> The government was actually succeeding, albeit at “another objective altogether”—the enrichment of its own members.

Indeed. And as soon as the flow of foreign money propping the whole thing up was cut off, they vanished like melting snow across the border.

Corruption endangers security in all sorts of ways. This came up at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when it became apparent that maintenance money (and in some cases entire pieces of equipment) had been diverted, resulting in operational failure. The US Navy had a corruption scandal a while ago too ("Fat Leonard").

> to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal

Not even conviction, just straight up execution. The lesson of the BLM backlash was that, no, really the US public demanded that the police had the right to execute citizens in the street without accountability.