> it cannot (or doesn't want) to stop the traffic coming from outside its borders

Openly turning that sophisticated intelligence apparatus against the citizenry is simply not politically tenable in the US at present. (Note that I said openly. What Snowden revealed wasn't open.)

Well, this is done in the open: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone/ .

The US already openly uses the entire surveillance apparatus legally anywhere within a few hundred miles of the border.

Are you aware that there's a bit of an ongoing jackboots-gas-and-rubber-bullets crackdown happening across the United States against unarmed civilians?

The government has no problem turning its tools against the citizenry - well, particular parts of the citizenry.

These aren't hypothetical techie concerns about the NSA seeing your dick pics. This is actual police departments behaving like we live in a police state.

Indeed. In context, something that would presumably continue indefinitely (border traffic and drug consumption) was being discussed. That would require permanent legislation and normalization of extensive government surveillance.

In contrast, the current shenanigans are occurring within a declared state of emergency (pandemic) on top of which widespread protests over an unrelated topic broke out. Even then, what's happening appears to be status quo police brutality that's piecemeal. (As opposed to open, centrally coordinated mass surveillance of everyone's actions - both physical and digital - with the approval of the legislature).

It also continues to be unable to win wars against insurgents hiding in mountains. Winning is hard in general.

China has the largest army in the world.

And India has the 2nd. US is 3rd.

That may be true by number of combatants. But the size of an organization is not measured just by number of people involved. It is well known that the US military spends more money than most other countries COMBINED, and has more bases and operations than any other military in the world. It doesn't even make sense to compare the US military with India's.

It’s not actually in the US’ national interest to have Mexico be a functioning state. How would we be able to get cheap seasonal immigrant labor, or export manufacturing jobs if they were? Perhaps more importantly, if Mexico really was a functioning economy we would then have to compete with them, rather than profiteer off of them. There is very little geopolitical incentive for the US to fix any of Mexico’s endemic problems, in fact it’s probably a far more in the US’ interestes to maintain the status quo making sure that no one faction ever gets too powerful.