It's difficult, but ironically the real enemy of every large developing nation is its own populism/chauvinism.

When the young ruling elite encounters a crisis, a real problem, often they see that doing it in a transparent and equitable way would only serve as gunpowder for their detractors. Hence the very fast descent into totalitarianism.

And it's no wonder the real crisis of every regime is not some natural disaster, or economic collapse... no, in large nation states the game is entirely about the meta level, the power, and how to keep it, how to distribute it. Naturally this leads to the aforementioned populism/nationalism/etc.