A wide-ranging article in The New Statesman by Sir John Jenkins, a recently retired British diplomat and Arabist. He sets himself an immense task:
The unique threat posed by Isis has been analysed in depth. But how should the West respond in practice?
Link:http://www.newstatesman.com/world/mi...mist-zero-hour

His explanation for writing this (in part):
Just reading about all of this is bad enough. I do a lot of it for professional reasons. And I sometimes want to scream. It’s not because the quality of the commentary is low. Quite the contrary. There is an impressive debate out there....Yet none of this flood of commentary, it seems to me, has had any impact on real-world policy responses....
His potted biography:
John Jenkins is a former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Burma. He also served as consul general in Jerusalem, as director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Foreign Office in London and with British diplomatic missions in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Malaysia. He is now executive director (Middle East) for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and is based in Bahrain.