President Trump’s on-going “trade war” with China is symptomatic of broader global changes to the world order that have been evolving for decades. To a large degree, these changes are grounded in the continuum of modern historical and geopolitical trends and a reiteration and possible resuscitation of 19th Century Great Power rivalries. This emerging new year in which we write brings with it the 75th anniversary of D-Day—and the New World Order ushered in by the “American Century” that soon followed.1 The transformation, created by the United States and key partners, was affected through what we shall refer to as the “Bretton Woods System” (“BWS”) that
emanated from the Bretton Woods Conference, held in July 1944 in the small New Hampshire hamlet of that name. Though that gathering was essentially designed to address pressing international financial relations following the war (its formal name was the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference), its impact soon extended to the political sphere as well, and by extension to associated legal and social. issues.2 It is within this larger domain that we deploy the BWS
designation. This weltanschauung, while imperfect and in need of a 21st Century update, has nevertheless led to unprecedented global peace and prosperity over the past seventy-five years.
William Jannace
Paul Tiffany