This sounds like conspiracy theory. Plenty of "countries like Ethiopia" were able to bootstrap their economy since the 1950s, conditional on providing stable en

This sounds like conspiracy theory. Plenty of "countries like Ethiopia" were able to bootstrap their economy since the 1950s, conditional on providing stable environment for investors. You yourself wouldn't invest your own money into an authoritarian country with an unreliable power grid and a penchant for useless wars, civil or external. Well, other people think along the same lines. No need to drag sinister powers that be into the calculation.