MRS MAY MUST NOT SEND ONE MORE BRITISH SOLDIER...

Prime minister theresa may has returned from holiday to face a wholly unwelcome dilemma. three years after Britain withdrew all but a few hundred of its troops from Afghanistan after fighting a long, unsuccessful campaign, U.s. President Donald trump wants some of them back.

this wild, unruly country is threatened with collapse — and a return to rule by the taliban, who allowed it to serve as the base for Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorists.

the Kabul government controls barely half its nominal territory, with the other half either disputed or lost to the insurgents.

Former American soldier and deputy nato representative in Kabul, mark Jacobson, calls it ‘a relative certainty that the Afghan government will eventually fall’.

Less than two years ago, trump tweeted: ‘We have wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure in Afghanistan — let’s get out!’ An important part of his 2016 election pitch to the American people was disengagement from futile foreign wars.

today, however, with his administration embattled, he is tormented by a different pledge — to make America a winner abroad, as his predecessor Barack Obama did not.

moreover, following a wave of departures of personal loyalists from his entourage, the trump team is now dominated by generals — Jim mattis as secretary for defence, John Kelly as White House chief of staff and H. r. mcmaster as national security adviser. All of them believe it is a vital Western interest to keep Afghanistan out of the hands of muslim extremists.

thus, on monday night, the President delivered a nationwide TV address in which he explained why — though he did not express himself like this — he proposes to do a policy somersault, and dispatch another 4,000 U.s. combat troops to Afghanistan, joining 8,400 already in the country, most fulfilling advisory and training functions.

since trump has made it a big pitch of his presidency to demand that America’s allies contribute more to Western security, and explicitly to nato, he is calling on others, including Britain, to take up their share of the burden of troop reinforcements.

At a time when mrs may is deeply anxious to secure American goodwill amid the looming prospect of Brexit, she will find it hard to say no, knowing that refusal will at best irritate, at worst anger Washington.

Yet i believe she should decline. seven years ago, the Americans had 100,000 troops fighting the taliban, the British 11,000, other nato members more. they failed to beat them then; there seems no reason to suppose they can beat them now.

President trump, on monday night, excused his new commitment by telling Americans that the troops would not be sent to do nation-building, but instead to focus on ‘killing terrorists’.

this was the argument used by President George W. Bush for going into iraq in 2003, by Prime minister tony Blair for supporting him, and later by both men and by President Obama for intervention in Afghanistan. they said that by fighting murderous dictators and muslim extremists in faraway places, we saved ourselves from having to fight them at home.

Yet we have had plenty of terrorism ever since, none of which has come from iraq, Afghanistan or syria. Western nations find themselves breeding jihadis in alarming numbers at home, or importing them from north Africa and other places where not a single Western soldier has set foot.

MOreOVer, among the foremost grievances cited by extremist websites are the actions of Western troops in muslim countries, and of course israelis in the occupied Palestinian territories. Far from suppressing terrorists by fighting them far afield, we find that we have been helping them justify their atrocities against our own people.

meanwhile, the failure of the Afghan government to persuade its own soldiers to combat the taliban with any conviction, despite more than a decade of Western training, and huge deliveries of weapons and equipment, makes it hard to believe that more of the same will change anything.

the taliban lack Western military advisers, weapons, vehicles and air support, yet prosper on the battlefield. this can only be a consequence of superior motivation and local backing, which no Western troop reinforcements can counter.

On paper, the Kabul government has 165,000 regular troops and 148,000 paramilitaries. Last year 6,800 of these men were killed — the highest figure since the war began, three times total American casualties in 16 years of fighting. thousands desert every month, more than a few of them to join the taliban. Corruption and incompetence are endemic.

Afghan president Ashraf Ghani is an intelligent, committed, rather impressive figure. But he is attempting to run an approximation of a Western democracy in a tribal society where local warlords have always called the shots. the Afghan treatment of their women is monstrous, many of their customs and attitudes barbaric.

Yet our efforts to change them have got nowhere. tony Blair’s crusade to use troops to stamp out the opium trade in Helmand province ended in a dramatic surge of poppy-growing, a humiliation for the British Army whose commanders should never have accepted the Helmand assignment, and a tragic procession of 456 British coffins coming home through Wootton Bassett.

retired General simon mayall, who fulfilled senior roles in Afghan strategy-making almost a decade ago, asserted yesterday that even a few extra British troops could ‘make a big difference to the confidence and competence of the Afghan security forces’.

i have great respect for mayall, but find it impossible to agree with him on this.

Like his American counterparts who are driving the commitment to reinforce nato, he can hardly fail to be influenced by all the cash spent, the lives lost. the soldiers cannot bear to feel that it was all for nothing.

i am writing a book about America’s Vietnam agony, half a century ago. in the later stages of that war, the same factors came into play: generals and politicians alike hated to acknowledge failure.

in October 1972, President richard nixon gnashed his teeth at the prospect of cutting a deal with the north Vietnamese communists that left them almost assured of victory.

He told his national security adviser Henry Kissinger: ‘i have determined that i am not going to sit here and preside over 55,000 American dead for a defeat.’

Yet in the end he bit the bullet, and authorised Kissinger to settle with Le Duc tho.

What is almost certain is that, had nixon decided differently and tried to fight on in Vietnam, there would merely have been more corpses for the same outcome.

ADeCADe ago, i listened to Colonel H.r. mcmaster — as he was then — describe his armoured cavalry regiment’s battlefield successes in iraq, then conclude sadly: ‘the problem was, there was nothing to join up to.’

He meant that there was no credible local iraqi governance. if i were talking to him now, i would say: ‘isn’t it still the same story, H.r.? in Afghanistan there is nothing to join up to.’

While trump has been wrong about almost everything else he has tried to do in the White House, he was right to promise to extricate America from its futile foreign wars, in which we, the British, have chosen to be complicit. He now seems mistaken to let his generals persuade him differently.

if theresa may agrees to send more British troops, this will be solely in pursuit of the political objective of appeasing Washington, not because they can change outcomes in Afghanistan.

the West has lost there, and should draw stumps.