There, emboldened by the withdrawal of US Marines from the Sangin district of Helmand, the paper tells us that insurgents have launched a massive offensive against Afghan forces. As these are threatening to gain the upper hand, the paper goes on to inform us:

The incursion by hundreds of fighters in June sent residents fleeing to neighbouring hamlets by donkey and on foot. It was the first salvo in a massive, ongoing Taliban offensive against Afghan security forces in south-eastern Afghanistan. The increasingly bloody campaign shows the strength of the insurgents, who have been emboldened by the US military withdrawal from the area in May, local residents and Afghan security forces said. The outcome of the fighting in the Sangin district, which includes Sarwan Qala, will be a bellwether for how Afghanistan's national police and army might fare after foreign troops leave the country at the end of the year.

Sangin is critical to both sides, but it was also critical to British forces in 2009, when many lives were being expended. After the British failed to pacify the area, the US Marines stepped in and held the ground. But, as the Independent records, with the Marines pulling out, Afghan forces – as predicted – are failing to cope.

Looking back over ten tumultuous years, and more, one now has to wonder whether any of our foreign policy interventions can be considered successful. One by one, they all seem to be unravelling. A very pertinent question to ask, therefore, is "what is wrong with our foreign policy". Nothing we touch seems to work, and nothing has a lasting effect. Largely, after our intervention, the impression is that things are inestimably worse.

It is hard to draw conclusions from what we observe, though. Either the world has suddenly got a lot more complicated, we are losing our touch when it comes to foreign affairs – or we are getting a distorted viewpoint: things were always this bad.

However, after our failure in Iraq, and a similar disaster now taking shape in Afghanistan, we really do need to think where we are going with foreign policy. The best place to look is here and, try as I might, I cannot see anything inspiring in there. Page 22, for instance – where our "priorities" are set out – is distinctly underwhelming.

Hague's introduction, rather sets the tone. "We will work to resolve the crisis in Ukraine and to press Russia to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of her neighbours", he writes, then adding: "We will press on with our efforts, with key allies, to bring about an end to the conflict in Syria and help end the appalling suffering of the Syrian people".

Interestingly, those issues are getting inexorably linked, but in UK terms we have nothing but failure to report. Perhaps this is because the Ukraine policy is primarily determined by the EU, and we are committed to advancing the British national interest "through an effective EU policy in priority areas, engaging constructively while protecting our national sovereignty".

Apart from the incompatibility of protecting our national sovereignty by advancing the British interest through the EU, the very fact that we are so much reliant on the EU may partly explain our lacklustre performance. This, though, can only be a partial explanation. Much of our failure has to be home grown. And we seem to be nowhere near explaining why.

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