He should also be realistic about what British military force can accomplish; despite plans for welcome increases in defence spending, RAF capability in the region is limited.
The gap in military spending and capability between the United States and the rest of NATO has been growing so large as to make NATO seem irrelevant.
Britain's defence chief of general staff, Sir Nick Carter, is to warn that the UK is trailing Russia in terms of defence spending and capability.
"With independence, Scotland can and will match the defence spending and capabilities of Norway and comparable European neighbours, providing professional, conventional forces with Scotland's current level of contribution to the MOD," he said.
It holds that we should put our energies, planning, programming and spending toward youth capability support, meaningful engagement in their own learning and in their community.
The plan would also increase spending on cyber capabilities to around $7 billion, an increase of nearly $1 billion.
Like China, India is rapidly expanding its military capabilities, spending an estimated $100bn on new defence systems since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014.
He has said almost nothing about the other side of the cybereffort, billions of dollars spent on offensive capability, much of it based inside the National Security Agency.
Prince Mohammed has spoken publicly of his frustration over the gap between the kingdom's military spending and its capabilities, which has become clear during the war in Yemen.
Investments reinforce the commitment: SAP's purchase of Business Objects was its biggest acquisition ever, while IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Google have also spent billions buying capability in this area.
There is still a huge gap in American and allied military capabilities and spending.
