There's a second bit of context to this film:

This, The living daylights and Licence to Kill are the only two Bond films with Timothy Dalton. When he came in it was the tail end of the cold War so they didn't want to paint it as 'those evil Soviets' as the villains and they didn't have an evil organisation like Spectre to fall back on. So both of these films played more into the narrative of the war on drugs with this one being the opium trade and the film after being about South American cartels.

Timothy Dalton also gets a under-appreciated as he plays Bond more like an assassin like in the books and I do like his more cold take on bond which is why I rate him third in my list of Bonds.