Military Dictatorships (from my mid term)

I can’t answer this question before first clarifying the two different kinds of military dictatorships. They are the personalistic dictatorships, which are concerned solely with self-enrichment, and institutionalized dictatorships. I’ll start with the failures, and then move on to the successes.
The saying “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” stays true when it comes to combating corruption. In most cases, the military government offers no improvement over its civilian predecessor. Sometimes, the corruption is much more prevalent and apparent. While there are exceptions, the fact is that military governments can’t resist the temptation.
Another pitfall is that the military governments increase the military budget beyond the capacity of the country to reasonably sustain. Usually, it means the cutting back or removal of social programs like education and health care. This is especially prevalent on the continent of Africa. Ethiopia and Eritrea spend 66 and 32 percent of their annual military budget on social programs like health care and education. The trend is that countries with substantial military concerns, i.e. Jordan, Burundi, Iran, North Korea, and Burma, spend more on their military than social programs. The logic is that they wish to maintain control over their country. Overall, in the past 20 years, absolute military spending around the world has been increased by an average of 55%, with South Asia being the leader at 105%. However, it seems to be those countries that have a growing GDP have less or a percentage of that GDP going to the military.
With these increases in military spending, comes the third sin of military governments. They are very protective of their own private interests. Especially in South Asia, corporations have treated former military members/political figures very well. After they leave the military, they receive lucrative private sector employment with preferential treatment concerning government contracts, or comfortable foreign jobs. And with this greed comes the fact that the people in charge will bicker over budgeting or other things that politicians are better suited to handle.
The last sin of the military government is that they are typically oppressive and brutal regimes. Take for instance South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The government of Ngo Dim Diem was Catholic, and did not tolerate deviation from that religion. This resulted in mass protests and the self immolation of a Buddhist abbot in 1963. Also, if you will recall, Pol Pot killed nearly one third of his country while in power.
However, military governments do have upside to them. First off is that they bring stability to the government. While what I mentioned earlier about the military regimes is bad, it does have the advantage off bringing stability to the government. Political unrest defies the military way of thinking, which is strict hierarchy. The government can employ the use of overwhelming force to disperse protests and crush guerilla groups. They also can employ secret police with authorization to use extreme tactics to crush dissent. However, this comes at great cost to human rights and life, as I have mentioned before. The downside to the military government’s stability is that it is typically short lived, as people can take only so much or the government destroys itself. There are exceptions where the government has transitioned to democracy, but the majority of the governments last for less than a decade, and usually are succeeded by a coup.
Military governments are also very good at bringing a nation up to speed when it comes to economic development. Military governments are keen on building infrastructure and modernizing a nation’s economy. There are instances that support this, like South Korea’s modernization. Indeed, Asian nations tend to display the positive side of this debate. The flip-side is that most Latin American countries displayed a very poor economic record when run by military governments. Chile was maligned by too much deficit spending as was Uruguay.