1982 England

A surprising leap takes us to 1982 England, led by a Thatcher who had loudly admired Chile's economic reforms under Pinochet. Klein declares unequivocally that the Falklands War with Argentina, over a tiny and distant point of land, had no purpose but to enable economic reform. By stirring up nationalistic passions and portraying her administration as fore guard, Thatcher gained support and increased militaristic license back home. At this point, an enduring and unswerving strike by coal mining unions was demonised and broken up with hundreds of arrests and thousands of injuries. In short order, with unions quieted and legislatively weakened, a string of privatisations occurred with British Gas, Airways, and Steel

Lesson learned: Going to war, conflict with unions: any large enough political crises can promulgate shock therapy.

From this point forward, the case studies of shock therapy seem an implementation of the lessons learned. Klein attributes the spread of Chicago School ideology (in part) to the diaspora of graduates into top advisor positions in NGO's and government administrations worldwide. For example, by 1999, 'Chicago Boys' held 25 positions as government ministers and a dozen central bank positions in Argentina.