After the horrific events that took place in Paris it is natural to see as aggressive and as immediate a response as we have. Within hours of the attacks Francois Hollande ordered French planes to step up their already intense bombing campaign against Islamic state, and the House of Commons is preparing for a vote on extending air strikes to bombing the militants in Syria. While it is undoubtedly important to remain uncompromising in the wake of an attempt to so violently intimidate and strong arm us, we cannot allow ourselves to blindly retaliate for the sake of retaliation.

The war will not be won by uncoordinated air strikes by individual countries, which do very little on their own to achieve long term military victory. Air strikes cause massive collateral damage and in the process cause civilian resentment and provoke further terror attacks against the West. They are also very impersonal (especially if carried out by a drone), and are often botched, as seen recently in Afghanistan. To achieve victory for our national interests and for the interests of the people of Iraq and Syria we need a clear and coordinated International plan of action.

First of all we need to work out who exactly who we’re fighting for, and who we’re fighting against. Although it’s unlikely we’ll reach a complete consensus between Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia we need to make sure that a credible and inclusive coalition is formed. Iran and Putin will be swayed by negotiation and concessions, not by being shut out.

In Iraq the situation is relatively simple: back the Kurds in the north (though they will only fight up to the frontiers of Kurdistan), and support the Iraqi government and Shia militias to regain territory in the rest of the country. It is important to understand why IS have enjoyed so much support, namely as a result of very little Sunni representation in the Shia led Iraqi government, so that when peace finally is achieved we can make sure that Sunnis will have a voice in the new country, and hopefully avoid creating the conditions for another IS emerging in the future.

Syria is more complicated: We need an end to empty rhetoric and vague promises about fighting for ‘the people of Syria’; a clear military plan is required, explaining exactly who we’re backing as well as fighting. IS will undoubtedly be an enemy, but who else? Although Assad is a tyrannical butcher who undoubtedly needs to eventually go, many of the rebel groups opposing him are just as extreme as IS. The so called ‘moderate’ rebels appear to be non-existent; we need to confront the reality that a pro-democracy secular group with no tribal loyalties who want a representative democracy simply does not exist.

We need to also realise that if we did establish legitimate elections in Syria, an Islamic party similar to the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt could very well win. The West would then have two options. We could embrace those “seeds of democracy” and accept the results of a legitimate democratic process, even if it did lead to a country that may very well be an enemy of the West and cause further regional instability. Or we could choose stability over legitimacy and temporarily appoint a leader who would be friendly to the West until the region is stable enough to have proper elections. While I think the second option is more sensible, appointed leaders have their own drawbacks. Simply replacing one dictator with another will solve nothing in the long term, furthermore the new leader would also always be associated with the West and would inevitably breed resentment and the belief that our intervention is an entirely self-motivated one.

Once we’ve worked out exactly who we’re fighting, we need to work out how we’re going to fight them and the precise level of the UK’s involvement. As I’ve said the coalition must be first and foremost led by Middle Eastern countries, with them providing the bulk of the troops and the West providing weapons, Special Forces troops, and air strikes to support ground troops. Although the expertise and undeniable effectiveness of the UK’s armed forces seems appealing, this war has to be won by a regional power, not what terrorist recruitment would portray as a meddling Western one.

Lastly and in many ways most importantly we need a clear exit strategy. The ‘guns first thinking later’ policy previously pursued in Iraq cannot be used again. We have to plan the garrisoning of stabilising troops after the war, how long they’ll stay there for and how they’ll leave without causing a return to chaos.

The hard part of fighting Islamic state will not be defeating them militarily, it will be picking up the pieces afterwards to ensure that we don’t see a similar group emerge in the future.