The US government spends trillions on the military, what stops them from descending with a crapload of police forces into a city like this and putting an end to it?
One of the better developments of last few decades is that national borders are, for the most part, no longer subject to violent change. That's due to territory simply losing importance: raw materials are insignificant, economically, compared to the fruits of intellectual labor. Borders have also become much more porous: the conflict in Northern Ireland, for example, lost much of its significance when it became commonplace to commute across the border every day.
Then, a once-mighty nation took the lead in establishing what's called the "rule-based international order": You may conquer some territory with your oh-so-mighty territory. But whatcha gonna do with it when nobody is going to reconise it and you can't sell anything produced there in international markets?
There's been enough regression in these efforts in recent years. No matter how grating it may be to see criminals getting away, it comes nowhere close to being significant enough to go back to might-is-right.
He was wrong -- both times. :)
"The Great Illusion" argued that economic integration made war unlikely. He was wrong in that he hadn't realized how much people wanted something that went against their interests.
But he learned that lesson well: "From the mid-1930s, Angell actively campaigned for collective international opposition to the aggressive policies of Germany, Italy, and Japan. He went to the United States in 1940 to lecture in favour of American support for Britain in World War II"[1]
We got a small taste of how isolated nations are when this pandemic kicked off. It's amazing it didn't degrade further.
If people themselves (the immune system, if you wish) don't make an effort like this woman did, no intervention will help them, Earthly or Divine alike.
At best the US can bunker up and make an effort to contain them.
Close to a trillion have been spent on Afghanistan for almost a decade. That much effort was needed to throw off an easily identifiable terrorist state. How will Afghanistan last until it collapses again? Because it's only a matter of time.
the US has already struck a deal with the taliban, and the afghan government is formally negotiating with them right now. so probably not long...
“Military” and “police forces” are different things.
But, in either case, doing so would both start a war with and further destabilize Mexico. There's a reason the US usually does this to countries far from its own borders, separated by oceans, or both, so that the blowback when popular support collapses and the ongoing cost in blood and treasure becomes intolerable is born by people that are remote from the US (in both the target country and it's neighbors.)
Aside from those pragmatic concerns, the same considerations also have a moral dimension, though that's less consistently reflected in policy decisions.
I believe we live in a narco-state where government works for the cartels. This does not exclude US authorities, search for Garcia Luna and ties with DEA operatives/israel companies
What the USA should not do (again) is "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them"