When the history of the current Coalition Government is written, probably their single gravest set of errors will be able to be summed up in four letters: SDSR. The October 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, thrown together in just five months, will go down in history as a textbook example of what happens when short-term financial and political considerations are allowed to undermine sound defence thinking.

Over the past five decades the Munich Security Conference (MSC) has become the most important independent forum for the exchange of views by international security policy decision-makers. Each year it brings together about 350 senior figures from more than 70 countries around the world to engage in an intensive debate on current and future security challenges.

Within the communities that perform it, the practice is usually very deep-rooted and driven by an interwoven set of factors including custom, religion, tradition, superstition and misguided beliefs about hygiene.

The EU somehow managed to cover up its failure in Libya and Mali, but the disaster of its Syria policy cannot be squashed as easily. The time has come for the member states to ask themselves how far they want to go in terms of a common foreign and security policy.

The RAF interception of Syrian Jets over Cyprus is a sign that Britain can still be sucked into Syrian intervention through regional spill over and unforeseen events.

Perhaps we should stake out the case for interventionism in very simple terms: an internationalist party does not stand by and permit the slaughter of children in gas attacks.

The brutal images coming from Woolwich could not have been more surreal. A man with bloodied hands holds a knife and explains he has just hacked a British soldier to death on the streets of London in broad daylight.