• sab@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Furthermore,

    Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies

    -- Machiavelli in the Prince

    Not to call out Putin’s Russia for being amateur hour, but the Prince is probably the first thing to read for an aspiring dictator.