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Politicians don't like hypothetical questions from journalists - and often I can see their point. But what are we to make of Gordon Brown's statement on Trident which is an answer to a hypothetical question that nobody had even asked?

The Prime Minister has suggested that Britain might reduce its nuclear forces "as part of an agreement by non nuclear states to renounce them". The idea is that the Trident submarine fleet might be reduced from four to three boats.

This new offer comes in the context of UN talks on nuclear non-proliferation. Emerging atomic powers have long complained that those already in the club have never taken seriously their commitment under the Non Proliferation Treaty to work for the abolition of their own arsenals.

So in essence, the British offer, conditional upon others moving at the same time, is to take a step in the direction of cutting its submarine force, in the hope of playing its role in improving global karma. Just as those who believe in the UK having nuclear weapons have often talked about 'sharing the burden' of ownership with the US, so the idea of joining them in disarming seems sensible enough.

How likely is it that North Korea or Iran are really going to be influenced by the UK example? It is also important to remember that a number of the emerging nuclear powers that might worry this country are outside the non-proliferation regime anyway.

Even so, the idea of renewing the treaty and of the US and Russia negotiating further cuts in their arsenal is not pie in the sky. But the UK offer is a conditional one. It remains hypothetical for the moment.

At home, Mr Brown's offer was welcomed by the Conservatives. They've pointed out that a 2006 government paper on replacing Trident had already suggested that the idea of a three boat fleet rather than a four boat one was being actively investigated.

Many in the UK will see the New York offer in terms of domestic political and budgetary struggles. Everybody knows there will be pressure to cut Trident in the Defence Review which is expected to be underway by the middle of next year.

This will not be a choice between having the bomb or not - as some backers of Trident such as the former defence secretary, John Hutton, appear to suggest. It will be a choice between different nuclear systems, and one about the degree of strategic risk the UK is willing to accept if it moves away from a four boat Trident replacement. All of these options, from cutting one submarine to opting for a different nuclear system such as cruise missiles launched from hunter-killer submarines, will be cheaper than the current one.

Will the public spending climate be so dire by next year that Britain will cut back its nuclear forces even if there is no agreement on renewing the Non Proliferation Treaty? I have my suspicions - but for the moment I'm not going to answer a hypothetical question.

The standard conservative line on President Barack Obama's foreign policy is that he is a weak pushover. One of the usual liberal ripostes is better that the USA have a leader who tries to gain agreement among allies that a unilateralist who goes around the world picking fights.

In between these polarised views, there have been steps by the new administration that can be cited by either side in the debate. Establishing diplomatic ties with Syria, reaching out to Iran, seeking deep cuts in nuclear weapons with Russia, conciliating China, or insisting that Israel adhere to its promise under the international road map to stop building settlements in the occupied territories.

So far both sides in this argument tend to set these decisions in the context of the president's personality or political philosophy. The real weakness though in American foreign policy now derives from economics.

Whether the US had elected Obama or McCain some large scale belt tightening was inevitable in the wake of the financial crisis. The Pentagon in particular was bound to feel the pinch.

President Obama kept Robert Gates, the Bush administration's defence chief, in place and John McCain probably would have done too. The need to trim hundreds of billions out of defence spending is the most obvious symptom of America's weakness.

The US relationship with Russia has been soothed by the need to cut strategic nuclear programmes and missile defence ones - both horribly expensive. China too can read the writing on the wall, that the US no longer feels it can afford strategic competition.

As the US tries to stimulate its own economy and bail out Wall Street, the growing mountain of national debt cuts the ground from aid programmes - soft power as well as hard. The White House has characterised its policy as multi-lateralist but so far multi-polar might be a better word.

Why multi-polar? Because in these difficult economic times western democracies are very reluctant to accept American leadership, for example on Afghanistan. The scope for multi-lateralism is strictly limited.

On the other hand, big powers such as China and Russia with their UN Security Council veto, are being conciliated. As the G20 becomes more important in international economic affairs, countries like India and Brazil are also gaining in status.

In the multi-polar world, America must concede influence in order to reach an international consensus on anything from Iran, to climate change or global finance. It looks less like a multi-lateral Woodstock and more like the 19th Century world of ruthless realpolitik.

So Poland or the Czech republic - both of which had agreed to accept US missile interceptors until the programme was shelved last week - got trampled as Washington changed course to save money and conciliate Moscow. Traditional US allies like South Korea or Taiwan can expect short shrift too, as the US cedes growing regional influence to China.

The only real alternative to this multi-polar, diminished US was the path of diplomatic isolation and maintaining huge debt-funded military programmes - the Bush alternative in other words.

As last year's election emphatically showed, the American public had lost its appetite for that option. So it's easy to portray the new administration as weak, but really it simply has to accept the waning power of the US.

The latest vote counts from Kabul show that President Hamid Karzai has now apparently got a large enough vote to prevent a second round of voting. But instead of providing the kind of closure that many might have hoped for, a flawed election process has now opened the way for months of political haggling and brinkmanship.

The United States and United Nations, among others, are pushing for a rigorous investigation of hundreds of reported irregularities.

Does the president owe the re-election to hundreds of thousands of questionable votes?

Some complaints point to districts where almost nobody voted for his rivals, others to ballot boxes being stuffed with votes without any voters having gone to the trouble of visiting the polling station.

Inevitably there are quite a few observers who believe the US and others will make a fuss because some of the rigging has been brazen, and they feel their public demands such protests, but that ultimately they will baulk at forcing Mr Karzai from power.

The vote will thus have gone ahead at great cost in lives and money but reassured nobody that the president has an authoritative new mandate.

It might be worth asking who, on the international side in particular, thought pressing ahead with this election was a good idea?

Back in February I wrote that the question of whether or not to hold it was an "elephant in the room" for the new Obama team.

Apparently key civilians like Richard Holbrooke and his British counterpart Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles favoured the poll, but some of the military figures like General David Petraeus did not.

Clearly there would have been a political cost to abandoning the exercise - the Taliban would doubtless have crowed that the president was afraid to hold it.

If however the authorities had cited the security situation for a postponement of the election, and convened a Loya Jirga - a grand assembly of local leaders of the type that originally confirmed the president in power - to confirm him in office for two years then it might well have been better for all concerned.

Instead we face months of investigation of the irregularities, with the choice of deposing Mr Karzai or leaving him in power as a damaged president at the end of it.