There are so many places this can go. I am thinking about this in terms of an earlier question. You start with your borders. Where am I in the world? What are the boundaries around my country? Who are the neighbours? Then you move on to consider, what are the threats out there in the wider world and how might they come to our borders? What are the defences we have to protect ourselves with?
You can say such things as part of what we call the “Little Britain” view, but then you have to say, well, who do we need to be our friends? Who will stand by us? Britain's history stretches a long way back, and I think the Falklands was the one time we fought alone. Perhaps Jamie can think of another example. The rest of our history has been fought as part of alliances. In today's world it is very hard to stand alone. You have to stand not just with people who will fight with you as a country, but also those who share your values, who won't actually hollow-out your society by weakening those values with compromises, by allowing chemical weapons, for example, by seeing the mass rounding up of women and use of them as sex slaves. That's the sort of world you want to be allied to and working with.
We also have to explain to our populations that this world hasn't gone away. It didn't end in 1945. The world is still very dangerous. Some of the dangers are new and different, but the need for us to be resilient and ever-vigilant is still there, and no matter where you are in the world the risks are out there.
Canada faces two ways. You face into the Pacific and you face into the Atlantic. Now you're also facing into that opening up of new terrain of the Arctic. Boy, are you in dangerous waters. I hope your people will then understand why NATO is as important to you as it is to the little islands off the coast of Europe that are Great Britain.