vitus979 wrote:
Alright. Let's look at this from the other direction, and see if that helps.
Tell me why I, as an American, should give a rats ass about Germany's opinion about the president? Why should I give a rats ass if they boo his daughter? Why should I give that act any credence at all? Because I don't. Convince me.
First, I don't know whether you should care about the opinions of these specific people at this specific conference regarding our President. I don't know if anyone should care that much about the opinions of a small number of average people from one country about the leader of another country, in general. What you shouldn't do is base your caring on whether or not Germany meets an aspirational NATO goal of 2% defense spending. There are other areas in which Germany and the USA depend on each other, on the international stage other than simply defense spending of NATO allies.
Germany doesn't resist increased defense spending because they like to rely on the US for their defense. They resist defense spending because they have a massive national complex about WWII, and it's very difficult to convince their populace to beef up their military as a result of that national sense of guilt and caution.
Germany plays a pretty strong leadership role in Europe, including the G7, NATO, and a few other organizations. Germany participates in NATO, although not in the numbers we might want. But their participation in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Africa, etc (along with other "under-contributing" nations) allows us to leverage the concept of global coalition, lending legitimacy to the efforts we want to pursue. Many of these nations, including Germany, also contribute quite a bit in terms of information sharing, going after financial networks for terrorism, etc. Germany is also the largest European economy, and as such, our economic fates are somewhat intertwined. I think they've got something like $250 billion invested in our economy, and we have a lot invested in theirs (not sure how much). We also have a lot of companies in the US owned by German companies, employing a lot of Americans. As I mentioned, they play leadership roles on a bunch of international organizations, on which we want/need their support to get things done that we want. In short, Germany is important to US foreign policy.
Does that mean that it's super important how a handful of people feel about Ivanka Trump at a female empowerment conference? Not necessarily. But it is probably important, or at least interesting, to keep a finger on the pulse of the German public towards the US, our leadership, and our policies, because they have the ability to impact our goals around the world.
There are some countries that we could probably just dismiss as unimportant because of their lack of contribution or impact on us. Germany is a poor example to choose if that's the point you want to make.
Slowguy
(insert pithy phrase here...)