Barman58 said:
In business, companies often "Slag Off" the opposition in order to improve the sales of their own products, it's a quite effective technique, but is less so at international political level, there is likely to be a very large cost involved, and this will invariably be met by local consumers, directly or indirectly, infrastructure costs multiplying by several times will likely result in costs to the end user, who are probably paying higher than average costs in remote areas to start with.
Politicians "create" some scandals to distract people from other inconvenient news.

The "Yes, Prime Minister" episode "Official Secrets" showed an example:
Hacker is unimpressed and Bill suggests that they distract the journalists by feeding them an alternative story. Sir Humphrey suggests the expulsion of 76 Soviet diplomats, which is standard civil service practice for killing press stories.
...
Since sacking the Energy Secretary and/or his press officer would also cause more trouble than it’s worth, they both agree that the best course of action is to expel 76 Soviet diplomats.
Official Secrets - Wikipedia