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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the Prime Minister, let’s get more on that, has promised to beef up the special forces in a newspaper interview this morning and double the number of British drones fighting Islamic State.  Yesterday he joined criticism of Russia’s military intervention in Syria saying it was only making the situation there worse.  Well a lot to discuss and joining me now to do that is Sir Christopher Meyer who used to be our man in Washington, Mary Dejevsky the veteran foreign correspondent from the Independent and Elizabeth Quintana from the Royal United Services Institute, a very good morning to you all.  Well a lot to discuss within those two elements I posed there but let’s deal first of all with the Prime Minister and his announcement there of more special forces, more resources for the special forces and more drones.  Sir Christopher?

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Well every military action ought to have a political or sometimes people call it a strategic purpose and one of the things I think we want to hear from David Cameron if he’s going to talk about this at the Tory party conference for example, is what is the strategic purpose of our beefing up the military assets that we have at our disposal at the moment in fighting ISIS and on that there is not clarity.  It is clear that if you are going bomb in Iraq because you’re bombing ISIS it’s loony not to bomb also in Syria otherwise you just get out but that itself poses a larger question – what is the strategic purpose of our bombing campaign against ISIS and how does this relate to the Syrian civil war and whether or not Assad and his Alawite regime should survive or survive in a transition period given that the Russians are never going to let him disappear?

DM: Well that’s why we have to bring that in, we have to bring in Russia’s campaign there now which has complicated, as we’ve just discussed, an already complicated situation even more.  Sir Christopher, do you go along first of all with the analysis of the Russian actions there, I mean there is a way of saying perhaps it should be welcomed?

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Well I agree with every word that Mary has just said and absolutely because in all of this the big power, the big regional power that has had the most clarity of strategy expressed in public has been Russia.  You may not like what Russia is doing, you may not like Russian motives but at least they are clear about the need not to let Syria become like Libya and Iraq.  

DM: Exactly, they have got a whole history of saying they were wrong as well.   

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Well the Syrians have been allies of Russia for almost half a century now, it goes back to Assad’s father, it goes back almost to the beginning of Ba’athism in Syria and they are not going to let this strategic asset go down the tubes particularly as on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, just south of the big town of Latakia is the only deep sea Russian port that they have in the Mediterranean at Tarkus so the Russians are quite clear what the political purpose of their military intervention is.  One has to hope that this will lead to a second position which Mary has touched on which is to say right, nobody is going to drive the Assad’s and the Alawites out of there area of Syria so let’s have an international peace conference and bring together the main players which go from Saudi Arabia to Turkey to the Assad regime itself …

DM: And elements of Islamic State?  

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Who the local parties would be would be another matter, that would be … I don't think it would be Islamic State but there are lots of other Sunni militants fighting against Assad who might need to be represented around the table.  

DM: Who might be tolerating Islamic State at the moment, who might be co-operating?

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Well they might also be fighting them as well because it’s a bugger’s muddle if I can say that.  

DM: In that context, yes.  We are out of time, thank you all very much indeed for your inputs on that.