After the Second World War ended with an Allied victory in 1945, the United States and the other Western nations that made up the Allies began to put systems in place that would guarantee, not just stability, but also a deterrent to the ever increasing threat from the Soviet Union and other Communist nations. One of these organizations was GATT or the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade. This organization and its successor organization, the World Trade Organization or WTO, functioned to eliminate trade barriers and ensure that trade flows freely between member nations. Alongside GATT, the US and its allies started the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, a security organization that was designed to deter the Soviet Union and its allies from attacking member states. While NATO and GATT, later the WTO, were started for different reasons and serve different purposes, they were both instrumental in helping the United States and its allies to win the Cold War and are just as important in ensuring global American hegemony in the modern world as they were during the Cold War. 

GATT and its successor the WTO are both economic institutions that seek to extend American power and influence. Both organizations make decisions in rounds and ensure that all members enjoy “most favored nation” status. The WTO also includes the vast majority of nations, thus ensuring that all member nations must play by the same economic rules that the US designed. This helps to ensure that the US will always be the chief economic power, as it designed and built the system that the world is using. NATO, much like the WTO is an instrument of American power, however, it functions as a security and defense organization, rather than an economic one. NATO helps to ensure American power by providing an organization dedicated to defending the US and its allies and interests. While both organizations were designed for the Cold War environment, they are still incredibly important for the US in the present day and beyond. For example, after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the US invoked Article 5 of NATO and led an international effort to replace the Taliban with a democratic Afghan government for two decades. While the US could have beaten the Taliban and occupied Afghanistan on its own, having the other NATO countries aid them in this effort gave the mission a more unified appearance and showed the Taliban and the rest of the world that the actions of Al Qaeda would not be tolerated. In the case of the WTO, while its positive effect on US global power is less obvious than NATO, it still plays an important role. As Johan Lindeque and Steven McGuire write in their paper, The United States and Trade Disputes in the World Trade Organization: Hegemony Constrained or Confirmed, “The results are equivocal. The United States does best in the early phases of a dispute, where political power is important.” Furthermore, they write that, “​​the WTO's very rules are not neutral, but reflect hegemony: the dominance of American rules, norms and practices about international commerce.” By making the world, including adversaries, play by the rules set up by the themselves, the US has given the global economic system a sense of order and has helped to set themselves up as the dominant power. 

While both of these organizations have faced and continue to face opposition from more nationalistic and right wing leaders across the West, as well as external threats such as the rise of China and the renewal of Russian aggression and territorial ambitions, they still function as some of the principal institutions of global American power and hegemony. Especially important is how NATO and to a lesser extent the WTO are dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has threatened to uproot the Liberal order that the US designed after WWII. They are both still extremely necessary in helping the United States navigate the rest of the 21st century as the dominant power. 


                                                           Sources

MIR: Management International Review , 2007, Vol. 47, No. 5, Innovation, Competition and Change in International Business (2007), pp. 725-744

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