As the rest of the world came to terms with the coordinated attacks on Paris the Kurdish leader Masrour Barzani put the problem into context when he claimed that if the west got its act together the Islamic State could be defeated in “months perhaps even weeks”. Barzani knows what he is talking about. A cultivated politician with a background in conflict resolution he acts as chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KDP) and as a young man in the 1990s served with the Peshmerga forces in the struggle against Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.

Barzani’s experience is both theoretical and practical but he has raised an awkward question. How can the west combine in common cause to confront and defeat the forces of the Islamic State? The two countries most affected are France and Russia which lost an airliner over Sinai to a terrorist bomb earlier in the month - there is 'alliance' but already fault lines are beginning to develop in the relationship.When it comes to 'alliance' warplanes from both countries attacked targets in the Islamic State and French foreign minister Laurent Fabius spoke of “an opening so to speak with the Russians”, however as former US diplomat Strobe Talbott put it last week the Russian and French leadership “talk the talk of being part of the solution and they walk the walk of being part of the problem.”

Now acting as the president of the Brooking Institution think-tank Talbott pointed to last week’s clash in the United Nations where both countries began work on a Security Council resolution which would authorise the use of force against Islamic State. Both countries have the same aims but they differ over the means with Russian ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin insisting that any co-operation should include the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad. That is unlikely to win US or even European agreement but nothing daunted President Francoise Hollande who still has hopes of creating “a grand coalition to act decisively” against Islamic extremists. In pursuit of that goal he travels this week to Washington and Moscow for talks with President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin.

Matters will probably come to a head in the UN on Thursday when Russia tables a revised draft of the resolution it first tabled at the end of September. According to diplomatic sources it will still insist that any UN approved action will require cooperation with Assad; it will also be countered by a rival French resolution which French ambassador to the UN Francois Delattre claims will be “short, strong and focused on the fight against our common enemy.”

Despite wariness on the diplomatic front military commanders in the region have instituted a number of “deconfliction” strategies to make sure that their warplanes are not operating in the same air space at the same time while attacking Islamic State targets. Simultaneously Russia’s chief of staff General Valery Gerasimov has entered into discussions with his French counterpart General Pierre de Villiers to iron out ways in which their forces can cooperate not just in the air but also in the Mediterranean where both countries have naval assets. These include the French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle whose accompanying battle group will include a Russian guided missile cruiser.

“Life indeed moves on, often very quickly, and teaches us lessons,” said Putin after ordering the Russian Navy to co-operate with their French counterparts. “It seems to me that everyone is coming around to the realisation that we can wage an effective fight only together.”

However, despite those hopeful moves any realistic international coalition will require the contribution and perhaps the leadership of the US which is already conducting operations in Syria in support of the opposition against Assad. That involvement remains a huge stumbling block and it is not made any easier by Washington’s suspicions of Putin’s motives in eastern Ukraine where Russian and Ukrainian forces have been in contention since last year. Despite a local ceasefire Russian-backed forces were again in action in the Donestsk and Luhansk provinces last week and dozens of Ukrainian soldiers were reported to have been killed in action.

This breach has fuelled fears that Russia is using the Islamic State negotiations as a smokescreen for their ambitions in eastern Europe with the price of Russian cooperation in the Middle East being a free hand to deal with the pro-western government in Kiev. US diplomatic sources have already noted that the EU sanctions imposed on Russia after their invasion of Ukraine are due to be renewed in January and could be part of any diplomatic bargain. And it has not escaped anyone’s notice that last month Russia warned that the continuing unrest in Ukraine could disrupt the supply of gas to western Europe during the winter months.

Also to be taken into account is the 20 member Syria Support Group which is currently meeting in Vienna in an attempt to find a plan to end the five year civil war. Amongst them are important regional powers such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all of whom are keen to broker a workable deal and each of whom possesses a different agenda. Iran wants to keep Assad in power but is also anxious to reassert its diplomatic credentials after long years in the wilderness. Saudi, a leading Sunni state, did not want Iran to be present not least because the two countries are fighting proxy wars in Yemen. As for Turkey it wants to see Assad deposed but feels that targeting the Kurds is as important as eliminating the Islamic State. As Syria’s closest neighbour it has suffered most from the refugee crisis and has a vested interest in ending the civil war as soon as possible. The group’s next meeting is scheduled to take place in Paris either in late December of early January 2016 - by which time we will be deep in winter, and it will be possibly too late for many of the innocent victims of the Syrian conflict: the countless refugees spilling out into neighbouring countries, desperate for the diplomatic wrangling to count for something and save their lives.