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This is the time of year when we all imagine what the next 12 months will look like. Events have a habit of making fools of us all, but here are the stories that I expect to be looking at in 2010.

European confidence after Copenhagen

As early as January there will be much soul-searching over how Europe was sidelined at Copenhagen. Many of its ideas were picked up, but there will be pressure to regain its leadership role. Will the EU be more influential at the next big meeting in Bonn? First, the divisions within the Union will have to be addressed.

The debt crisis

This is perhaps the biggest fear for Europe. What will happen if a eurozone country can't reduce its deficit or finance its debt? Look at Greece. It has passed an "austerity" budget but believes it can cut its deficit by attacking corruption, tax evasion and waste. Many believe that won't do it. Then what? How far should the EU step in? Could it negotiate a bail-out and would countries like Germany agree to a bail-out?

Watch, too, the Republic of Ireland and Spain. And then there are the sick ecomonies outside the euro.

The recession

How will Europe emerge from the recession? How will it compare to the United States? Expect the Commission to try and enforce competition policy rigorously and to resist any signs of protectionism.

The Lisbon Treaty

Was it worth the eight years of argument and agony? Will the EU be more democratic, more efficient, and more effective on the world stage? The tests start in January with
the Spanish presidency of the EU. Already its foreign minister says that it will be at the service of Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton, the new faces of the EU. There remains a strong suspicion that the big countries don't want these figures to take the limelight. We will know in the next 12 months.

European Parliament hearings

One of the claims for the Lisbon Treaty is that it makes the EU more democratic. Expect MEPs in January to flex their muscles at the confirmation hearings for the new commissioners. It will be interesting to see how they question the foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton.

Identity

Europe will continue to be anxious over its identity, in the face of immigration and the fear that separate unintegrated communities are growing up. Early in the new year France will decide whether to ban the burka. There may be legal challenges in Switzerland to the ban on minarets.

The Tories in Britain

If the Tories win the election (probably in May) how will they act in power towards Europe? How willing will they be to expend capital on trying to wrest back powers from Brussels? Will they regret not being a member of the centre-right EPP bloc and losing influence?

Silvio Berlusconi

2009 was a horrible year for the Italian prime minister. Will he bounce back and will Italy become dangerously divided?

The EU budget

It grew again last year, but countries may resist paying more when they are busy paying down their debt. Expect scrutiny of EU spending and an argument once again over the dominant slice of the budget taken by the Common Agricultural Policy.

Energy

Europe will watch the Ukrainian elections anxiously to see if instability leads to another crisis with Russia and an interruption in gas supplies.

The environment

Finally, how will we judge whether Europe is serious about managing the environment? My pick is the bluefin tuna. That may be the litmus test of how serious the EU is in protecting species under threat.

I will take a break until 3 January, unless events intervene.To those who have enjoyed my blog: Thank you. To those who have disagreed: We will all have another chance to debate further in 2010. Happy New Year!

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• - What's this?

Imagine if you believe you have had the smart ideas, that you have set the agenda, that you are leading by example, that you are defining the future and at the defining moment, when all your hard work should bear fruit, the door is shut in your face. You think it is almost your party but you are stopped at the rope line.

Others who you never imagined were even players are being waved into the inner sanctum. A deal is being done and you are not invited.

Some say this was Europe's fate in Copenhagen. To be "snubbed", "bypassed", "sidelined". All those words have been used.

In the final hours of a chaotic and exhausting meeting is drawn up. The United States is there. So too China. They are the big two and the chief carbon emitters. Also present: Brazil, India and South Africa. Powerful emerging nations and a new world order.

As for Europe, the world's biggest trading bloc - they get a text message.

The Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, current holder of the EU presidency, learns about the accord on his mobile phone. He is still negotiating, but the real business has been done elsewhere. He senses that President Obama had been desperate to wrap the summit up and muses whether it was because "there was a snowstorm coming" towards Washington.

Some European leaders felt they ended up as the rubber-stampers of the accord and not its architects.

There is an element of caricature here. Some of Europe's leaders were very active in Copenhagen. Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy worked tirelessly to get a deal and the British prime minister has scarcely been able to hide his frustration at the summit's chaos. Certainly British officials had influence on the final outcome but, even so, the sense of being on the outside remains.

Spool back to some recent . At the last one, while Copenhagen was in session, I remember being told that the new money that Europe had pledged to help developing nations in the short term (before 2012) would lead to a breakthrough. It would demonstrate that the rich world would pay to reduce the global impact of climate change. This was a "show the money" moment. I was told that Europe's offer would persuade the poorer countries that down the road many more billions would come their way. Gordon Brown was bullish. Europe and the UK was leading by example, he believed.

Then go back further to another council. European leaders believed they were setting an example by agreeing that by 2020 the developing world would need 100bn euros to adapt to climate change. Early on they had committed the EU to cutting emissions by 20% by 2020. If others joined in it would move to 30%. The message was that on climate change Europe was leading the world.

Here are more questions than answers. Did Europe misjudge its influence? In Copenhagen should it have made a larger offer to cut emissions, to create momentum? Would it have made a difference? Was Europe's hand weakened because it was masking deep divisions among its nation states? Why does the EU not have the stronger voice it so obviously craves?

Occasionally a still photograph gives an insight that moving pictures do not. It happened in Copenhagen. It is a group picture. To the right is Barack Obama. To his left is Gordon Brown, bent over a piece of paper. He appears to be amending a text. To Obama's left is Sarkozy. Across from them is Chancellor Merkel. To her side is Jose Manuel Barroso. Fredrik Reinfeldt is there too. The meeting appears informal and spontaneous. What struck me was that these were Europe's power-players. As always the big three were there: Germany, France and the UK. Sitting alongside was the President of the Commission and the leader of the country that holds the rotating presidency. Now it may be too soon after the Lisbon Treaty was signed to expect to see any difference. But this question will be returned to time and again in 2010. Will , be in the frame or will Europe's big beasts continue as the face of Europe?

Europe is disappointed at the outcome of the summit in Copenhagen. Some believe, however, that it is a step along the road to a binding global agreement. Attention moves to a meeting in Bonn in the late spring. How will Europe approach this? How will it settle its differences and how will it ensure it remains at the table when the deal is done? It will be another test for Europe's ambitions.

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• - What's this?

The figure "$100bn" slips easily off the tongue. It is headline-catching. If there is a that figure may have helped break the deadlock. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States backed this vast fund to help the poorer countries adapt and to counter climate change.

While $100bn is big money, others had bigger figures in mind. The EU had suggested that $150bn would be needed each year by 2020 to help the developing world.
Some of the poorer nations wanted even more, perhaps $600bn.

These figures can only be estimates. No government or international agency can accurately cost the effects of climate change. They are guesses in the dark.
Yet $100bn would represent the biggest transfer of money from the rich to the developing world for a single issue. It is not precisely costed or matched against forthcoming projects or divided between countries. It is simply the price to get the developing world to agree to limit its emissions. It is a bigger figure than the total value of all development aid this year.

Yet history suggests it is wise to be wary of big figures. Firstly, where will the money come from? The United States is likely to chip in 20%. The EU has suggested its contribution will be somewhere between 22bn and 50bn euros. Now that is a wide gap. European countries have not decided which of them will pay what. Some eastern European countries are resisting making commitments when they are struggling to contain carbon emissions themselves.

Then there is the unsettled question of where this money will come from. There will be a divide between public funding and private sources. The US indicates that perhaps as much as 30% of its contribution will come from private sources. But which private sources and what will be their interest in contributing to such a fund?

The recent record of commitments made at summits being honoured is not good. I attended an emergency meeting in Jakarta after the Asian summit. Money was promised and leaders felt good. Many of the promises were not honoured.

In 2005 the G20 countries promised to raise aid for Africa by about $30bn a year. It still has not happened. And rich countries are having to pay down their debts and raise taxes. ( reports that in the United States there is broad opposition to spending taxpayer's money to encourage the developing world to curtail its emissions).

Many other questions follow: What are the projects that will get priority funding? Who will determine which country gets what? What is the formula? Who will ensure the money is spent wisely? Who will hold the rich countries to their pledges?

In the short-term there is a proposed $10bn fast-track fund to help poorer countries deal with climate change problems between now and 2012. How that money will be spent also remains unclear.

What the big figures represent is guilt and recognition that for decades the rich world has been harming and warming the planet. They may be fuzzy figures, but they may just have persuaded the developing world that the West will carry the burden for cleaning up the planet.

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Catherine Ashton, the EU's new foreign policy chief, today set out her ambitions. In she said that her job was to "make our voice stronger" on the world stage. She also extolled the virtues of "quiet diplomacy".

Few public figures are allowed to settle in quietly and Catherine Ashton will be no exception.

Firstly, in January, she faces a grilling by members of All the indications are that it will be a tough session with searching questions about her inexperience in foreign affairs. She cannot afford to emerge weakened from this questioning because of the belief that she was a compromise candidate.

Secondly, it is worth picking up on the doubts that are already out there. In the Polish paper Jacek Pawlicki writes of the risks to Catherine Ashton in an early crisis. He thinks it could come as early as January when Moscow and Kiev fall out once again over energy payments and Europe risks some of its homes going cold. In that scenario he says that "neither (Russian) Prime Minister Putin, nor President Medvedev will want to receive her because they consider her to be a too low-ranking official".

That may be too harsh and even untrue, but the underlying question remains valid. If supplies are cut off who will take the lead in negotiations? Will it be Catherine Ashton, representing Europe's foreign ministers, or will the call that matters come from German Chancellor Angela Merkel?

Then there is which says that Europe has been "uncertain and meandering" since establishing its new posts. It quotes an un-named European ambassador who refers to the new President of the European Council and the foreign policy chief as "garden gnomes".

This may be little more than unsourced back-chat but what it tells you is that the new faces of Europe will have to prove themselves, to demonstrate that they are figures of substance.

Sometime in early February, Catherine Ashton is expected to visit Jerusalem. Even experienced diplomats tread carefully here where words and nuances can have immediate impact.

One of the tests she applies to the new role is that Europe speaks with a more "coherent" voice. Beyond calling for the Palestinians to return to negotiations and for the Israelis to cease settlements in the West Bank will she be able to convey that Europe has a "coherent" policy on the Middle East that, however supportive of American efforts, is distinctive from them?

Over Afghanistan the reality was that Europe had to wait until President Barack Obama had decided what his policy would be. Then different countries gave varying responses to the American surge. France and Germany won't make up their minds until the end of January.

Thirdly, it will be difficult to change the reality of big states and how they exercise power. On some of the most sensitive issues, like Iran and its nuclear ambitions, France speaks boldly and with the clearest voice.

In Copenhagen, again, it is France and Britain who have been holding talks with Ethiopia to try and break a deadlock. Everyone knows that there are major differences between the member states over how to pay for combating climate change. Gordon Brown has gone it alone in setting out his ambitions for halving greenhouse gases in the UK.

Now none of this may matter except for the fact that the EU is about to build a new diplomatic service with thousands of posts. Catherine Ashton wants it to be the "pride of Europe" but the European tax-payers will want convincing that it is worth paying for as discussions get under way about the EU's budget. Is the European External Action Service necessary or is it another diplomatic layer on top of that run by the nation states?

Some of the burden of whether the Lisbon Treaty has made the European Union a more effective and powerful voice in the world will fall on the shoulders of Catherine Ashton.

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I am returning to Europe from a few days away. At the weekend I was travelling on the New York subway and in the underground world where all eyes avoid each other a man with a very loud booming voice began talking about the hungry. He was collecting money and pointed out that in this holiday season thousands would be dependent on charity. Like with most metros, subways and undergrounds he got few takers.

On Fifth Avenue volunteers from the Salvation Army stand outside most of the big stores. I spoke briefly to one woman who said the food banks had never been in such demand and in danger of running out.

A few more conversations filled in the picture. One in eight Americans and one in four US children are fed with the help of food stamps. The US Department of Agriculture reckons that one in six Americans either went hungry or had insufficient food in 2008. There are nearly 700,000 homeless people. It can remain true that if you lose your job you lose your home.

Now I mention this because you will not find such dramatic figures anywhere in Europe. The safety nets are part of the social contract and most Europeans would not want the harsher world of the United States. So, when you travel around Europe, you can escape noticing we are in recession. The pain is less than in the United States. Many Europeans take satisfaction in this.

But as the world emerges from the recession another argument will start. Is it the European or American model that will create new jobs quicker, that will produce the greater number of start-up companies, that will more enthusiastically embrace the new technologies, that will be better prepared to compete in the global market?

The answers cannot be known yet, but in the months ahead I will be looking at how Europe, with its safety nets, bounces back.

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• - What's this?

US President Barack Obama walked into Oslo's City Hall to long applause. He smiled cautiously, knowing that in the world-wide audience there were sceptics. For many the had come too soon, too early in his presidency. It was a prize for good intentions.

Mr Obama addressed those doubts in the first minutes of his lecture. He accepted that his getting the prize had caused controversy. "In part, this was because I am at the beginning and not the end of my labours," he said.

He went on to accept that compared to some of the giants of history who had received the award before - like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela - "my accomplishments are slight."

He also knew that for some there was a contradiction in accepting a peace prize when he has just ordered another 30,000 troops to deploy to Afghanistan. He told his audience that he was a commander-in-chief in the midst of war. In a speech that was about war and peace "I face the world as it is and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," he said. "For make no mistake, evil does exist in the world."

Mr Obama then marked out what he considers to be the major difference between his administration and that of President Bush. He insisted that America must follow international agreements.

"America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves," he said. He then reverted to a theme that I had heard often during his election campaign. "We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend," he said.

Introducing Mr Obama, the chairman of the Nobel committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, had praised the new president's commitment to oppose torture and to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. That has not happened yet. Today, here was a president re-affirming all the idealism of his campaign while tempering them with the reality of power.

Earlier in the day, he had said that if he was successful some of the criticism would subside but if he was not "all the praise in the world and the awards in the world won't disguise that fact". Outside the president's hotel were small groups of people demanding that Mr Obama earn his prize. For them, the test will be the Copenhagen summit next week and the pledges made by the United States. Others were demanding an end to the war in Afghanistan.

It was a sober, cautious president who insisted on the one hand that the "instruments of war have a role to play in preserving the peace" while saying that "war itself is never glorious and we must never trumpet it as such".

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In 1938 when Hitler annexed Austria, the League of Nations (the forerunner to the UN) was debating the standardisation of level-crossings. Not surprisingly the League collapsed into irrelevance as war spread. One of the early exponents of a body like the League of Nations was the American President Woodrow Wilson. He had his fourteen points of peace, which included a League of Nations, to prevent another Great War.

For his work he got the Nobel Peace Prize. But the Treaty of Versailles which set up the League paved the way for World War II. History can be ruthless with good intentions.

President Obama has also got the peace prize for good intentions - but for ones that cannot be judged. It was an award for the ideals he wrapped into campaign speech-making. He was nominated a mere 12 days after his inauguration. It was also a prize for not being someone else - George W Bush. The White House, in many European eyes, no longer had a sheriff who acted alone, but a leader who offered partnership. The Peace Prize award was, if you like, a political endorsement from Europe.

When the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, woke the President at 6.30 in the morning to tell him of the prize he may have had misgivings. He could not have wanted it. For a prize comes with judgements and assessments. And for him this is far too early. It enabled his critics back home to say he has achieved nothing, nada.

It also encouraged a rush to judgement. The president today is a different figure to last January. He has been shaped by the reality of power. As the old saying goes "you campaign in poetry and govern in prose".

The president is a Peace Prize winner who has just committed a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. He offered Iran dialogue but has been snubbed. There is scant progress in the Middle East. Guantanamo Bay remains open.

It would be wrong, however, to say he has achieved nothing. The mere fact of his election was an achievement. An African-American in the White House broke the shackles of history. He sold the audacity of hope and drew in large crowds, many of whom had been alienated from politics.

The award was for a vision; his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between people". So those who nominated him will have liked his speech in Cairo offering a bridge between the West and Islam. They will have welcomed his decision to go to the final sessions of the Copenhagen summit, when America's leadership will be in the spotlight. They may well agree with the singer Bono, that Obama deserves his prize for his commitment to end global poverty.

So what can the president say when he comes here to Oslo. He has to be humble. He has to explain why he accepted this award so early in his presidency. He may well say, again, that there is no alternative to nations working together to solve the world's problems and that, in this, America will be a partner.

But, as with Woodrow Wilson, events can undermine the best intentions and dreams.

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Watch the Republic of Ireland. Mark it in your diary. Take a moment on 9 December to watch a bust country in its moment of reckoning.

Not so long ago there were more Mercedes per head of population in Ireland than in Germany. That was then. That was when the Celtic Tiger prowled with pride. Now its people talk of a "bedraggled alley cat".

The reckoning comes in the form of a budget which will be the harshest in Ireland's 88-year history. Who will pay? The unemployed, parents with young children, the jobless young, the public sector. In times past these were the untouchables. It was central to the social contract in most European countries that the most vulnerable would be protected. Not just in Ireland the unthinkable is being considered.

Why? Ireland's foreign debts total more than 800% of its GDP. Next year it will have to borrow 12% of its national output. It needs to find nearly £4bn in savings.

So the word is that a savage budget will come. The expectation is that there will be a 4% cut in social welfare payments, a 9% cut in child benefits, a cut in dole payments to those under 23, a 6% cut in public sector pay. Only pensions will be untouched.

For a family with two children they could lose 360 euros (£327) a year. Tough at any time. Tough when jobs are so scarce.

There have been public sector strikes already. Even the police are considering industrial action. The government has tried to share the pain. The cabinet has taken a pay cut. The Prime Minister, Brian Cowen, is set to see nearly 60,000 euros lopped off what he earns. Higher-paying civil servants will take a higher percentage cut.

And budget cuts carry risks. The General Secretary of , John Monks, said the cuts could "choke off" the recovery and cause unemployment to rise.

Watch Ireland because other countries may follow. Greece needs to borrow $70bn (£43bn) next year. Spain teeters on the edge. And then there is the UK.
Now it so happens that the British Chancellor Alistair Darling will be giving his pre-budget report on the same day as the Irish budget. Will Britain, not now but in the future, face an Irish day of reckoning? opined today that a million public sector jobs in the UK, including frontline roles in the NHS and the police, must be axed if the government is to cut its deficit. That is not a platform that any party will go into an election with. But these are times when the unthinkable is being thought.

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• - What's this?

Political leaders like success. It can rub off on them. They are drawn to the spotlight, to the banks of cameras that circle international events. They want to be in the "family photo" that shows the people back home that they were there when history was made.

It follows that they do not want to turn up and leave empty-handed. They do not want to be associated with failure. It makes for bad headlines. As more leaders have committed to attending the so hopes of a deal have risen too. As more heads of government promise to attend, others are drawn in. We are reaching the point where few will want to stay away.

US President Obama has He was to have dropped-by this week en route to receiving the peace prize in Oslo. It would have amounted to a warm embrace and little more. He realised there was a danger that the US, the world's largest carbon emitter, would have been isolated. By attending the final two days, all the pressure will be on to sign the strongest deal.

The shape of the agreement is already clear. The world will commit itself to reducing greenhouse gases to prevent global temperatures rising two degrees which many scientists believe would be catastrophic. There will be pledges-a-plenty to cut emissions by 2050 and before but, at this stage, they are likely to be non-binding.

The second part of the deal will be to agree that these cuts are only possible if the rich countries give aid to the developing countries to help them reduce emissions even as they expand their industries.

What almost certainly will not happen is for an internationally legally binding treaty, one of the original hopes for the Copenhagen summit. Some, like British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hope that such an agreement will follow within six months.

Even as the curtain is raised on Copenhagen one can sense the pattern of things. The pledges are coming in. President Zuma of South Africa said he would cut emissions by 42% by 2025. It was unclear what the baseline for those cuts would be, but the offer was conditional on support from the international community and "in particular, money". It comes down to: "You pay, we cut."

Then listen to Yes, he says, we can protect the rain forests if rich countries pay the price. The developing world sees in Copenhagen an opportunity for a transfer of funds and technology, so they want a legally-binding agreement and money on the table.

The pledges may be easier than the money. Even the EU, which has prided itself on being at the forefront of fighting climate change, has struggled to agree figures. It has stated that by 2020 100bn euros will be needed to help the developing world adapt. There is a promise that the EU "will assume its share" but there is no agreement as to what tax-payers will end up funding. There is the suggestion of somewhere between 22bn and 50bn euros. That is a wide gap. And then it has finally to be agreed who pays what and on what basis.

Some eastern European countries like Poland argue that they are struggling to reduce their emissions as it is and that they should be helped as much as the poorer countries.

Politicians find it easy to make financial pledges that extend in to the long-term future when, most likely, they'll no longer be in power. The reality is that many economies are heavily in debt and need to reduce public spending. It will be a tough sell to tell tax-payers the true costs of fighting climate change. However most environmentalists will argue that there can be no agreement without money.

Copenhagen also cannot be a success without the United States. President Obama has put a target on the table, of cutting emissions by 17% over the next 10 years. The international community will be looking for him to do more, yet he faces a sceptical Congress back home and a business community most reluctant to take on further costs as they struggle to emerge from the recession.

Chancellor Merkel of Germany compared the importance of climate change to that of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Other leaders have invested heavily in getting agreement. Copenhagen will surely deliver a world-wide commitment to fight global warming but the hard part, the money, the targets and how it all will be enforced may lie in the future.

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US President Barack Obama, in his threw down a challenge to Europe. He made it clear this was "not just America's war". He said this was not simply a test of Nato's credibility. What was at stake, Mr Obama said, was "the common security of the world". He was confident of "substantial increases in the contributions" of America's allies.

Despite knowing what Mr Obama would ask, Europe has played for time. The Germans said they would not decide about boosting troop levels until after an international conference next month.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was flattering about Mr Obama's speech, which he said was "courageous", but there was no mention of extra forces. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said: "For the moment there's no need for increasing the number of troops."

The Belgians said they would only look at what was possible "when the request was made in concrete terms".

The Italians will send more troops but have not been specific. Poland is considering sending a few hundred more.

Nato said it was expecting some pledges right away, and more at a later stage.

Over the next few days, the US will deploy its diplomatic muscle to get at least 5,000 extra troops out of Europe.

If, however, those pledges are not forthcoming it will damage Washington's relationship with some of its European allies. For the Obama administration this is one moment when the credibility of its European partners is on the line.

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Europe never disguised its enthusiasm for President Obama. It serenaded him as a candidate and celebrated his victory. His popularity ratings were higher in Europe than at home.

Then came the cold shower of power. Many of the old problems did not simply disappear with George Bush to Texas. And like presidents before him, Obama - at a critical moment in his presidency - is looking to Europe for help.

Afghanistan has become Obama's war. Soon the number of American troops there will be three times what he inherited. He has taken ownership of the conflict. the American people, however, are weary and unconvinced. Victory is elusive and lurking in the memory is the quagmire of Vietnam.

Europe made a large commitment to Afghanistan. More than 30,000 of its troops are there, although nearly a third come from Britain. Considering the historical reluctance to deploy to conflict areas the numbers were significant. Afghanistan was easier to sell to voters than Iraq. The mission was supported by a UN mandate. Afghanistan's links to the 9/11 attacks were clear, whereas they did not exist in Iraq. So all 26 Nato members joined the mission although by far the largest number of casualties have been suffered by the US, Britain and Canada.

During the past six months support for the war in Afghanistan has ebbed away in Europe. The conflict is perceived as not going well. There is no end in sight. The recent election looked rigged. There is widespread corruption and President Karzai has some ruthless warlords as allies. Women's rights, if anything, have taken a step backwards.So, just a short time ago, the mood in Europe turned towards scaling back or even pulling out.

President Sarkozy captured that mood when he said "not a [French] soldier more" would be sent. However the Obama administration has concluded, after a long and painstaking review, that they cannot walk away. Gen Stanley McChrystal made it clear that without extra troops the mission would "likely result in failure". That would not just be an American failure, it would be a failure for Nato and Europe.

For months Europe has had to wait while President Obama decides. Now he is calling. Brown, Sarkozy, Rasmussen et al are getting the presidential squeeze.

Obama would like 10,000 more troops from Europe. He may get just over 5,000. That would be a victory of sorts, because any extra troops represents a fresh commitment, just when some countries like Canada and the Netherlands have set dates to withdraw.

So in the next few days the president's special representative to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, will be heading to Brussels. Hillary Clinton and Gen McChrystal will be at Nato headquarters by the end of the week.

Britain has already said it will send 500 more troops. There may be pressure to add to that number. Despite President Sarkozy's reluctance, Paris may support sending another 1,000 troops, but to work as trainers. The French papers report an aide to President Sarkozy as saying "we're not saying 'no' to Obama". Italy has indicated it will increase its commitment. Poland may do so as well. The government there is not enthusiastic, but helping Nato is seen as enhancing Poland's long-term security.

So in the coming days President Obama will come calling and learn a lot more about the transatlantic relationship.

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