Yup, Russia, China, North Korea, all authoritarian states

Winners write the history books.

Real winners write the law books.

Whether that's European colonial settlers, or William of Normandy.

(Not known as "William the Negotiator", or "William the all-around nice guy").

Descendants of the local warlords he installed still own huge (well, by British standards, the entire country isn't much bigger than New York State) tracts of land, a thousand years later.

Are you trying to somehow claim that the well-established fact that the Russian govt is indistinguishable from the Russian Mob, or that North Korea is not counterfeiting currency, running drugs, and hacking networks for currency, all indistinguishable from a criminal gang, and definitely not the purview of legitimate governments?

In linguistics they say that the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language is a dialect with an army.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...