The killing of 10 French troops near Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, and the statement by United States Commander General David McKiernan about the need for significantly more troops to defeat the Taliban insurgency, will again raise concerns about the way the war is being conducted.
Australia's hard power/soft power approach in Oruzgan Province, where it is surgically targeting the Taliban leadership at the same time as improving local infrastructure, seems to be working quite well but it is not being replicated effectively elsewhere in Afghanistan.
There is little doubt that the overall security situation is deteriorating because of a lack of combat troops on the ground. It is generally accepted that to defeat an insurgency you need a ratio of 10 to one.
The Taliban in Afghanistan probably number about 10,000, meaning that it would be necessary to have an International Security Assistance Force of some 100,000 to get on top of the situation. That is very unlikely to happen.
One of the further difficulties of dealing with the (Pashtun) Taliban is that there are more Pashtun in Pakistan than there are in Afghanistan. This gives the Taliban a surge capacity and ability to regenerate when necessary.
Given the troop shortage, the US and international approach is to rely particularly on artillery and airstrikes from aircraft and umanned aerial vehicles.
The main problem with this approach is the collateral killing of innocent civilians, thus creating more local support for the Taliban.
The key to military progress on the ground is a combination of hard power and soft power. This means having appropriate hard power to keep the Taliban in check, while making local arrangements that will make it difficult for external terrorist groups to retain local support.
This may include negotiated outcomes with the Taliban where they have local popular support.
Reliance on any positive developments in Pakistan would be misguided. Pervez Musharraf's resignation as the country's president earlier this week will not make much difference to the security situation. The Zardari/Sharif coalition of convenience will lead to divorce in due course, with the likelihood that the military will eventually step in once again to restore order.
In the meantime, the Pakistan military has no incentive to do anything decisive about the Taliban or al-Qaeda. The Pakistan military is being paid monthly by the US to conduct border operations and doing anything too decisive would kill the cash cow.
At the same time, there is official and public support in Pakistan for the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden is significantly more popular than George W.Bush.
With the continuing deaths of NATO troops in Afghanistan, there will be increasing domestic pressure in Europe to withdraw NATO contingents from the international force. (176 international troops have died in Afghanistan so far this year.) Russia's recent preparedness to use force to safeguard its security interests may accelerate that process. This will leave the US in the position of having to make up the numbers itself if it wants to try to defeat the Taliban.
Realistically, there will always be international sanctuaries for terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, and we may have to accept that containment, covert operations, psychological warfare and targeted assistance to foreign governments are more effective ways of dealing with them than regular military involvement in Muslim lands.
Australian troop involvement will also make home-grown terrorist incidents more likely.
Cricket Australia would be unwise to contemplate any tours of Pakistan while we have Australian troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, simply because of the Taliban's capability to retaliate in Pakistan. The presidential level of security offered does not mean much in a nation where the recent president was lucky to survive three assassination attempts, and the prospective prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007.
Clive Williams is a visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the ANU.