An ok narrative to some degree. Not necessarily for its completeness or even validity of its various statement (within my extent of knowledge), but as a source

An ok narrative to some degree. Not necessarily for its completeness or even validity of its various statement (within my extent of knowledge), but as a source of thought. Supposedly RU elites organize the functioning of a state in a mafia style which the authors is convinced dictates through which prism they view the world at large. His position is that it leads to 1) always escalatory politics/rhetoric, 2) any changes from outside or within are seen as work of other power groups, and 3) elites parasitically stay in power protecting their subjects against other such groups and resisting change. At the end, he acknowledged that despite the staggering obstacles at present, in the future EU cannot function without diplomacy and trade with RU (and vice-versa I suppose). That all states are essentially 'mafias' (as a model of modus operandi) should need no elaboration as this has been recognized since Aristotle (perhaps even sooner). The facade of this or that ideological justifications (political -isms) through which the subjects (populace) is manipulated makes some details speciic, but generally very little difference to a normal person. Arguing about and defining (rationalizing) -isms is the sole purpose of the intellectual class of a given state, at least the fraction promoted by the state as it official doctrine. Economically, how much wealth 'state mafia' will siphon out for itself depends less on a particular -ism than on the phase of life-cycle of a particular civilization (roughly speaking). Hence, I do not see the author's 'discovery' tone of this fact noteworthy. That Russian elites have different structure and 'law of conduct' or 'loyalty code' than their western counterparts is the truth indeed, and it is continuation of its historic developments. As W. Durant wisely observed in one of his books that we are narrative driven and of feeble intellect in facing the complexity of system such as multiple-civilizations history and current-affairs. What is most important and our goal (as individuals) should be to bear with patience each others delusions. Hence, let me follow this advice here as well, as other do for me. A concrete defect of this and many such opinions, they (for some understandably) do not use the same metric and principles of all agents throughout the analysis. In any case, there is nothing useful in here (even in my own reply) that could be a building block of tactical plan for real peace.