Vulnerability and exposure notwithstanding, through the highly diplomatic language of the NACD’s Commissioners, the ‘Blue Ribbon Commission Report… ’ emphasizes that Director participation must be, and increasingly become, ‘Constructively Engaged!’ The report further included Mr. Budd’s recognition of the absolutely pivotal importance of “non-financials” and the significance of both social and political trends. It is in that light we find the role of the CEO being extended into domains considered uncomfortable, difficult and decidedly outside the path of the direct pursuit of Quarterly Profit Numbers. The emerging diplomatic role of international business leadership will take the duties of senior executives and board governance upward onto a new global platform. This platform will likely overlay the realms of Commerce, Finance, Government Affairs, Integrity, Credibility, and Diplomacy. Above all else, it will include a required new sense of common fairness that will become part of Year 2001’s soft core values against which business transactions – and CEOs – will be substantively measured and held accountable. This shift in public attitude will encompass not just American-based CEOs, but most foreign senior business executives as well. CEOs in international markets have the opportunity to be perceived as much as ambassadors as business leaders. Those that do so stand to gain unique competitive advantages in the form of long term trust. While perhaps difficult to assimilate under existing business pressures, in actuality, this development simply continues a pattern of U.S. policy vulnerability begun after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Historically, it is with no small irony that CEOs return to a role once more publicly held during the latter Cold War era of the 1970s by business legends such as Leo Burnett (Leo Burnett), David Rockefeller (Chase Manhattan Bank), Walter Wriston (CitiBank), Robert Woodruff (Coca∼Cola), Walter Disney (Disney]),Tom Watson, Jr. (IBM), Reginal Jones (GE), Ray Kroc (McDonald’s), Armand Hammer (Occidental Petroleum), David Kendall (PepsiCo), Edwin Land (Polaroid), Irving Shapiro (DuPont) and others who either actively sought out that unique stature or had that status thrust upon them. The sole difference today is that this type of mantle is much more broadly forced across the entire business community leadership at large.