Bertrand de Jouvenel’s book On Power was more a cri de coeur than a coherent theory of the state. It is however relevant to the current war waged by a Kremlin dictator against the residents of Ukraine. About modern wars waged by both unconstrained democratic states and unconstrained autocracies, Jouvenel wrote:

We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns.

For those who read French, the 1945 original says:

Nous finissons par où les sauvages commencent. Nous avons redécouvert l’art perdu d’affamer les non-combattants, de brûler les huttes et d’emmener les vaincus en esclavage. Qu’avons-nous besoin d’invasions barbares ? Nous sommes nos propres Huns.

Isn’t this what is happening in Mariupol?

I suppose that Jouvenel’s reference to the enslavement of the vanquished relates to the forced labor imposed to some foreigners and POWs by the German and Russian governments during WWI and WWII. “We” have not recently resorted to this, at least in the West, but we can see well enough by observing today’s Russian state how the technology of war (shelling, bombers, and missiles), the power of conscription, and the technology of taxation empower barbarians.