Transatlantic Relations Face Worst Crisis Since WWII, Data Shows

Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column.

We are living through the worst crisis in transatlantic relations since the end of World War II. We have the data to prove it.

The annual Atlas of Impunity, of which I serve on the advisory board, ranks 172 countries by a single measure: how far the power of the state operates without accountability. In its latest edition, the U.S. — the country that built the postwar order and guaranteed it for 80 years — now ranks 117th.

Compared to its Western allies, the U.S. occupies a solitary position on this list. It outranks Poland by 25 spots in terms of impunity, while Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Australia all rank more accountable by 30 to 50 spots.

It seems the club of democracies that America assembled and sustained for all those decades now has a growing hole in its center: the U.S. itself. But it would be a mistake to assume the rest of the West is immune.

For Washington, this is not a momentary drift. It is a fundamental breach.

The U.S. is currently the only wealthy democracy in the index that is moving up the list in terms of impunity. The damage is concentrated in the country’s governance and economy, and the underlying numbers are striking: The score for freedom from political killings got three times worse in a single year, while that of impartial public administration fell sharply.

These indicators don’t suggest a gentle slope of decline. They represent cliffs. And it is the disparity in accountability between the U.S. and its Western allies — as well as the speed of this shift — that lies at the foundation of the current transatlantic crisis.

Just as concerning is the fact that the current administration in Washington does not seem to care. On the contrary, it defends its new direction as fundamental to its America First view. The 2025 National Security Strategy made this crystal clear, recasting allies as free riders and alliances as transactions conditioned on immediate U.S. interests. It cast a zero-sum view of geopolitics and the global economy, and advocated a might-makes-right perspective for global engagement.

Turns out the nation that wrote the rules has formally announced it no longer feels bound by them.

This perspective is unlikely to be temporary given that the second hard truth underlying the current crisis is this: The U.S. will not again carry the burden of global leadership as it did after 1945 — and not just because of one president but because the America of today is no longer the country it was. It is more insular, more selfish, more insecure and far less accountable.

While the immediate cause of this crisis lies in American politics and policy, a contributing cause lies in Europe’s weakness and self-delusion.

For years the continent mistook dependence for partnership and treated American security guarantees as a law of nature. For too long, it relied on cheap Russian energy and an open Chinese market to propel its economy. Now, as all three of these elements of strategic dependence have come crashing down, Europe is being forced to step up on all fronts simultaneously.

The deeper self-deception, though, may be the belief that the problem lies entirely across the Atlantic. The illiberal tide has already made its way inside Europe’s house.

From Serbia’s crackdown after the Novi Sad disaster and Romania’s annulled presidential election to Hungary’s backsliding under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Slovakia’s far-right turn, the data underscores that this isn’t accidental. Illiberalism’s advancement has a very European path.

It is no coincidence that in the four major Western European countries, the far right currently leads or rivals the lead in the polls: Britain’s Reform UK, Germany’s Alternative for Germany, France’s National Rally and Italy’s governing coalition. Elections will take place in most if not all of these countries — as well as in Poland — over the next 18 months.

Whether this polling becomes electoral reality remains to be seen. But for the very first time, the U.S. is not holding the democratic center against this tide. It is funding the tide. The National Security Strategy warned that European nations face “civilizational erasure” and pledged to defend their “greatness” — against their own elected governments.

The U.S. State Department is now preparing to channel money from its Democracy Fund to the think tanks and civil society groups supplying Europe’s national-populist movements with their ideas.

For 80 years, American power held the center. Now it’s bankrolling the periphery.

This is why the crisis in transatlantic relations is so severe. When the anchor of a system declares the rules optional — tariffs by decree, sanctions on the international court, annexationist talk about Greenland, strikes on Iran that ignore the laws of war — it does not merely remove a guardrail; it issues a permission slip.

The Atlas calls this “copycat impunity” — the normalization of the abnormal. And it is no longer the reserve of distant autocrats; it is for parties just one election away from power in Paris, London and Berlin, accompanied by American funding.

Reversing this trend starts with seeing it clearly. The data shows that the gap between the most and least accountable countries is wider than at any point in recent years, that the U.S. is driving that divergence from within the democratic camp, and that the forces of impunity now have American strategy and money behind them.

But that same data also shows the tide can be turned. Over the past five years, smaller countries like Fiji, Montenegro and Suriname rebuilt their accountability under severe constraints. The gravitational pull of EU membership carried Montenegro and Albania toward the rules, even as Washington walked away from them.

These examples are proof that determined action by middle powers can hold the line. The question is whether Europe, Canada and Asia’s democracies will recognize the danger in time — and act not as dependents waiting for the U.S. to return but as custodians of an order they can no longer afford to leave in someone else’s hands.

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