Right now, there’s one big superpower in the world, the United States of America. The reason they are that powerful isn’t their large military nor is it the number of people living in the US, it has economical reasons. I don’t know which country you, the reader, are from, but I would not be surprised if your country has some business with the US, a very large part of the world do. And even if there isn’t a big import-export contract lying around somewhere, I bet that you at least have a couple of McDonalds.
So, what am I saying here? That the US can make the rules because they have a big fast food corporation with branches all over the world? Actually, that’s pretty much the point. To put it simply, no country can make the USA do something they don’t want to unless they are willing to play Russian roulette with their economy. Not many kings, presidents, prime ministers, etc, can risk destroying their business connections with the states. For example, if the value of a US Dollar would suddenly drop that would also happen to large part of the currency of foreign countries all over the world. But let’s not stray too far into the black hole that’s economics.