In Afghanistan, it is nearly a year since the Nato-led military operation completed the full deployment of its forces, but its effectiveness has been severely hampered by the refusal of many member states - most notably the Germans - to allow their troops to operate in areas where they might be at risk of running into the Taliban.
Consequently, Nato's stated objective of helping the Afghan government to eradicate the country's poppy crop - which provides 92 per cent of the world's heroin supply - has only succeeded in facilitating "a massive increase in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan", to quote the latest UN report on the subject.
Iraq is faring little better, despite the upbeat assessment provided this week by General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces, of the security benefits derived from the recent military surge.
The failure of the Iraqi government to undertake much-needed reforms, such as stamping out rampant ministerial corruption, and the continuing inability of the Iraqi security forces to defend themselves, means that coalition troops will be required to keep the peace - and sustain casualties - long after President George W. Bush has vacated the White House.
In Pakistan, the government of President Pervez Musharraf is on the point of collapse, while in neighbouring Iran, the country's nuclear scientists are forging ahead with the assembly of thousands of centrifuges that can enrich uranium to weapons grade, which by any standard constitutes a terrifying threat to world security, irrespective of what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might tell Channel 4's Jon Snow about not wanting to build an atom bomb.
The worst-case prediction is that Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by 2009 or 2010.
But arguably the most depressing news of all is that, after six years of unremitting conflict, Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terror organisation is as strong today as it was six years ago and retains the ability to carry out terror attacks on a similar scale to those carried out against New York and Washington.
These, at least, are the main conclusions that have been reached by the team of international experts who drafted this year's Strategic Survey for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The 400-page report, published this week, concludes that, for all the efforts made over the past six years, tackling Islamic terrorism and nuclear proliferation - the original objectives of what used to be known as the war on terror - will be even harder next year than it is now.
But can it really be that all the sacrifices of the past six years, the horrendous loss of life, whether on the London Underground or the killing grounds of Basra and Helmand, has been for nothing if, as the experts argue, the world today is a far more dangerous place than it was prior to September 11?
To start with, the suggestion that al-Qa'eda's terror capacity is as potent today as it was in 2001 is questionable. By al-Qa'eda's own admission, the September 11 attacks were a "tactical error" because they provoked the US-led coalition into expelling it and its Taliban hosts from Afghanistan.
The main rump of the terror group is now confined to the inhospitable mountain ranges of north-west Pakistan, where its ability to move, communicate, train, disperse funds and plan attacks is severely limited.
Given the resources that have been thrown at eradicating al-Qa'eda, it is frustrating, to say the least, that the group remains beyond the reach of the West's security forces, but its ability to stage terror attacks is severely limited, not least because the West's security and intelligence agencies have got better at thwarting them.
In Britain, more al-Qa'eda terror plots have been prevented than have been successful, and while the devastation of the July 7 bombings will linger in the memory, just imagine the carnage that would have occurred if bin Laden's lieutenants had succeeded with their plots to blow up the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent or American-bound flights from Heathrow.
The same applies to Europe, where the German authorities earlier this month uncovered a plot to launch suicide attacks against Frankfurt airport, while the tight homeland security restrictions imposed by Washington have protected mainland America from further attacks.
But if the West and its allies have become more adept at disrupting al-Qa'eda's diabolical schemes, that is not to say the overall threat has been diminished.
One of the more sinister aspects of the group's modus operandi is its ability to form new alliances.
Denied access to its more traditional recruiting ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qa'eda has recently changed its focus to North Africa and the Horn of Africa, where it has linked up with indigenous groups of radical Islamicists.
If this trend continues then some form of Western intervention may well be necessary, particularly in East Africa where al-Qa'eda has already left its calling card with the 1998 suicide bomb attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But before such a bold course of action can even be contemplated, the West must first achieve tangible military progress on its other war fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan
