Mobsters And Madmen

 Sadly, these days there are many countries where law and order is weak .....

Isolating Oneself Can Lead To Madness

.... and where the Mob, and Narco's are able to act with near virtual impunity.

These are sometimes, known as Mafia states aka "rule by thieves," where most government officials, the police, and/or the military have become a part of the criminal enterprise. These are usually countries where drug trafficking has become a major part of the economy, but in both  Italy and Japan, there have been long links and associations between organised criminal groups and local and national governments.  

In both those cases, the Italian Mafia and Japanese Yakuza have become part of the country's social and economic cultures. Similarly Mexico and many of the central American states such as Honduras are nearly mafia states, and are already Narco states - in fact such is the pervasive influence of drug money, that even the Netherlands (yes the super civilised Dutch), have been branded a Narco state (by the French) ... In 2018, several police detectives stated in a report by the Dutch Police Association that the Netherlands "already exhibited a painful number of characteristics of a narco-state".

But its still rare for the biggest criminals to run the country as its official government. Venezuela for example has had a large number of government officials, including disputed current President Nicolás Maduro Moros, indicted by the US Government for drug trafficking.

But few states have been branded as both Mafia states and run by madmen, but Russia under Putin and his judo cronies such as Arkady Rotenberg, Boris Rotenberg, his nephew Igor Rotenberg and Vasily Shestakov can only be classed as such ...  the Mafia state tag has been used by US diplomats in leaked memo's described Russia as "a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy, centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a 'virtual mafia state'" and other American diplomats have stated that "the government [of Russia] effectively [is] the mafia."

But as for madmen, well how else can you describe a government that comes up with the statements that have come out of the leadership recently. The Russia's president has said that "The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors," and has doubled down on his loathing of the West/EU/NATO - The Russia's leader aims to reverse the fall of the Soviet Union seeing it as the "disintegration of historical Russia" and declaring that the "Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood."

He has accused Nato of threatening "our historic future as a nation", claiming that Nato countries wanted to bring war to Russian Crimea. This despite the fact that he had himself signed the 2015 Minsk peace deal that attempted to bring a ceasefire in the eastern separatists war that Russia has backed and that has claimed 14,000 lives. 

In these mad claims he is backed by his government, For instance Russia's Foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin says that "Russia's future and its future place in the world are at stake." ....  

One can only conclude that the country of Russia is being led by mobsters and madmen ....