Nothing new with US-Russia proxy war; that’s been going on since the Berlin Airlift. Same with Iran since we installed the Shah in 1953. The intent behind proxy wars is to bleed the sponsor nations to death through death by a thousand cuts tactics. That translates to the side that can outspend the other over time usually is the winner. We’ve already done it once with Russia, we’ll do it again because, well, dollars>rubles.What I mean is there is now a proxy war with Russia, a proxy war with Iran, not to mention what's going on with the border …
The border has always been loosely enforced; what’s ironic is that it’s harder for me as a citizen of the US to legally enter the US (where I cannot he refused entry) than it is for a non-citizen to do so. That’s been the case since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
Our current preoccupation with finding and killing single and small groups of terrorists and calling that war is and has been a great distraction from actual warfighting and leads some to make a connection between declaring cartels a terrorist organization which, also ironically, would give Mexican nationals an actual and valid basis to ask for asylum in the US and would likely worsen the overall immigration problem.
Congress has no incentive to solve immigration because it gives the parties one less thing to fight over AND doing so requires a grand compromise, which is undoable in the current environment. Cartels could he solved for, but it literally would take a new form of government in Mexico and a relationship with Mexico that would allow US military and law enforcement to operate freely within Mexico along with the US population deciding that drug users just aren’t worth the hassle of trying to save them during an overdose. Niether ain’t going to happen, either, so no matter what Congress does/doesn’t do, so long as there’s economic incentive for the drug cartels to operate, they will. Sorry, but it is what it is.
Meanwhile, the US is still the only 800 pound gorilla in the room, albeit masquerading as a circus monkey. The rest of the world remembers Yamamoto’s declaration after Pearl Harbor and onows that if push comes to shove, we’ll gladly break out pallets of whoopass and deliver up close and personally.