It's not even an advantage for the powers-that-be if the result is not what was planned. The Chernobyl media blackout brought a blowback in the form of public distrust and outrage from other countries reached by the plume. The famine engineered by Stalin in the Ukraine killed off the farmers who would work the fields to produce grain the next year. In Pinochet's Chile, there were beneficiaries of the initial bubble, but the lack of the expected growth (and expected rise in tax incomes to be spent on pet projects like military equipment) wasn't what the regime dreamt about.  

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}