USA is pretty much the dog and the rest of the world is the tail, if something happens to the US markets it will most likely just spread to others as well and probably hit them even harder. Money flees quicker away from developing markets.
For a place like Russia to reduce its corruption it would need to undergo a revolution, and that would probably require a civil war, and that is not good for the stocks there.
I don't know about energys pricing but I know that dividends are quite irrelevant. They are transferring money from one pocket to another (from the value of the company to your bank account), and usually the taxman is between that transfer stealing his share. Unless you can escape those taxes, a more taxeffective method of investing is preferrable, like index funds where the dividends are put directly back to compound without the destructive harm of taxes.