In the 22nd century, resource depletion is a serious problem, as most of whatever we had left has been stripped bare. A large multinational corporation, let's call them Deus X, is searching everywhere for Element X, a naturally occurring metal that they utilize in their weapons industry. Element X has been stripped bare in most of the world - except for a small sovereign nation in Eurasia. We'll call them Haven.
Execs from Deus have met with Haven leaders multiple times to get permission to extract Element X. But Havenites are essentially future hippies and love their nature and their landscapes, and they will not allow a full-scale strip mining of their land, even if it means missing out on economical benefits. Deus does not want the situation to escalate because they're an American company first and foremost, and Haven has allies with strong anti-American sentiments - could lead to a full-scale military situation.
So Deus contacts a rogue biochemist to develop a deadly bioweapon. Their plan is to release a controlled, slow-acting virus on the populace of Haven, which would incubate over a period of a couple of years, and slowly kill a large portion of the Haven population, seriously destabilizing their economy and infrastructure. At this point, Deus would very kindly offer to step in and help the nation economically. This would be their way of essentially grabbing a foothold of the nation at the political level, and then use their influence to remove any roadblocks into extracting Element X.
This is what I have so far. Is this something reasonable that an amoral, unethical corporation could do to get what they want, or is there a better, more efficient way of getting the Element X?
EDIT: The endpoint of this setting is that eventually this virus will break free of the bounds of Haven and cause a global pandemic - but for the time being, I'm just looking to see if this is a good way for Deus to get what they want or if they should explore other options.