How do you fight against them, the knife and axe wielders, the suicide truck bombers and "lone wolf" gunmen? That is the question on so many people’s minds right now, as terrorist strikes spread.

Earlier this week in attacks within a few hours of each other, 45 people were killed 2,800 miles apart. In a quiet Normandy church a priest had his throat slit while in a busy Middle East street in Qamishli, north east Syria, 44 people were eviscerated by a massive truck bomb.

If Pope Francis is right and the world is at war, how then is this war against the Islamic State (IS) group and other terrorists like them to be prosecuted?

At is most basic, the fight against terrorism has two sides, those trying to incite fear and division and those who must fight that fear and division.

It is a war where the frontlines are transnational, the protagonists no respecter of borders or boundaries.

Terrorism is also resistant to traditional notions of warfare. Faced with such a threat, having a Trident nuclear missile capability is the equivalent of hanging on to a hammer in order to put out a fire in your hair.

In the fight against Islamic-inspired terrorism, two things are our most effective weapons. One is sound, shared, efficient intelligence and the other a much less considered component, empathy.

It was as far back now as 2002 that the European Counter Terrorism Group (CTG) was formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Its aim was to further intelligence sharing cooperation between European domestic security services.

That the CTG was an offshoot of something called the Club de Berne, itself an intelligence-sharing forum between the 28 member states of the EU, Norway and Switzerland, says much about the make-up and remit of this body.

It’s that word "club" that’s the problem, for the CTG – like the club before it – is an informal body, largely independent of the EU's institutions.

Chaired until recently by the Dutch security service AIVD, critics say it’s hard to see how the CTG could operate effectively given they don’t have an office, headquarters or staff, and don’t follow EU decision-making rules.

It’s going to take more than discreet, informal chats to stop the threat of IS and their supporters in our midst say detractors, and they have a point.

Add to this the fact that intelligence services seem congenitally unwilling to share their sources and methods, and it gives some idea of how ill-equipped in terms of cooperation Europe is, when it comes to developing an effective joint security apparatus against the likes of IS.

To give just one such example, while a list of suspected people might be shared by some agencies, others would be reluctant given that different national agencies often define ‘suspects’ in different ways.

All this we are told has not stopped officials from 30 European security services meeting every week for the last few months in the Netherlands as part of the CTG.

As recently as June, Dutch home affairs minister Ronald Plasterk, insisted the CTG had made “enormous strides in intensifying cooperation” and that “information about European foreign fighters is now available for all the services”.

Really? Explain then Mr Plasterk if you will, why we have seen

such an upsurge in Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks that appear to have caught both the French and German intelligences services pretty much flatfooted?

The CTG’s new "virtual platform" on intelligence sharing was meant to be in place by July 1. While admittedly it’s early days, the CTG has been around for years and if that cooperation has been intensified lately is it not conceivable some useful leads on plots or individual terrorists who took part in recent attacks might have been flagged up. The problem here, of course, is that we rarely know of intelligence service successes, only failures.

But that there is a serious structural problem among major European agencies is undeniable. A measure of the extent to which some have been found wanting and the urgency with which they must address their problems was highlighted by a French parliamentary commission report released earlier this month.

Among its finding was that the French government fuse all its security services into one large “national anti-terrorism agency.”

Such an approach would mirror Washington’s National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC), which was set up in the years after the 9/11 attacks.

Just like the US, France’s law enforcement and intelligence communities have suffered similar problems over the years, beset as they are by operational differences, opaque turf wars and resourcing cutbacks.

If all of this sounds like a challenge then that’s because it is, for there is simply no getting away from the fact that solid, joined-up security coordination and follow-up remains the best line of defence against IS.

So much then for the need for efficient shared intelligence, but what about that other potentially key weapon in our arsenal against terrorism? I’m talking about empathy and its own power to help unite against a collective threat.

Isn’t there now a familiar pattern emerging whereby deaths at the hands of terrorists outwith the USs and Europe go comparatively unnoticed. Day in day out people across the globe, especially in the Middle East, are victims of the very same IS gunmen and bombers that threaten the West.

Over the last few weeks there has been a frenzied need for news updates on attacks in Belgium, France and Germany. But when it comes to Baghdad, Kabul and Qamishli, where IS terror killed hundreds of victims, there was an embarrassingly disproportionate reticence here in the West.

In a recent journalistic snapshot by the New York Times, the newspaper profiled two weeks during which there were eight terrorist attacks in six countries with 247 victims.

Of the 222 victims of which the journalists were able to get details, a fifth of them, 44, were under 18. More than 60 per cent were Muslim and they had 26 different nationalities.

Empathy, like all emotions, can’t be demanded. It’s only natural that tragedies and horrors impact on us far more when they happen closer to home geographically and culturally.

But there is no getting away from the fact IS-inspired terrorism is transnational and its threat a common one, be it in Baghdad or Brussels.

IS is currently shifting strategic tack, leaving behind its territorial caliphate ambitions and turning to the export of its jihadist terror.

Any country that thinks it can pull up some imaginary border drawbridge and feel safe is kidding itself.

Any failure on our behalf also to recognise that others often far away have as much to lose as us only alienates potential allies in our common fight. At worst it could even lead to a sense of frustration and anger pushing others irrevocably towards the terrorist’s ranks.

Right now, a greater use of shared intelligence and a heightened sense of solidarity, are the most sound weapons at our disposal in the fight against IS terrorism.