You have to read it in its proper context... He is not demeaning our neighbouring countries.. He is saying that we are not as big a country as our neighbours and so we have to be exceptional. No choice... If we are just as good as our neighbours, we cannot survive. Why ? Because we do not have any natural resources ; we have only our people as our resource and that number is only 5M compared with our neighbours who have 10x, 20x and 50x more people resources. So, our people must be exceptional in order to be able to compete well.