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I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. However, I think the reason it’s not sitting right with you is your assumption of good faith on their part.
What if they never cared if the country is more profitable generally and they just wanted to rip them off as much as possible before they realise what’s going on?
To me, their actions make far more sense if I presume that was what they really intended to do. More so, any assumption of good faith, as you point out, makes their behaviour seem, at best, bizzare.
I don’t think I explained it very well.
They dont look to own the country when they overthrow it. Thats old school colonialism. Its expensive to maintain and people will dislike you for it. Neo colonialism has them pay for their colonisation from the start.
It’ll be for access to specific resources. Say they had, oh I dunno, oil. You install a puppet government thats 100% dependent on you, who knows they’ll be killed if they lost US backing, and you force them sell you their oil fields for a fraction of their worth.
Then, any revolution or even democratic vote that tries to take them back, despite how wrong and unlawfully they were obtained, would be seen as breaking international law and have them cut off from the rest of the world. Cuba was and still is meant as a warning to the rest of the Americas.
You don’t need the rest of the country to be prosperous for that. In fact, that would just push up the labour costs.