Most places with autocrats have no tradition of democracy and removing the autocrats often leads to civil war. This has been a recurring theme in Africa over the last half century. The West has made some disastrous foreign policy decisions, but I think the idea that we keep autocrats in power solely to extract foreign resources is not supported by the evidence.

Also, here's a list of recipients of US foreign aid[0]. I don't see an obvious connection between material wealth and amount of aid spent.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#Over...