Imagine for a moment that you have the misfortune to be elected president of some nation. A neighboring nation possesses valuable natural resources that you'd like to have. How to proceed?
You could seize those resources by force. Certainly that's been a common method across much of human history. Hire some thugs to take what you want. Have them beat up the other guy if he gets in the way. Give your thugs uniforms and an internal hierarchy, and you might fool some people into believing the whole thing is more legitimate.
