The Best and Worst International Relations Right Now
2026-09-03 · by Jordi Fuster
WorldRelat scores every bilateral relationship it has data for, which means it's always possible to ask a simple question: right now, which pairs of countries come out best, and which come out worst? Here's the current top and bottom of the list, with the context that the raw number alone doesn't give you.
The top of the table
| Countries | Score |
|---|---|
| European Union – Ukraine | 10.0 / 10 |
| New Zealand – Japan | 10.0 / 10 |
| Singapore – China | 10.0 / 10 |
| Kosovo – Germany | 10.0 / 10 |
| Japan – India | 10.0 / 10 |
| United States – Norway | 10.0 / 10 |
| Zambia – United States | 10.0 / 10 |
A handful of these are exactly what you'd expect — close allies with decades of dense, warmly-covered cooperation. A couple are more interesting. Singapore and China topping out at a perfect score, despite Singapore's close security relationship with the US, says something about how carefully Singapore's diplomacy is written about: consistently pragmatic, low-drama language tends to score just as well as language about a formal alliance, sometimes better. And Kosovo and Germany reflects something real and specific — Germany was among the first and strongest backers of Kosovo's independence and has remained one of its most consistent partners since.
The bottom of the table
| Countries | Score |
|---|---|
| Poland – Belarus | 0.0 / 10 |
| Russia – Germany | 0.0 / 10 |
| United States – Iran | 0.0 / 10 |
| Israel – Iran | 0.0 / 10 |
| Israel – Iraq | 0.07 / 10 |
| Rwanda – Democratic Republic of the Congo | 0.07 / 10 |
| Pakistan – Afghanistan | 0.07 / 10 |
Most of the bottom of the list needs no explanation — these are, by and large, the relationships you'd guess: active rivalries, unresolved conflicts, or a state of open hostility that's been the dominant story in each pair's coverage for years. Russia and Germany is the one worth a specific note: a relationship that carried substantial energy and trade ties as recently as the early 2020s, now scoring at the absolute floor — as clean an illustration as this site produces of how quickly sustained, heavily-covered conflict can override even a long, previously cooperative history.
A caveat worth repeating
These scores move as new text gets analyzed, so this exact top and bottom seven will drift over time — that's expected, and it's part of the point. If you want the full, current ranking for any specific pair rather than this month's snapshot, the Search page and every individual World ranking stay live and up to date, unlike this article.