I agree with Bertrand Russell, who said that power is the fundamental paradigm of social analysis. Political scientists know they study naked power, but economists think they study wealth, when wealth is really just economic power. Political scientists and economists who study political economy are probably getting the whole picture, although it is a narrow discipline that can't encompass everything that political science and economics seek to analyze in their respective fields.

I think it's a pretty widespread and uncontroversial belief to say that US "foreign policy" (i.e., imperial grand strategy) is designed to advance the interests of US corporations and to foster a global market economy. The CFR, the most influential foreign policy think tank, represents the intersection of US foreign policy and the corporate sector, and while it does produce non-partisan expert analysis for policymakers, it is committed to the ideological mission of the US being the vanguard of globalization.

There is a growing concern in these circles about China's increasing economic power. China's experience in recent decades has been development without substantial economic liberalization, and with absolutely no political liberalization. Their approach to globalization thus protects state sovereignty against global financial markets and Western corporations - and most significantly, shields authoritarian regimes from liberalizing forces. Putin's Russia is needless to say a supporter of this type of globalization. Thus the TTIP and TPP are being promoted to cement the free-market approach to globalization within the "trans-Atlantic" community (the USA and the EU), and within the "trans-Pacific community (the USA and Japan). The TPP is more interesting because it is competing with a Chinese-sponsored trade pact over "writing the rules" of trade in Southeast Asia.