I would assume they are looking to gauge the political climate of these countries to see who they can approach for silly things like "Coalition of the willing" and other NATO missions, business intelligence for American corporations or for arms shipments, looking for potential double agents or whistleblowers leaking NATO secrets, keeping tabs on dissident parties and movements like the pirate party that may be getting popular and threaten their influence, or to discover early negotiations for future trade treaties with countries like Russia so they can parachute in diplomats to unravel them and pitch better offers to keep their influence in the region.

I'm sure they're also interested in these state's methods for security/offensive hacking and spying. If they find a hole they can either approach the country with American made (and backdoored) infrastructure blackboxes to sell them or monitor it looking for Chinese or Russian state hackers to break in so they can watch their methods and eval capabilities.