https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/29/the...ddle-east/

"...Chile, the beacon of fledgling democracy after decades of turmoil between a military junta and left-populist governments, is melting. The pro-American government remains under siege, with the military fighting pitched battles with street protesters, which the leftist politicians openly support. Right there, in Argentina and Chile, we have two loyal American allies under internal seige.


Among others, Venezuela remains a dictatorship, with millions of refugees flooding to another pro-American power, Colombia, proving to be a major burden on the host country. The Mexican army just surrendered to drug cartels, as I wrote last week. Ecuador is in a state of emergency after some of the deadliest riots. And the less said about Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, the better. None of them are functioning governments, and all efforts to democratize those countries have failed....

Kirkpatrick wrote, “The American effort to impose liberalization and democratization on a government confronted with violent internal opposition not only failed, but actually assisted the coming to power of new regimes in which ordinary people enjoy fewer freedoms and less personal security than under the previous autocracy — regimes, moreover, hostile to American interests and policies.” American policymakers, influenced by liberal media and academics, have promoted values in regions that were not capable of grasping, she wrote.


Instead, Washington was “led by its own misunderstanding of the situation to assist actively in deposing an erstwhile friend and ally and installing a government hostile to American interests and policies in the world. At best we will have lost access to friendly territory.” As she wrote, evangelical liberalism promotion has been one of the periodic follies of American foreign policy:...."

Chile is particularly disappointing. They pretty much followed most of Milton Friedman's suggestions for opening up the economy and installing a true free market. In two decades they went from backwater to G20. They've been steadily dismantling all that progress ever since starting with voting in as President an open socialist who had as some of their top policy proposals the elimination of private schools and privatized social security where you can invest your own retirement money to grow it.

(11-03-2019 01:42 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  Chile is particularly disappointing. They pretty much followed most of Milton Friedman's suggestions for opening up the economy and installing a true free market. In two decades they went from backwater to G20. They've been steadily dismantling all that progress ever since starting with voting in as President an open socialist who had as some of their top policy proposals the elimination of private schools and privatized social security where you can invest your own retirement money to grow it.

We should use Brazil to destabilize the government in Chile and have a U.S. backed but wholly regional military crack down in Chile and then Venezuela. We might be able to tolerate socialists tenets in part of the EU but we don't need a socialist state on a land bridge to the U.S. and it is yet another reason to lock down the Southern Border and encourage Mexico to lock theirs down as well.