The aim of the article is to analyse the Bretton Woods system (BW) as a geoeconomic regime, i.e. a regime pursuing both economic and geopolitical objectives. I examine the economic and political objectives of the great powers participating in the system as well as the benefits and costs involved. My hypothesis is also that conflicting geoeconomic interests of the great powers eventually contributed to the collapse of this monetary regime. Its decline in Western Europe saw the emergence of a monetary system modelled on BW and designed in line with the geoeconomic interests of the region’s major economic powers.