New Institutions for a New World: The Transatlantic Alliance and the Future of the Global Economic Order

Political disagreements, the financial crisis, and the emergence of new powers had called both the economic dominance and the political relevance of the transatlantic alliance into question. Given these existing challenges and expected longer-term shifts in economic power, there had been much debate about how the transatlantic alliance could best ensure the future longevity of a Western-led international economic system. The conventional wisdom was that socializing rising powers into existing international norms and institutions would be the most important determinant of the stability of the existing liberal economic order. Though this approach had many benefits, in and of itself, this strategy was fundamentally incomplete. In order to cement its central position in the global economy, the alliance needed to draw on its tradition of institutional innovation to strengthen transatlantic competitiveness and define the economic rules of the game for the 21st century