Analysis | Trump’s saga is part of a wider global ‘age of impunity’

With other investigations ongoing, Trump faces the possibility of more than one criminal indictment this year. To many Americans, that’s a reflection of his unique record of behavior and approach to governance, as well as a sign that the U.S. system is capable of ensuring that no one is above the law. Though historic in the United States, there are many precedents of former leaders being held to account for abuse of power and corruption in other established democracies.

But to Trump’s sympathizers, both in the United States and elsewhere, the unprecedented indictment of a former U.S. president marks nothing short of a “witch hunt” — an event that may presage political violence and a further unraveling of democratic norms. “The position implied here is that the price of social peace is absolute impunity for Trump,” wrote Washington Post columnists Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, referring to Republican hard-liners. “The insistence that Trump must be kept above the law — no matter his wrongdoing — courses through all these GOP responses.”

From abroad, support for Trump has come from familiar corners. On Monday morning, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban tweeted an image of him clasping the former president’s hand outside the White House — two illiberal nationalists, comrades-in-arms — with a message: “Keep on fighting, Mr. President! We are with you.”

Orban is much admired by the American right precisely because he has bent his small nation’s political system in his favor, cowing the judiciary, co-opting the independent press and weakening civil society. Orban’s government has faced E.U. censure for its undermining of the rule of law, but in his view, that’s what it takes in a battle with entrenched liberal opponents. “In order to win, it is not enough to know what you’re fighting for,” Orban told an adoring right-wing crowd in Texas last August. “You should also know how you should fight: My answer is play by your own rules.”

Trump’s indictment fuels global concern over U.S. politics

In many parts of the world, the desire of political leadership to play by their own rules is carrying the day. President Biden and some of his counterparts in the West like to frame the overriding challenge facing global politics as a clash between democracy and autocracy on the world stage, but there may be a sharper way to understand that contest: “The great danger is not just that democracy is under attack, but that the rule of law and systems of accountability are being eroded in all areas of life,” wrote David Miliband, a former British politician and president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee.

To that end, Miliband and his staff, in conjunction with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Eurasia Group consultancy, published in February an index that charted how these systems of accountability are struggling. Their Atlas of Impunity ranked 163 nations around the world based on data that tracked what they defined as the five dimensions of impunity — unaccountable governance, abuse of human rights, conflict, economic exploitation and environmental degradation.

The top and bottom of the rankings provide a familiar sight: Finland and its Nordic neighbors score lowest in terms of their aggregate impunity rating, while conflict-ravaged Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Myanmar sit highest. Russia, whose rolling invasion of Ukraine and catalogue of war crimes constitute one of the most flagrant examples of impunity on the world stage, ranks poorly, as does China.

The United States is tellingly in the middle of the pack, closer to countries such as Argentina and South Africa than Group of Seven peers Germany and Japan. That’s in part due to what Miliband described as “middling scores on discrimination, inequality, and democratic access,” combined with its legacy as a major global arms exporter.

Shocked and defiant: How Trump is responding to unprecedented indictment

Implicit within this analysis is the imprint of Trump. His polarizing political movement, flouting of democratic norms and harnessing of an ultranationalist brand of politics that seems bent on restricting voting rights, among other agendas that critics dub anti-democratic, have all raised the stakes in U.S. politics. His checkered business career, let alone the controversies surrounding his time in office, reveal him to be a figure who has long benefited from a certain culture of impunity among U.S. elites.

The case of Trump, moreover, shows where Biden’s “democracy vs. autocracy” worldview may come short. By most indexes, the United States has a healthier democracy than many other countries, but its divisions and political ferment tell a different story. “Though liberal democracy certainly is important to impute the necessary characteristics for accountability, it still isn’t enough. Societal cohesion across ethnic, racial, religious and class lines is also important,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “And while prosperity matters, making sure the gains are distributed widely and equitably is even more so.”

One of the most interesting conclusions of their analysis is that none of the great powers — be it the United States or China or regional giants like India and Brazil — comes out looking that great.

“Perhaps it should not be a surprise that the most powerful countries suffer from impunity given that the impunity we see in the world is a product of unchecked power,” noted the Atlas of Impunity’s main report. “But it should give pause to U.S. observers who believe in the positive role their country can play in upholding rules-based systems that the country performs so much worse than it ‘should’ given its peer group. These findings also highlight the danger of a world dominated by any other major power, such as China, which has also failed to create internal systems of accountability.”