ABSTRACT
Finding itself in the wake of a second world war as the dominant economic power in the ‘free world’ the US government strove assiduously to consolidate this power at the level of foreign policy.1 Under prevailing conditions that included the potential threat posed by the USSR and the fallout from a spreading and unstoppable decolonization movement in the economically backward areas of the world, US policymakers decided on, and actively pursued, a foreign policy with three pillars. One of these pillars was a strategy of economic reconstruction of an economically devastated Europe and the capitalist development of the economies and societies on the periphery of the system. A second pillar of the post-war order was what would become known as the ‘Bretton Woods system’, composed of three institutions (a Bank of Economic Reconstruction and Development-the World Bank today; the International Monetary Fund; and a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that would morph into the WTO 50 years on) and the mechanism of the US dollar, based on a fixed gold standard, as the currency of international trade. The third pillar would become the United Nations-a system of international organizations designed to provide the necessary conditions of
(capitalist) development and collective security, a system of multilateral conflict resolution.
