The first development involves the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As the global economy becomes more interdependent, the need grows for a supranational institution capable of detecting looming financial crises and containing the spread of these crashes when they occur. Countries that get in economic trouble also need a lender of last resort to help them regain stability and undertake often-unpopular economic reforms. The IMF’s record on these matters is far from stellar; it has, for instance, failed to anticipate crises and gone too far in imposing harsh conditions on its beleaguered borrowing countries. Critics around the world denounce the IMF as an opaque organization that perpetuates America’s economic preeminence; in the United States, it is mostly ignored or seen as another UN-like bureaucracy that feeds on American taxpayers. These critiques often exaggerate the institution’s indisputable flaws and overlook or dismiss the instances in which it has provided an indispensable public service. The challenge for U.S. officials is to ignore populist calls to shut the IMF down and instead find ways to make it work better.

In fact, that’s precisely what the United States tried to do in 2010 with a series of reforms aimed at updating the World War II-era institution for the 21st century. Among other changes, the Obama administration proposed raising China’s voting shares in the IMF’s board from 3.8 percent to 6 percent of the total. The adjustment doesn’t even reflect the fact that the Asian superpower will soon have the largest economy in the world and that China’s share will remain well below America’s 16.7 percent of votes, which gives the U.S. several advantages, including the ability to veto IMF decisions it dislikes. The administration’s reforms also included increasing the nearly negligible weight that emerging economies like Brazil and India now have in the IMF—despite accounting for half of the world economy—by altering the composition of the institution’s board of directors. That board still reflects the world order of 1944 and affords Europe representation that is disproportionate to its current influence (seven of 24 board members are European). The board unanimously approved all the proposals.

After spearheading these reforms, however, the Obama administration has been unable to get Congress to approve them. The IMF cannot implement the measures without such approval, which has now been delayed for five years. One of the chief obstacles is Jeb Hensarling, a Republican representative from Texas and the head of the Committee on Financial Services, which must sign off on the reforms. Neither he nor his allies in the Tea Party are fond of the IMF. As a recent New York Times editorial noted, “Republicans in Congress have refused to ratify changes to the I.M.F., which would have also increased its capital. They signaled that they would only vote for I.M.F. reforms if they got something in return from the administration, like changes in the 2010 health care reform law.” And yet a better functioning, more representative and legitimate IMF is good for the rest of the world and a strong pillar of an international economic order in which the U.S. economy has thrived for over half a century.