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Business men and women today need to straddle the worlds of commerce and foreign policy as never before. While this may have been true to some extent since international commerce began, in the age of the Internet it is Rule #1. The globalization of commerce and the Internet have forced the worlds of commerce and foreign policy to come together and anyone in business who does not believe this should look around them.

Calls to American Express are handled in New Delhi; AOL help desks respond from Taiwan; your call for PC help may be answered in a wonderful Irish lilt. The functions that are being outsourced, in the current business vernacular, are not just mundane back office tasks. They are tasks that comprise the lifeblood of a company's operations. Investment banks are aggressively testing analyst and modeling operations in India and Singapore. The size of its internal market, and production costs which have already drawn most major companies from the United States and Europe to shift their manufacturing operations there, will soon make China the largest recipient of inward investment in the world. This is a role that the United States has played for decades.

So, how will you react when your senior vice-president for strategic planning recommends that, going forward, your company's critical information technology software research be performed simultaneously in Hyderabad and your company's U.S. headquarters? Will you ask her where Hyderabad is? Or will you immediately make the connection that Hyderabad is a city in India, and that it is India's second most important technology hub. Will you also recall that India and its neighbor, Pakistan face each other with atomic weapons, have fought four wars against each other, and, even as you execute your outsourcing plans, have a million troops facing each other along a border a thousand miles long? More importantly, will you be able to put all this in perspective as you listen to the presentation.

How about setting up shop in Israel or Palestine to export to Europe. Are you familiar with the European Union court cases that relate to bypassing of trade treaties, which might result in your products being banned in the European Union? You probably know the EU will next year become the largest trading entity in the world. As General Electric, an American company found out two years ago, it could not acquire Honeywell, another American company because the EU antitrust commissioner refused to approve the deal even though the U.S. regulators thought it was fine. 10 more European countries will join the EU in 2004. Does your company have plans to leverage this expanded business opportunity?

I'd like at this point to highlight an extraordinary American organization: The Foreign Policy Association (FPA) was founded in 1918. Its mission today, as it has been throughout its 82-year history, is to serve as a catalyst for developing awareness, understanding, and informed opinion on U.S. foreign policy and global issues. Through its balanced, nonpartisan publications and programs, FPA encourages citizens to participate in the foreign policy process. Under an enthusiastic President, Noel Lateef, it has aggressively moved to illuminate the nexus between business and foreign policy and to project the FPA mission all over the United States. The World Leadership Forum, for instance, a meeting place for corporate and business leaders, is now one of the most sought after tickets in North America.

We, at ebizChronicle.com, have proudly partnered with the FPA to help them launch some of their business/foreign policy efforts and in supporting them. I would encourage our readers to visit their website and join in supporting their mission. As many of the world's leading companies have discovered, membership to and participation in the FPA could well become your company's secret weapon, the edge you need to outdistance your competition.