That's my point though: these leaders aren't aliens beamed down to Earth from space. They are the kind of leader a society elects as a sort of Hail Mary last d

That's my point though: these leaders aren't aliens beamed down to Earth from space. They are the kind of leader a society elects as a sort of Hail Mary last ditch self preservation effort (yes, elects, in that they actually have support and are not usurpers). As for the second part, let me retell an anecdote. I was once at a party (in the US) with someone who participated in "helping" one of the post-Soviet republics with reforming their industry after perestroika. After too many drinks he began to brag about how "these corrupt businessmen thought they were hot sh... for grabbing all that stuff, little did they know they were just handing it to us". There were a ton of vultures feasting on the USSR's corpse. Now, the fact that it came to that in the first place is absolutely the Soviet leadership's fault. And it is also ultimately the current Russian leadership's fault that Victoria Nuland even got around to handing out those cookies 10 years ago.