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.