Can Military Governments be a good thing (for a while)?

[TheCurmudgeon]

We are just giving our opinions over here, its not like we stay we want it this way and its going to happen.

I doubt any of us are in a position to carry out a coup and install a military government on our own, but the question does have ramifications in the wider world. For instance, since the end of the Cold War coups conducted by the military or ones that resulted in a military strongman in the presidential palace, even as a transitional government, has been seen as a step backwards. In certain respects this is a PR question, but the ramifications are real since aid can be tied to how Western states approach the new government.

The more direct issue has to do with our own doctrine. If a military government is per se bad, than how can we ever implement a transitional military government? If a military government is "bad" than we can never again do what we did after WWII. In both Germany and Japan there was a military government who ran things for about eight months until it was turned over to civilian administrators. There was no looting; no loss of priceless art, and very little civil unrest as opposed to how we handled Iraq. This is a bit of a separate question, but it is related.

[ccmaximus]

The military have been drivers of modernization in many South American countries, which, after becoming independent from the colonial powers, were mainly ruled by rural landowning regional elites, which intended to keep the agricultural economic basis of their nations.

In the case of Brazil, the Armed Forces were a competing sector within the society which favored industrialization and closer ties with the Western powers.

The Army was reponsible for ending the monarchy in 1889 and, after the Triple Alliance War, played a major part in the abolition of slavery, seeing as they realized a strong Army could only be built from a free society.

Many South American countries were ruled by military regimes during the mid XX century and, although some had their own specific historical reasons for becoming so, the fenomena must also be understood as a part of the contention strategy of the Cold War. Nobody wanted 25 countries styled after Cuba in their backyard.