Here comes the season of high school reunions! This is a good time of the year to think about your good old friends — how long you know each other or if you fought long time ago. So does the United States. Countries are like men, they have good and bad relationship with the other. Also, it is not wrong to prefer someone over the other one, just be sure you don’t forget your BFFs. Luckily, US recorded the first day we know each other for all countries.
We compiled the data from Wikipedia (Foreign Relations of the United States), trying to visualize relationships of the United States to the other countries by these factors:
- First criterion, there must be a formal relationship establishment with the other country. In some countries like Bhutan or Aruba, the relationships have been developed informally, thus we cannot count the magnitude of friendships. We leave these countries to be shown as grey.
- In a Relationships Since….. A good friendship is usually built by time, measured by length from first year of formal relationship establishment to the current year (2016) if the relationship is continuing. However, there are some that US had established the relationships more than once. We count only the first one and leave the second or third with the next criterion, as it is more intuitive when you are asked if you know someone for how long. We usually answer the first time we know each other.
- On-and-Off Relationship, if there is a reestablishment of relationship due to political instability such as regime changes in the other countries or political polarization in the global stage. For instance, US has been a good friend with Russia for a long time, but the cold war torn them apart. However, they decided to return in 1991. Friends fight sometimes.
- Break-ups. Unluckily, some relationships just cannot be continued and have been terminated for many reasons — those friends might be changed and never be the same person again. Or if you find a new friend who is an arch-enemy of your old friend, this is the time to choose. Good bye North Korea, Iran, and Taiwan.
To summarize, we have sorted the league of BFFs who never fight or forget US when they were struggled with their lives. These are the top 10:
- Morocco — 240 yrs
- France — 238 yrs
- Netherlands — 235 yrs
- Spain — 233 yrs
- UK — 233 yrs
- Portugal — 225 yrs
- Tunisia — 221 yrs
- Germany — 219 yrs
- Denmark — 215 yrs
- Sweden — 198 yrs
It is surprising to us that US never had to reestablished the relationship with the axis country like Germany after WWII. We doubt that too.
