the US-led hegemonic system produces stability in the Twenty-First century: The United States makes its power safe for the world and in return the world agrees to live within the hegemonic system maintaining formal or informal alliances and open markets. The United States has been influential in moving many countries towards embracing the free market through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (see Washington Consensus). Curiously, at the peak of the 2003 anti-hegemonic crisis, the world public opinion remained highly pro-hegemonic and convinced in the hegemonic stability. Large majorities of people in most surveyed countries thought that the world would be a more dangerous place if there were a rival to the American superpower. 64% of the French, 70% of the Mexicans and 63% of the Jordanians thought this way. The US network of alliances created in the early Cold War remains intact in the post-Cold War period and NATO almost doubled in members. When NATO counted only 16 members, it was already described as the most successful alliance in history. As of 2023, it counts 30 members. The exact number of US allies worldwide is undefined because there is no clear criteria for counting unofficial defense partnerships. Bradley A. Thayer counts 84; Max Ostrovsky over 100. 130 countries or even more host US bases. Most of these countries are either formal allies or informal defense partners. Fifteen years in the post-Cold War period, Thayer calculated the hegemonic stabilization: Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America and they include almost all of the developed economies. That is a combined GDP ratio of almost 17 to 1, a big change from the Cold War when the same ratio was about 1.8 to 1. Never before in history had any country so many allies. Ostrovsky outlined a political-economic rule which, he claims, has a very few exceptions: countries with the nominal per capita GDP above the world average formally or informally ally with the United States. These are not alliances in the Westphalian sense characterized by impermanence and power-balancing; rather it is a hegemonic system of the Roman kind. Most states of the world host the hegemonic bases, many of them partly cover expenses for running them ("host nation support"), integrate their strategic forces under the hegemonic command, contribute 1-2% of their GDP to the integrated forces, and tip military, economic and humanitarian contributions in case of