So, David Cameron, like Tony Blair before him, pledges to help the US in the Middle East. We know that that sort of intervention is unlikely to end well. It would also be unlikely that the UN would ever agree to sanction any military action. Russia and China would just block it. So the option would be to have another Iraq, without properly defined objectives and potentially make a horrendous situation even worse.

I don’t always agree with Paddy, but he’s always my first port of call on foreign affairs. He’s been writing for the Independent about what should happen next and what is the best way to tackle the growing ISIS problem. And if you are under any illusion about life under ISIS, have a look at how they treat women and gay people.

Paddy reckons we’ve been too careless, too quick to grab the guns instead of quietly building international coalitions to tackle the major problems faced in the region.

We see a problem in the world and our first instinct is to bomb it. We have become obsessed with high explosives as an instrument for peace.

George Bush Snr knew better. He carefully constructed a Middle East coalition before Gulf War one, making it seem Western forces were the instrument of Arab will – and he won.

George Bush Jnr ditched diplomacy in favour of Western “shock and awe” – and lost. We repeated the mistake in Afghanistan, using high explosives as a substitute for the kind of patient diplomacy to bring in the neighbours in a regional treaty, as we had done in Bosnia – and lost.

In Libya we could have created a wide regional coalition with countries like Turkey first to liberate the country and then rebuild it afterwards. Instead the West chose to blast Gaddafi out and then abandon the country to chaos afterwards.

So how does he think we should tackle ISIS?

The best thing Britain could do to defeat Isis is not to add a tiny quantum to the more than sufficient pile of high explosives already falling on Iraq and Syria, but to use its diplomatic skills through the EU to begin to assemble a wide diplomatic coalition aimed at smothering Isis. This should include Iran and moderate Sunni states such as Turkey.

And yes, why not Russia too? We have no choice but to play hardball with Moscow over Ukraine. But offering Putin a partnership on defeating the Sunni jihad which threatens us both would add huge weight to our ability to succeed and avoid the mistake of pushing Russia into a corner from which there is no escape.

You can read the whole article here.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron’s Musings