Peter: Oh, absolutely. Remember, geography, I don’t mean to suggest it’s completely deterministic. It’s hugely important. It’s the most important factor. Think of it like a tapestry. You can paint on it and make it something else, it’s still going to be a tapestry. In the case of countries like Israel and South Korea, you have a very creative, very intelligent, very driven population that has just decided that they are going to make this work no matter what.
In the environment of the order, a lot of the security concerns have fallen away. That has allowed you to try to turn the deserts green or build a manufacturing place where no one would have before. That is the success story of these places. Two cautions; number one, the strategic environment that has allowed this to happen is changing. These countries now have to maintain that themselves. In that, the Koreans probably face a bigger challenge than the Israelis, because their security environment is going to change more and their economic environment is dependent upon exports. If those exports go away, then they have to have a complete retooling of their industrial base and their educational system.
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Korea, looking at the facts, I would say is doomed. If there’s one thing Koreans continue to do, it’s surprise to the upside, so I’m not writing them off yet.
