In all the major flashpoints of the world – Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and North Korea – Washington is in paralysis where it is not deep in a regressive coma. There is little it can do to force the changes it wants, and whatever it can do is only likely to backfire.

In Afghanistan, after sacrificing national treasure and blood to topple the Taliban regime, some US congressmen are seriously considering inviting the Taliban back in some form of “power sharing”. The implications cannot be good for US policy or pride.

The reason for this drastic prospective U-turn is simply that the US “point man” in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, has been ineffective in facing down rebel elements around the country. Whether these rebel groups are remnants of the Taliban or local tribal factions or (probably) both, Washington is unable to say.

For Kabul, the problem is that the US State Department has given up on differentiating between different rebel ideologies, interests and demands, the Pentagon has given up on bombing them back to the Stone Age, and the White House is just about to give up on Hamid Karzai as the sole alternative to the enemies at the gates.

Things have moved further downhill in Iraq. There is talk in Washington that Bush has given up on backing President Nuri al-Maliki because of – again – an inability to govern.

Yet who can blame Nuri, when Iraq has been rendered ungovernable largely by “coalition forces” and the militias they once courted? So far, nobody has yet mentioned inviting Saddam Hussein back to restore order, which might be the most realistic option yet. Saddam knows a thing or two about putting rebels in their place.

From virtually every conceivable indication on a daily basis, from death counts to refugee accounts, Iraq is getting from very bad to even worse as it rapidly descends a bottomless pit. Official voices in Washington and London have ceased to be optimistic, since even spin can go only so far.

Three days ago in a broadcast interview, President Bush finally admitted that Iraq today might be compared with Vietnam. Until then, the Vietnam comparison with all its pain and colossal humiliation was firmly rejected by every US official from the president down.

In Britain, a week after British army chief Gen Sir Richard Dannatt said occupation troops should withdraw from Iraq because they had become part of the problem, Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded the point. Blair went as far as he could to agree, while splitting and splicing hairs as only he could or would.

Now all that is needed is for another general to admit that the Iraq war had been such a bad mistake that it should never have happened. Then Blair can agree to not disagree with it, through another display of his semantic exercises.

Meanwhile, the Congress-backed Iraq Study Group headed by former secretary of state James Baker has ruled out a victory or democracy in Iraq, recommending a pullout as well as the United States asking Iran and Syria to please help manage Iraq.

No matter what Bush does or does not do with the advice, such a climbdown will look bad for his government and country. It may also embolden Teheran and Damascus on a range of issues, from Iran’s nuclear ambitions to Syria’s regional influence.

And so, after yet more US national treasure and blood had been squandered on Iraq, Washington is considering handing a slice or two of the country to Iran and Syria on an official platter. History would have yet another opportunity to judge the Bush White House and a Rumsfeld Pentagon as the most anti-American in real and substantive terms.

As for North Korea, what else can be said besides similarly bad tidings prevail? Only that these ill tidings may get even worse.

Washington could not stop Pyongyang’s development of a nuclear bomb before, and it cannot stop Pyongyang’s nuclear proliferation now if that is what Kim Jong-Il wants to do. Bush can huff and puff, but cannot blow Kim’s house down if only because political disintegration would worsen nuclear proliferation.

Kim and his comrades used to do the huffing and puffing, with little to show for it by way of real action or achievement. The recent nuclear bomb test changed that, with substantive action and very little bluster to follow.

A government’s Bluster Quotient (or Bullshit Quotient) may be derived from the volume of its rhetoric divided by its capacity for effective action. And in that, Bush’s BQ now far exceeds Kim’s.

Ways must now be found to get the United States to the negotiating table on the North Korean bomb. It used to be the other way around, and may still be for the Western mainstream media.

But Pyongyang had never entirely rejected talks, only making them conditional on ending US sanctions that are seen as unjustified. Washington had earlier rejected direct talks in not wanting to dignify Kim’s regime, and now it refuses to resume six-party talks (together with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia) by lifting those sanctions.

On Thursday, a North Korean general went on record to ask for a resumption of negotiations, be they direct (with the US) or six-party talks. Would Bush agree, or instead lavish more blood and national treasure on another unwinnable war nobody else wants, not even a major ally like Japan?

The decline of the British empire began in the late 19th century, so the US decline through imperial overreach was only a matter of time. The only surprise is that it has come so soon, and for now at least, so rapidly.