Good morning.

As Britain carries out initial air strikes on Isil targets in Syria, questions are being raised as to whether more is needed in order to defeat the terrorist. Boris Johnson, writing in today’s paper, suggests that David Cameron may have to leave Vladimir Putin and Bashar Al-Assad to destroy Isil, as the number of moderate ground troops he says are in the country “may be exaggerated”. “This is the time to set aside our Cold War mindset,” Johnson writes. “It is just not true that whatever is good for Putin must automatically be bad for the West. We both have a clear and concrete objective – to remove the threat from Isil. Everything else is secondary.”

Johnson may be touching on a sore spot in Downing Street by expressing public scepticism about the estimated 70,000 “moderate” troops in Syria, as this number has come under scrutiny over recent days. “They may include some jihadists who are not ideologically very different from al-Qaeda,” Johnson adds. No. 10 recently had to admit that the “moderate” fighters are made up of several “disparate” groups after claims that defence officials had expressed concern about claiming that 70,000 fighters were ready to join the fight against Isil. However, it has stood firm behind the number, saying it was approved by the joint intelligence committee.

In the meantime, David Cameron will be under pressure to show over the coming months that his air strikes are helping defeat the Isil threat. But will this be enough? John McCain, the former Republican presidential nominee, recently gave backhanded praise to Britain’s “token” effort, saying that the RAF will “drop a few bombs, and we’ll say thank you very much”. “The best hope of getting rid of Isil is an agreement between all the powers – America, Russia, France, Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the rest – to take them out, together with a timetable for Assad to step down and a plan for a new Syrian government,” says Johnson.

The London Mayor isn’t alone in suggesting that Russia and the Assad regime may be needed to bring about a decisive end, as Conservative Foreign Affairs Committee member John Baron has said similar over recent days. Military experts are also piling in, with Wes Clark, the former head of NATO Allied Powers in Europe, suggesting that world leaders will need to compromise on how long the Syrian president can stay in power. “Go back to the way we did it in Bosnia in 1990s. We put together a plan, we brought the parties together, and we said we would put ground troops there under certain conditions. And we could do the exact same move here.”

“Am I backing the Assad regime, and the Russians, in their joint enterprise to recapture [Palmyra]? You bet I am.” Boris Johnson

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