  We use the recently proposed supergravity approach to large $N$ gauge
theories to calculate ordinary and spatial Wilson loops of gauge theories in
various dimensions. In this framework we observe an area law for spatial Wilson
loops in four and five dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills at finite
temperature. This can be interpreted as the area law of ordinary Wilson loops
in three and four dimensional non-supersymmetric gauge theories at zero
temperature which indicates confinement in these theories. Furthermore, we show
that super Yang Mills theories with 16 supersymmetries at finite temperature do
not admit phase transitions between the weakly coupled super Yang Mills and
supergravity regimes. This result is derived by analyzing the entropy and
specific heat of those systems as well as by computing ordinary Wilson loops at
finite temperature. The calculation of the entropy was carried out in all
different regimes and indicates that there is no first order phase transition
in these systems. For the same theories at zero temperature we also compute the
dependence of the quark anti-quark potential on the separating distance.
