might also be set to work building new routes around government strongholds, easing opposition operations.

Where would all this leave putative Russian-mediated talks between the SNC leader and Syria's foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem? Most seem to think the two sides may be sufficiently exhausted from a struggle that has cost more than 70,000 lives, to think seriously about talking to one another. Whether they are ready to do a deal, is quite another matter.

But the current moves to step-up supplies to the anti-Assad groups may also be intended to empower them in forthcoming talks.

That sub-text was less about whether the union's next seven-year budget would end up at euro 913bn or the euro 908bn eventually agreed, a small difference rendered even less significant when one considers that it is dwarfed by what national governments spend, but concerned whether UK Prime Minister David Cameron's recent call for reform - and re-negotiating UK membership - had gained wider traction.

Ending the marathon negotiation with a personal declaration of victory to reduce the budget while protecting the UK rebate, Mr Cameron was asked whether these tense hours of debate might inform his bigger agenda about reforming the EU and Britain's place within it.

"We formed a strong alliance", he said, and it could be seen as "part of the new settlement that we seek".

There are legions of people in the European set-up who find his calls for smaller budgets, and repatriated powers anathema. Martin Schulz, president of the European parliament, allowed some of his ire about Britain's stance to burst into the open when questioned by BBC colleague Iain Watson at a press conference on Thursday night.

How could Britain opine on the next seven-year budget, asked Mr Schulz, when it might not even be a member of the EU by the end of it? For good measure he attacked George Osborne, the UK chancellor, for saying (in Mr Schulz's version of what was presumably a private conversation at the Davos economic forum) that he cared less about what the EU committed itself to spend than he did about what the UK actually had to cough up.

Casting doubt over whether the European Parliament would actually approve a trimmed budget once the national leaders signed off on it, the president implied that its members might come under such pressure to do so that they should be allowed to vote in secret.

The annoyance of Francois Hollande, president of France, at Mr Cameron's speech was also apparent to some. He cut a scheduled meeting with the British and German leaders and threatened to veto any budget that did not protect "agriculture and growth".

One person close to the negotiations told me, "he has become very emotional about it, and it may be in reaction to Mr Cameron's speech, that he sees himself defending the European status quo". Ending the summit he put a brave face on France's diplomatic reverse, calling it a, "good compromise".

It is a reasonable deduction that had the British leader's speech been greeted with ridicule or indifference across Europe, the denizens of the European apparatus would have reacted with cold disdain. But something seems to have worried them, and they will now be reading the runes of a summit that ended with an unprecedented decision to cut EU spending, trying to evaluate whether this is a one-off or a symptom of a more troubling shift in Europe's centre of gravity - a move in a more sceptic direction.

Of course it has been apparent for some time that the harsh austerity measures mandated by Germany and other northern European countries on the likes of Italy, Greece, and Spain have caused some deep resentment of the EU. It is a nervousness about what form these feelings might take that has caused Italy's Mario Monti (Mr Hollande's principal ally in trying to defend a higher EU budget) to warn about the "populist" tactics of his opponents in casting doubt about the necessity of such austerity.

However these southern critics are highly unlikely to side with Mr Cameron - except perhaps the ever mercurial Silvio Berlusconi - in arguing for a smaller Europe. The group that seems to be making people in Brussels nervous is "the parsimonious ones" as one French newspaper dubbed them yesterday.

Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands lined up with Britain on Thursday on the budget question, and Finland hovers on the fringes of this group. All of these countries have form in standing up against the "ever closer union": Sweden by voting in a referendum not to adopt the euro; Denmark by opting out of the Lisbon Treaty provisions on the single currency; and the Netherlands by voting against the European constitution in 2005 and more recently questioning the need to bail out the weaker eurozone members.

Germany's attitude proved critical to the question of whether this "parsimonious" group could win the day. Chancellor Angela Merkel had already shown her hand in wanting further cuts after the failure of November's summit. Although she did not side overtly with the UK, Sweden, Netherlands, and Denmark, her objection to the Franco-Italian counter-proposal doomed it.

Le Figaro, the French daily, on Friday evening reported the outcome as a, "double success for Mr Cameron". For France, it added, "this clash... hides a more worrying sub-text for the future: the proven paralysis of the Franco-German axis".

To be clear, Ms Merkel's assistance on the budgetary issue cannot be taken as a sign of support for Mr Cameron's broader platform of re-negotiation. But in the summit statements of the Dutch, and Swedes in particular he can take comfort that there is support on this wider agenda.

The Dutch parliament has scheduled a full day's debate on the implications of the British prime minister's Europe speech, something he was delighted to tell reporters at the end of the summit.

It is one more sign of an alarming deterioration of the security situation across the Middle East.

US officials have suggested that the Israelis might have struck a convoy carrying sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons to Hezbollah. Concerns have focussed for months on the security of Syria's chemical and missile arsenal and the possibility that a doomed Damascus government might send such weapons to the Lebanese group.

Whether or not there is retaliation for this specific Israeli strike, it is clear that the potential for an engagement between Israel and Hezbollah is now high.

The Israelis have moved Iron Dome missile defence batteries to the north of their country in preparation for a possible repeat of the brief 2006 conflict in which the two belligerents traded thousands of bombs and rockets across the border.

This tense situation continues to become more dangerous as the Assad regime loses control of more and more of Syria. It is however just one of several dangerous trends emerging across the region.

Moving from west to east:

In the midst of all of this there are signals, for example in his inaugural speech, that President Barack Obama intends to continue with a policy of non-intervention.

This has confounded the hopes expressed in some European capitals that Washington might provide more of a lead, if only diplomatically, on the Syrian or Iranian issues once he was re-elected.

Some reports circulating in the region suggest that even if Syria used chemical weapons against its own people, the US warnings of a dire response might not actually produce any intervention on the ground to secure these stockpiles.

Instead, it is suggested by some credible sources, that the US might provide support to Turkish and Jordanian forces as they attempted to carry out this mission.

Whatever the degree to which Mr Obama might sanction intervention - and dreadful events on the ground might force his hand - it is clear that the diminished US appetite for warfare, combined with the breadth of the crises enfolding the region, would most likely mean that any direct Western military role would be short lived and of limited significance.

Western countries seem set to observe these unfolding dramas largely in the role of concerned but powerless spectators. There could be all kinds of ramifications - from galloping petrol prices to refugee flows into the countries of southern Europe.

It might be overly melodramatic to paraphrase Britain's foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, who said at the outbreak of World War I that the lamps were going out all over Europe, but it seems unlikely that the Middle East can avoid a period of prolonged instability and crisis in the coming years.

Of course the region has long been the leading source of headaches to global policy makers, but the possibility of leakage of weapons of mass destruction and the sharp exacerbation of religious tensions in the region seem set to make things even worse.

Why? When the UK has so often been the European Union's one nation "awkward squad". Doesn't the series of opt outs it has negotiated make this position quite obvious?

It is true that the UK opted out of the 1985 Schengen agreement on borders, of committing to join the Euro, and made sure it would have to opt "in" to a raft of new police and justice powers. There are other countries that have also negotiated opt-outs here and there - so why is today's language significant?

The importance of rejecting ever closer union lies in stating something explicitly that mainstream politics in Europe has been side-stepping for decades. There are many supporters of the European project who imply that unless the whole structure of treaties, summits, and memoranda carries on moving inexorably on, it will wither and die. Could the Conservative leader be the first mainstream European politician to make the case that it doesn't have to be that way?

It is clear there are sections of the European public who share the nervousness of Mr Cameron's grassroots Tories about ever closer integration. In both France and the Netherlands, the public rejected the European constitution in popular votes nearly eight years ago. Sweden voted against joining the Euro, and Denmark also has an opt-out on the single currency.

While public opinion has sometimes coalesced, euro-sceptically, around particular issues in these countries, what has been lacking is a broad philosophical acceptance that integration may have gone far enough or, indeed, as Mr Cameron has argued, need to be reversed in some areas. Indeed where such arguments have been made on the continent, it tends to be by parties on the extremes of Left and Right.

In France or Germany, these types of argument touch deep insecurities about the war and the need to buttress peace by "ever closer union". The real challenge to this philosophy in those two countries comes from the extreme Right. So the idea of setting out an alternative is tainted in the eyes of many Germans or French with an ugly whiff of neo-fascism.

Does the passage of time or the intensity of the economic crisis mean that the old post-war arguments for further integration might be lessening, and that other countries might see a "UKIP effect" in which the heresies, once confined to the fringe, may become newly and respectably mainstream?

Mario Monti, facing a Eurosceptic Silvio Berlusconi in Italian elections, has warned the EU that unless it makes more concessions on the bailout package, "Italy - which has always been a pro-European country - could flee into the hands of populists."

It is an odd thing when a man running for office warns against "populism"; as Mr Monti has a few times in recent months, alluding to anti-EU trends across the continent. And his attitude, as a former EU commissioner and advocate of "ever closer union," highlights that centrist candidates could find themselves in trouble at the polls in some countries if they paint euro-sceptics as extremists.

In the Netherlands too there have been some interesting recent currents, with the centre right party expressing greater reservations about European integration, expropriating some of the language once confined to the extremes. This provides a clue as to why Mr Cameron originally hoped to give his speech in Amsterdam.

Downing Street clearly hopes that someone, anyone, will make common cause with the British prime minister in his argument that European treaty revisions, that may be required to buttress the eurozone, offer an opportunity to re-visit some of the concessions of powers to Brussels. The Netherlands and Sweden, their two main hopes, are not quite ready to do so.

However it will only require a couple of significant European players to align with Mr Cameron for the awkwardness of isolation to lessen and for his platform to be taken more seriously in Europe.

On the assumption that the process he described today does not lead to a UK exit from the EU - for this would require a great many things to go wrong for him - it is the announcement of an explicit policy or set of ideas to counter the idea of "ever closer union" that may prove to be this speech's most important legacy.

The CDU drive to get their man, David McAllister, re-elected to run the state government of Lower Saxony, is well funded, confident (despite the closeness of opinion polls) and united on the question of Europe.

There is no real dissent across the German political spectrum on the issues of integrating the European Union (EU) more closely, apart from on the extreme right.

Indeed talking to people across northern Germany during three days of filming, it is apparent that there is a broad degree of consensus both on the EU and on Britain's position within it - from the CDU election event we attended, to the floor of the Sennheiser microphone factory or from the Hamburg students' union.

Firstly, people express regret that, faced with the faltering of Germany's traditional EU partnership with France (socialist President Francois Hollande is too much the tax and spend type for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her CDU), that it is not possible to make common cause with the UK in the council chambers of Brussels.

From Ralph Brinkhaus, a local member of the German parliament, the Bundestag, to Christine Lemster, a chemistry student at Hamburg University, we heard a similar refrain - the UK and Germany ought to be natural allies, and it is too bad that they cannot unite around EU issues.

The second issue on which there appears to be wide agreement is that Germany opposes the type of renegotiation of membership terms or competencies that UK Prime Minister David Cameron has talked about.

We have heard the apparent British threat to block other EU business unless its agenda is met described as "blackmail" by the head of the Bundestag Europe committee, Gunther Krichbaum, and by Cornelia Fuchs, former London correspondent for Stern magazine, as something that will soon exhaust the patience of ordinary Germans as well as their government.

"It's starting to get on people's nerves… there are already people who say 'if they don't want to be here they should get out'," Ms Fuchs told Newsnight.

The last topic where the Germans offer Tory Eurosceptics cold comfort is on their idea that Britain, even if it actually left the EU, could negotiate the same type of free trade arrangement with it that Norway or Switzerland have.

We went to the Sennheiser audio plant near Hanover; where something like 10% of their worldwide sales are made in the UK, to canvass their view on this:

"I know how complicated it is to negotiate", said board member Volker Bertels, referring to Switzerland's long discussions over the terms of access to the European market, adding that in the case of the UK, "we all need to be careful about putting up additional obstacles".

Like many German producers, there is a worry that market share might be lost during a long period of uncertainty about access to the UK.

At the heart of the anxiety expressed by German politicians is a fear that British renegotiation could eat up a lot of time at EU meetings at a moment when voters would prefer a focus on economic recovery and that even if ultimately successful, such talks could set a grim portent for Europe more widely.

"If we agree we will have a blueprint," said the CDU MP Mr Brinkhaus, "and next, for example, Poland or other countries will demand the same and this will be a first step in the melting down on the whole union".

I recently made some documentaries about the experiences of British tank crews during World War II and in particular a group of men who fought all the way through that terrible conflict - the "tankies" from The Fifth Royal Tank Regiment, also known as the Filthy Fifth.

The first episode aired on Sunday 6 January, but if you are based here in the UK you can still watch it on the BBC iPlayer by clicking here.

The second part will be broadcast on Sunday 13 January 2013 at 9pm on BBC Two.

But how damaging the remarks of Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia's deputy foreign minister must be to morale in the beleaguered regime strongholds of Damascus or Latakia.

"We must look at the facts," Mr Bogdanov opined in Moscow, "there is a trend for the government to progressively lose control over an increasing part of the territory".

He added that "an opposition victory can't be excluded."

That might seem like a statement of the blindingly obvious, coming from a French or British minister, but it signals an important shift for the Kremlin.

Mr Bogadanov was saying something aloud that has been evident from Russian actions for some months: that they cannot allow their earlier opposition to strong action in the UN Security Council on the Syrian crisis to poison their future relationship with any post-Assad government or the wider Arab world.

Back in July, Sergei Lavrov, Mr Bogdanov's boss, received a delegation from the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) in Moscow. There have been other contacts since, indicating a desire to keep channels open.

As for evacuation of the five thousand plus Russians still in Syria, Mr Bogdanov said on Thursday that plans to get them were being updated.

Russian analysts suggest that an actual order to remove its people could be the regime's death knell.

The Russians practised an evacuation through their base at Tartus in Syria several months ago, moving marines and warships to the area for the drills. A signals intelligence listening post and naval training facility at Tartus date back to Soviet times.

These tentative signs of a Russian attempt to put more distance between themselves and the Assad regime leave the embattled president more dependent than ever on Iran.

Reports continue to circulate in the Middle East that Iran has taken over paying Syrian government employees and is still flying arms into the country.

The Kremlin remains consistent on one point however, which is its oft stated desire for an orderly transition of power, ie against Mr Assad's overthrow.

It continues to speak out against the recognition of the recently organised SNC as the peoples' sole legitimate representative, something the US has just joined scores of other countries in doing.

Russia plans to host a meeting of tamer opposition groups in Moscow next week.

When President Vladimir Putin visited Turkey earlier this month, his spokesman warned, "if the al-Assad regime goes then the number of refugees flowing into Turkey would rise from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Syria will turn into a lake of blood".

The Russians have tried unsuccessfully to halt the growing recognition and influence of the Turkish-backed SNC.

This new umbrella organisation for anti-Assad groups opposes the kind of dialogue with the Syrian president that Moscow has long considered necessary to allow an orderly change to happen.

Thursday's statements from Mr Bogdanov display a public resignation to the fact that Moscow's ideas for a transition of power are very unlikely to prevail.

In their recent warnings about what might follow Mr Assad's ousting, the Russians have also shown just how bleak their view is of Syria's future.

According to figures released by the Israeli defence ministry these new anti-missile batteries opened up 573 times, knocking down 421 out of 1,506 missiles fired from Gaza.

Some have even speculated that the success of the missile has mitigated the fact that Hamas or Hezbollah can now hit Israel's most important population and economic centres, a factor that cannot be overlooked in looking forward to the possible consequences of a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Let us deal with the upside for the Israelis first. The fact that Iron Dome was only used against just over one third of the projectiles fired is a measure of its advanced fire control computers rather than its limitations. By tracing the trajectory of the Palestinian missile within the first few seconds of its flight, the system could calculate whether or not it was heading for a populated area and therefore whether the firing of a defensive interceptor missile was necessary.

Calculating the firing solutions so quickly on multiple projectiles heading your way is indeed impressive. An unnamed US air defence officer quoted by the New York Times argues, "this discrimination is a very important part of all missile defence systems… this clearly has been a validation of the Iron Dome system's capability".

Luckily for the Israelis, most of the missiles fired at them were heading for the barren Negev desert or hillsides within the (Palestinian) West Bank. They say that 875 of them, more than half of the total fired, landed in uninhabited areas.

When it comes to the ability to hit the many Palestinian firing points, clearly very difficult targets since they are often nestling against homes, schools, or mosques, the capability demonstrated by the Israeli Defence Forces has however been less impressive.

Throughout the brief conflict Israeli experts such as Brigadier General Michael Herzog, who Newsnight interviewed earlier this week, said that the rate of missile firings had lessened significantly as their strikes against the Palestinians went on, and indeed the statistics released during the conflict by the defence ministry in Tel Aviv suggested that this was indeed the case.

However the figures that have now emerged hardly support this view. The numbers fired on each day of the conflict were: 75 on the first; then 316 on the second; then 228; 237; 156; 143; 221 on the last full day; and 130 on the day the ceasefire was agreed. The figure of 221 near the end is significant in this regard.

While there have been claims of "massive damage" to the estimated stockpile of 10,000 Hamas missiles, the organisation itself - unsurprisingly - maintains that it still retains substantial stocks, including of longer range weapons, that had been hidden on the assumption that the conflict might last weeks.

Airstrikes were evidently patchy in their results, as they were in the 2006 Lebanon conflict or the 2008-9 campaign against Hamas.

Where does all of this leave the calculation of missile defence and how effective it can be? Certainly the apparent success of Iron Dome has changed the calculus for the future. More batteries will be deployed, and there will be further refinements to its software.

However Hamas and Hezbollah can hardly be expected to stand still either. If they improve their launch accuracy to the point that the majority rather than minority of their missiles are on target, would Iron Dome be able to cope?

Luck comes into this too, and if Hamas had scored a hit resulting in a major loss of life, the sense of insecurity felt by Israelis might have been much more profound.

Missile defence may be able to play a significant part in blunting this threat. But the fact that peace process rejectionists such as Hamas and Hezbollah now have such extensive means of hitting Israeli cities is the more important strategic development.

It may also prove to have been a new milestone on the road away from a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue and towards perpetual instability in the region.

As for the rockets themselves, they landed without harming anyone and the fact that air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv for the first time since Saddam Hussein's Scud missile attacks of 1991 is something of a red herring.

The really significant developments are the ability of Israel's most implacable enemies (Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon) to bombard its populated centre, and the emergence of Gaza as a semi-independent entity able to garner both diplomatic and materiel support.

It has been apparent since the 2006 Lebanon war, when Hezbollah rained thousands of rockets down on northern Israel, that Israel's old calculations about using buffer zones to ensure the security of its citizens were pretty much redundant.

Now it is clear that the old notions that dominated military thinking there for decades, about retaining the lands conquered in 1967 for "strategic depth", no longer apply.

During the brief 2009 invasion of Gaza there was talk of re-occupying the northern part of the coastal strip in order to push the rocket firers further back, but now the Palestinians have obtained far longer range weapons a few kilometres either way would make no difference.

Could this actually help peace-making in that it might convince Israel that holding the West Bank is not so important? Do not expect it, for this new situation seems set to harden attitudes on both sides.

In the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah missiles can now hit most of Israel and the potential effects should not be under-estimated. These non-state actors now have the ability to close Israel's one proper international airport, and in response to Thursday's rocket firing some airlines have already been talking about suspending their services.

While the ability to bombard the "Zionist enemy" in this way creates great excitement and support for Hamas or Hezbollah on the Arab street, one can hardly lose sight of the fact that these two movements will not acknowledge Israel's right to exist, even if the Palestinian one has toyed with the idea of long term truces.

For the Israelis the last few years have seen increasing insecurity as groups in Gaza progressed from home-made Qassam rockets with a range of several kilometres through to the newly acquired Iranian-developed Fajr-5 with its range of up to 75km.

Hezbollah, which used this missile in 2006, has since acquired even longer range weapons including, persistent reports from the intelligence agencies indicate, Scud missiles.

All of this means that the frequent call to the air raid shelters, and disruption of school or economic activity that were once limited to towns like Sderot in the south of Israel or Qiryat Shmona in the north could now become general through most of the country.

Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, followed by the ouster of the Mubarak government in Egypt has allowed more advanced weapons, including shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to reach the Palestinian Territory. The blockade has eased, allowing distinguished visitors such as the Emir of Qatar or Prime Minister Hisham Qandil of Egypt, who was there on Friday morning, to enter the Gaza Strip.

Following the election of a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt neither Israel nor the United States that could formerly rely on President Hosni Mubarak to maintain the "quarantine" of Gaza in the interests, in their view, of regional security, have been able to hold sway.

One result is the increasing self-confidence of the Hamas government in the territory under the leadership of Ismail Haniya.

Will this sense of independence and strength help or hinder reconciliation with the Palestinians under the secular leadership of Fatah in the West Bank?

The new Egyptian government has tried hard to convince the warring factions that healing this rift is the essential precursor to a meaningful peace process, but the history of this feud between Palestinian factions suggests neither that it will be easy to resolve nor that it helps much when one party feels it has the upper hand.

So those rockets falling in southern Tel Aviv could constitute another grim portent in the Middle East.

Hamas may become less amenable to compromise with Fatah, and the Israelis in their air raid shelters, seeing increasingly well-armed and implacable foes on their borders, could retreat further into a siege mentality.

There are many things about it that have attracted comment from US columnists to the blogosphere: that he oversaw such controversial and costly wars but should ultimately fall on a matter of personal behaviour; that President Barack Obama was not apparently informed until election day that Gen Petraeus was under investigation by the FBI; and that the issue is now drawing in more people, including General John Allen, who replaced Gen Petraeus as the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The inquiry resulted from complaints by a woman that she had received threatening e-mails from Paula Broadwell, Gen Petraeus' biographer and for several months apparently also his lover. The FBI investigation is now moving on to issues such as whether the author had unauthorised access to classified material.

Some have written of the general's vanity, suggesting he liked to be surrounded by admiring staffers, academics and indeed journalists.

Having met and interviewed him several times, I can certainly confirm that he took particular care of his image (for example preferring to be filmed favouring the patch on his right shoulder - the combat one of the 101st Airborne Division, which he commanded during the 2003 invasion of Iraq), and that lately his staff tried hard to discourage challenging lines of questioning, whereas during our earlier meetings he had proven more than happy to tackle whatever we threw at him.

It was during one of these later meetings with Gen Petraeus that he introduced me to Mrs Broadwell, who at that time was working on her book about him and with whom, it emerged last week, he was having an affair.

I will not pretend that I had any great presentiment or intuition about what was going on, but did note that during our off-camera conversations, he and I reflected in a humorous way on the ageing process and how it played out in men.

Gen Petraeus had gone through cancer treatment in 2009 and it is in this context that a friend of his, a fellow general, sought to explain to me today what had happened:

"Almost everyone considered him to be immortal, but he had been shaken by the cancer business and continually deployed for five-and-a-half years."

The same officer concluded that while his friend was right to offer his resignation once the extramarital affair with Ms Broadwell had come to light, that "the president shouldn't have accepted it".

Some reports today suggest that the CIA director did not even himself feel it was a resigning matter, but was persuaded to write the letter by the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.

The head of the wider US intelligence community apparently felt it would not be possible for Gen Petraeus to discipline CIA staff accused of marital indiscretions, if he had shown himself fallible in the same regard.

General Stan McChrystal, Gen Petraeus' predecessor as Nato commander in Kabul, also suffered a public fall from grace in 2010, stepping down after staff members were quoted by Rolling Stone magazine being critical about the Obama administration.

Some used a similar formula at the time, about the president not needing to accept a tendered resignation.

Both generals had been lionised in the US press and in Congress, particularly for reversing the slide to civil war in Iraq.

It is also true to say that many of the commanders, including British as well as American, whom I have spoken to in Iraq and Afghanistan were completely in awe of these two men and their abilities.

As for what they achieved in their attempt to replicate the success of the Iraq surge in Afghanistan, that is a different matter, for many now consider it to have failed.

That two commanders who wielded power of life and death over so many, and were widely praised as soldier-scholars, should fall on issues of PR and an affair is itself a stark measure of the degree to which personal failings that might once have been kept private can now be the decisive factors in professional ruin.

And how serious are the charges that led to their fall? The FBI cleared the CIA boss of any involvement with sending threatening emails, even if he still has serious issues to address with his wife Holly Petraeus.

And an inquiry into Gen McChrystal's conduct towards the Rolling Stone reporter exonerated him of any misconduct.

Some once talked of Gen Petraeus - his physical fitness, charging intellect, and devotion to duty in almost super-human terms. Ultimately though he has proven himself all too fallible.

This debate has mirrored the wider one in the US about whether the pace of withdrawal could go faster still.

Philip Hammond, the UK defence secretary, said recently "it will now be possible to have a significant reduction in force numbers by the end of next year".

However, the key point here is that calls from within Prime Minister David Cameron's Cabinet for these reductions, thought to be around 4,000 of the 9,000 British troops that will be in Afghanistan next summer, to be implemented even faster have not been answered - so far at least.

Lieutenant General Adrian Bradshaw, the British deputy commander of the Nato forces in Afghanistan, confirmed on Wednesday, "the drawdown will happen after next summer's fighting season".

The campaign has followed a rhythm in which insurgent activity tends to slacken by autumn, picking up again in March or April, following the harvest of opium poppies.

Given the general public's pessimism about the Afghan mission, revealed in polls, and its expense, the government is keen to cut back. It is estimated that the campaign there will have cost £20bn by 2014. At current force levels it is running at about £2.5bn a year.

The British force will drop by 500 troops this winter. But deeper cuts cannot be made quickly without exposing the limited capabilities of Afghanistan's own forces.

Military arguments against a more rapid drawdown have centred on the Afghan's inability to perform many operational tasks for themselves. Attempts to organise helicopter squadrons or bomb disposal units capable of dealing with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) have been underway for a few years, but these capabilities are still inadequate.

One crucial area of dependence on Nato is casualty evacuation. Afghans are currently serviced by Nato's bespoke system of helicopter transfer to state of the art trauma facilities such as the hospital at Camp Bastion.

Lt Gen Bradshaw says that a basic Afghan national casualty evacuation system is meant to be operating "by early 2013". However it is hard to see the Afghan forces standing up anything similar to Nato's world class emergency medical facilities in the next few years.

Nato forces will continue the pattern of the last year in reducing their participation in combat operations - a trend that has already played its part in a 40% drop in casualties over the past 12 months - but will find it harder to cut off air, intelligence, and logistic support.

In May this year the Americans and Afghans signed a security agreement that will involve thousands of US service men and women remaining beyond the 2014 deadline. These will include "enablers" making up the shortcomings in Afghan capabilities as well as some special operations forces.

Will the UK strike a similar deal? So far it has committed only to providing some support for future officer training. Could intelligence support or special forces be added to this? Certainly many in Whitehall assume there will be some kind of on-going role in these areas. However that will depend on the British and Afghan governments.

When British combat forces withdrew from Iraq in 2009, diplomats were shocked when they realised that the government in Baghdad did not want any enduring UK training mission to remain. The government of Nouri al-Maliki could not wait to see the back of the Brits.

In the case of Afghanistan there is less hostility on the part of the host government; the real question is whether the UK has the appetite to remain in any significant numbers beyond 2014.

Either way it marked a further intervention in the civil war.

The reason given for taking the Syrian Airbus under F-16 escort to Ankara was that it was carrying weapons. It was flying from Moscow to Damascus, and the Syrian government denounced the move as "piracy".

Now after searching the aircraft, the Turkish government says it has found communications equipment. Walkie talkies perhaps? Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted on Thursday night that the plane had been transporting Russian weapons, but neither claim has yet to be proven.

Under the circumstances, the reaction of Russia's foreign ministry has been muted, saying that it will seek a full explanation from Turkey and denying that it was carrying any weaponry.

Perhaps Russia is operating under that old principle of diplomatic chess that it is rude to interrupt your opponent while he is making a mistake.

There are though theories doing the rounds that the decision of Mr Erdogan's government to detain the plane is part of a wider strategy to de-stabilise the Assad regime.

Turkish airlines on Thursday announced that it considered Syrian airspace unsafe and would fly around it in future, and the chief of staff of the army, General Necdet Ozel, said that if last week's shelling of his country's territory by the Syrian army is repeated, his forces will, "respond more strongly".

Some observers in the Middle East are casting these latest Turkish moves as steps in an attempt to deny Syrian forces control of the border area and its airspace.

It may be that the Turkish government does indeed see them as being helpful to its allies in the Free Syrian Army, but the idea of Turkish artillery and air power creating some sort of liberated zone in the north of Syria is still a long way from being fulfilled.

Mr Erdogan's policy of supporting the anti-Assad forces and working for the overthrow of the Syria regime has caused some controversy in Turkey.

Opponents argue that Turkey does not have the power to determine the outcome in its neighbour's civil war, but could prejudice other important relationships, including with Russia, by taking sides so obviously.

"This incident is the latest bitter fruit of the wrong and biased Syria policy which the [Erdogan] government has been following", Faruk Logoglu, deputy leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, said in response to the detention of the airliner.

Others have argued that aligning so closely with the Free Syrian Army will undermine the Turkish government's ability to mediate any kind of political settlement to the crisis.

The Turkish prime minister appears to be calculating that taking sides will stand him and the country in good stead with millions of Arabs who are angered by the Syrian government's continuing use of force against his own people.

It is a tricky balancing act though, because there will be many Syrians, even in the anti-Assad camp, that will not forget the role that Turkey has played in allowing arms shipments and rebel movements, fuelling the bloodshed in their country.

The scale of it is staggering: tens of thousands of apartments were bought here during the better economic times of the late Nineties and early 2000s, tens of thousands remain unsold, and in other places as you drive further along this Riviera, the outlines of new gated developments have been laid out but the ground remained unbroken as money and consumer confidence dried up.

Mitt Romney says the US has abandoned global leadership and is slipping behind, but does not really believe that the country is in long term decline.

For "Jen", as the CIA analyst who tracked down the al-Qaeda leader is referred to in No Easy Day, a US Navy commando's first-hand account of the raid, it resulted in floods of tears.