Thanks for the clarification + source.

Putin has clearly mastered a new type of war that specifically weakens America's monopoly on violence both domestically and internationally.

You can already see the symptoms of an institution slowly coming to gripes to a major espionage campaign that did not stop after the USSR fell but evolved into a criminal state, one that explicitly seeks to include criminal elements to distance the Kremlin.

Americans rely on a network of multi-national corporations to do their bidding, Russians rely on the mob.

The United States is that exception, because our constitution explicitly recognizes, not grants, our right to arm ourselves independently of the State (or States really), only with some regulation permitted.

The actual definition of State can easily be found in the dictionary: "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government."