Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay.  What do they have in common?  Well by the misguided reasoning set forth in this Washington Post editorial they should be three of the most prosperous nations in South America due to all the positive effects decades of military dictatorship have had for economic development in that part of the world. 

In fact the entire South American continent should seemingly be the most modern and prosperous in the developing world, but its not, and most of these countries are abandoning free market reforms put in place in the 1980's and 90's and even earlier.  What, you say Chile was different and Pinochet did it right?  Well then maybe we'll see future military coup's justified not merely for the need to restore social order and stability but as a means of bringing Pinochet-style political and economic reforms.  As this 1998 article by Mario Vargas Llosa makes clear that has already happened in Peru, Guatemala, Paraguay, Columbia, Bolivia and Venezuela and few of those countries ranks the kind of praise heaped by the Post on Chile. 

The problem with this editorial is that the Post tries to find the positive in U.S. foreign policy support for South American military dictatorships during the Cold War in order to needlessly praise the recently deceased Jeane Kirkpatrick, so the last thing they want to do is delve into the considerable wreckage left by these authoritarian regimes across the continent and the needless political polarization and extremism, both left and right, they generated.  In the end we won, so we're led to believe Pinochet was a good guy and democracy and free-markets are flourishing not regardless of these regimes but because of them.  Nevertheless, what does it say to the rest of the world when the opinion page of the Washington political and foreign policy establishment basically praises a particular type of military authoritarianism as a legitimate and necessary stage in the path to democratization and economic development for the Third World?