[marcinzm]

Since you want to make it political. It's how every country ever became an economic superpower. Then many decided to clean up their acts since they could divert resources to it at little relative cost. The countries that tried to do the right thing from the beginning didn't get into that club. Most of them then were destroyed by the superpowers in one conflict or another. Moral of that story is to be pragmatic until you're at the top since otherwise it won't much matter.