Ian
"But consider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Governments provision of this protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering. To the extent that the threats against which a government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket. Since governments themselves often constitute the largest current threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate in essentially the same ways as racketeers." [C. Tilly "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime"--from Bringing the State Back In edited by Peter Evans Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, Cambridge University Press]