Needless to say, the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions under the UN’s system in the Post War II order seems to have espoused the very notion of power politics through which the so-called financial or economic umbrella– of the IMF and the World Bank-has been largely meant to serve the political agenda of the powerful nations via synergies of economic loans and other packages of assistance for both the devolving and underdeveloped world. On being founded in 1944, both the IMF and the World Bank, in 2019, will become 75 years old. The critical view holds that both the institutions are dominated by the US and a few allied major powers who have been working to generalize policies that run counter the interests of the world’s nations. Since their creation, both the IMF and the WB have been criticized of promoting geopolitics. The 1944 Bretton Woods’ agreement was established under the canopy of a new global monetary system. It replaced the gold standard with the U.S. dollar as the global currency. By so doing, it established America as the most dominant power in the world economy. After the agreement was signed, the US was the only country with the ability to print dollars. The agreement created the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These U.S.-backed organizations would monitor the new system. Though the Bretton Woods countries decided against giving the IMF the power of a global central bank to print the money, they agreed to contribute to a fixed pool of national currencies and gold to be held by the IMF. Each member of the Bretton Woods system was then entitled to borrow what it needed, within the limits of its contributions. The IMF was also responsible for enforcing the Bretton Woods agreement. All the same, the international agreements in the monetary and financial field are basically hard to reach since they lie at the very bottom of matters— affecting the whole complex system of economic relations among nations. It is a well-known fact that in all countries sectional interests are often in conflict with the broader national interests and that these narrow interests are sometimes sufficiently strong to shape international economic policy. Subsequently, in the years that followed the events of 1971, international monetary cooperation again changed its nature. Keynes’ vision of an international monetary system capable of disciplining both deficit and surplus nations, thereby bringing equilibrium to the economies of the world, faded. Instead, states tried looking towards fora like the G-7 and the G-5 to coordinate international monetary policy. Anyway, cooperation was resurrected or reconnected with some success with the Plaza Accord of 1985: an agreement to let the value of the dollar decline and the Louvre Accord of 1987, an agreement to stabilize the value of the dollar. The WB and the IMF have systematically imparted loans to states as a means of influencing their policies whereby foreign debt has been and continues to be used as an instrument to subordinate the respective borrowers Significantly, the dollar’s flows became the International Financial System’s lifeblood, engendering structural power for the United States, which has been held in place through reserve currency status, institutional stickiness through banking and currency trading, and ideational influence. While introduction of the Euro and attempts in Asia to dismantle the Asian Bloc have already shaken, American structural power– money’s foundations– have always rested on trust, trading, and risk-taking, emergence of extensive credit and virtual money, and related security concerns, bring forth new topics resting on these old foundations. There is no exaggeration to say that the US has been able to irresistibly influence all the other players on the geopolitical chessboard because it directed the global economy, and historically it could have had done so: therefore greatly reward or severely punish in ways and to an extent no one else could” (Stroupe, 2006), attaining both political and diplomatic power, as well as formidable power projection capabilities. Therefore, the trends that rule the behaviour of currencies are strikingly similar to those that govern the conduct of national states. They both seek dominance in highly hierarchical and dynamic systems where competition, conflict and confrontation are commonplace. They both gain and lose power and prestige at the expense of one another in zero-sum games (Cohen, 2003). Therefore, “the realpolitik balancing instinct would apply to current politics as well as geopolitics” (Drezner, 2010). True but justifiably, critics of the World Bank and the IMF are concerned about the conditionalities-cum-acute stipulations imposed on borrower countries. The World Bank and the IMF often attach loan conditionalities based on what is generally termed the Washington Consensus, focusing on liberalisation-of trade, investment and the financial sector- deregulation and privatisation of nationalised industries. Commonly these stipulated conditionalities are orchestrated without due regard for the borrower countries’ respective circumstances and therefore the prescriptive recommendations by the World Bank and IMF normally fail to resolve the economic problems within the countries. Whatever the justification for the developing nations’ borrowing loans from the IMF and the World Bank, the truth remains irrefutable: by agreeing to the terms dictated by these Bretton Woods institutions, we do agree to compromise our economic independence focusing on our basic needs that cater our people’s demands of accommodation and survival. Or in other words, the IMF-imposed conditionalities largely obscure a state’s authority to govern its own economy as national economic policies are predetermined under IMF packages. And yet conceptually, the understanding of the World Bank and the IMF of the term ‘development’ – both in doctrine and practice – has meant a focus on GDP growth, increased trade and greater consumption. This is reflected in the UN’s adoption of the Human Development Index as a counter to GDP per capita as a measure of ‘development’. Inequalities among states and within states, however, have been growing, in many countries, unemployment has increased, particularly affecting youth, and standards of living have drastically dropped. Nonetheless, the WB and the IMF have systematically imparted loans to states as a means of influencing their policies whereby foreign debt has been and continues to be used as an instrument to subordinate the respective borrowers. IMF packages have also been associated with negative social outcomes such as reduced investment in public health and education. Accordingly, the issues of representation are raised as a consequence of the shift in the regulation of national economies from state governments to a Washington-based financial institution in which most developing countries hold little voting power. The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan