What’s truly impressive about this silence is the apparent lack of comprehension by Trump’s foreign policy team about why Merkel would have fired these shots. As I warned back in February, Trump’s ignorant rhetoric and brash demeanor virtually guarantee that elected leaders in large advanced industrialized democracies will benefit from resisting Trump. The Economist offers a similar explanation for Merkel’s comments over the weekend:

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Mrs. Merkel’s … most important audience was the wider German electorate, which goes to the polls on September 24th. The poll surge enjoyed by Martin Schulz, her social democratic rival, is collapsing. But it goosed the CDU/CSU and the chancellor is taking no chances. Among Mr. Schulz’s more resonant talking points are Germany’s internationalist, European vocation — he defines himself as the anti-Trump — and his opposition to Mrs. Merkel’s insistence that German defense spending eventually hit the NATO target of 2% of GDP. Her words today buttressed both flanks. They emphasized that Mrs. Merkel is keenly European but that the country cannot afford to depend indefinitely on the military shield of wayward Anglo-Saxon allies. They reframed and helped disarm two of her opponent’s most potent arguments before the election campaign has even started.

One would think that America’s chief diplomat might be aware of these subtleties, but I’m beginning to wonder if that is true. It seems apparent that Tillerson devotes little attention to anything happening in other countries. Recall Tillerson’s decision to skip the annual human rights report. Or consider Tillerson’s remarks earlier this month to the State Department, in which he took pains to distinguish American foreign policy from American values. To be fair to Tillerson, those remarks stressed that the distinction between interests and values happened only “in some circumstances.” Outside the Syria missile strikes, however, American values do not appear to be visible at all in the last four months.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has declined a request to host an event to mark Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, two U.S. officials said, apparently breaking with a bipartisan tradition in place with few exceptions for nearly 20 years. Since 1999, Republican and Democratic secretaries of state have nearly always hosted either an iftar dinner to break the day’s fast during Ramadan or a reception marking the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of the month, at the State Department. Tillerson turned down a request from the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs to host an Eid al-Fitr reception as part of Ramadan celebrations, said two U.S. officials who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

One can detect a disturbing pattern to these actions — non-actions, really. The striking thing about Rex Tillerson’s State Department to date is the degree to which it seems to care only about other governments, as opposed to other societies.

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There’s a very vulgar brand of realism that would be consistent with such an approach. This kind of crude realpolitik argues that states are only important actors in world politics. Therefore, a state’s diplomatic resources and attention should focus on interactions with foreign governments. Focusing on sub-state actors or societies could be interpreted as intrusions of sovereignty. And as Trump said in Saudi Arabia, “We are not here to lecture. … We are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be or how to worship.”

The problems with this kind of worldview are so manifest that even realists would be leery of such a narrow vision. One obvious problem, however, is that all governments need to think about their domestic troubles first. If Trump is going to articulate an “America First” strategy, then other countries will reciprocate in kind. Indeed, this benefits the leaders of those countries, particularly if Trump provides the easy out with his bullying behavior.

The other big problem with this form of vulgar realism is that it ignores the last few years of history. Middle Eastern states have fallen apart, and democracies have been repeatedly surprised by election outcomes. Completely neglecting the domestic politics and civil societies in other countries is a surefire way for the State Department to get ambushed by surprising social movements.

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Look, I realize that Tillerson is trying, in his own way, to act as America’s chief diplomat. The thing is, it seems increasingly clear that he possesses a stunted vision of American foreign policy.

Given that Trump is the president, it is possible that even the most talented diplomat alive would be flailing as secretary of state. It is possible that, even if James Baker took the job again, the department’s influence over foreign policy would still be waning.