I wonder if they've thought through what all this spying on 'allies' is doing to them, long term.
The change in attitudes towards the US in friendly, allied countries - the UKs and Australias and Canadas and Germanys of the world - has changed noticeably in the last 20 years. We quite liked you guys in the 90s. The US had a positive image and was an popular place to visit. But now you have a whole generation who is really quite anti-American. This shift in attitude started with Iraq (II), particularly in the countries that, due to treaty or otherwise, committed (and lost) troops to that conflict for what was felt to be no good reason. It deepened when you started treating tourists like criminals (taking first two, and then all ten fingerprints of everyone who enters, even just to transit and connect to another flight elsewhere). And now, all this NSA stuff is compounding the situation.
Diplomats and politicians and businessmen won't see much of this shift in attitude. In the circles they roam in (educated, generally middle-aged to older people), nothing much has changed. But there is a ~significant~ anti-American streak, in supposedly allied, Western countries, among younger people (say, the under-25s). It's not (usually) a burning hatred or anything as dramatic as that, more a general feeling of resentment and 'screw those guys'. Not seen as a place to visit as much either - quite a few of my friends 'wouldn't visit me in the US if [I] paid them' (I live in the US currently ... I move around a lot for work). Just seen as too much hassle with the fingerprinting and the scary, rude border officers (though, I personally think that's just an LAX thing ... SFO and DFW seem a lot friendlier!)
Whether this or justified or not is somewhat moot - that generation will eventually occupy the positions of influence and power in politics and business, and attitudes formed in youth are often difficult to change (although, they will generally mellow with age). The US is big and powerful and could reasonably argue its allies need it more than it needs them; nonetheless, they rely on friendly countries in obscure corners of the world for a lot of their ability to project military power (bases) and collect intel (communications installations, listening stations etc.) I just wonder if they've considered what a general shift in attitude towards the US in the rest of the western world would mean, long term...