A cartel isn't a state as normally would be defined, as they tend not to have geographical bounderies.
Sure they do. It's called turf.
If there were no other greater state that also had claim to the same 'turf', then I would agree, but a cartel is not a state so long as it remains in contention for that same 'turf'.
A drug cartel could be considered a phyle.
Phylum?
No, a phyle. Like a tribe, but more politically structured....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyle"Phyle (Greek φυλή phulē, "clan, race, people", derived from ancient Greek φύεσθαι "to descend, to originate") is an ancient Greek term for clan or tribe. They were usually ruled by a basileus. Some of them can be classified by their geographic location"
In the modern sense, they are used to describe a type of mostly voluntary city-states from the fiction of Neal Stephenson's
The Diamond Age...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age#Phyles"The world is divided into many phyles, also known as tribes, distinguishable by either ethnic, religious, political or other emerging cultural markers....
Most societies depicted in the novel have become globalized, and maintain enclaves throughout the world....
The phyles coexist much like historical nation-states under a system of justice and mutual protection, the Common Economic Protocol."
Inevitable is a good word for it. Not desirable, nor irresistable; but certainly inevitable.
That's a different discussion though.
Not for me.
