And so as part of that, the US has a strong interest in the last century fight against communism and the Soviets in the last century, which was frankly in almost everyone's interest as we see now in Latvia, Finland, Ukraine, Poland etc..

"when suppressing weak democracies with strong dictators" <- this is total baloney, a perennial trope of misinformation.

Allende, with the backing of the Soviets, and only a small minority of the votes (about 30%), viciously appropriated property and socialized large swaths of industry which crashed the economy - he came into a constitutional fight as the clear majority of the elected assembly - and the Supreme Court - acted against him, and he began to rule by 'decree'. He had neither popular support nor arguably constitutional basis, this is not a 'democracy' by any stretch.

It's the same story over and over again, all over the world in the last century, communist agitators try to take over, and there is blowback.

Chinese vassal state of North Korea is among the worst places on Earth, and all the former Soviet states are now freaking out due to intransigence from Russia, they're doing everything they can to prevent another Imperial incursion. All of those places (aka S. Korea, E. Europe and even Central Asia) run to the US for help. Even Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan would ally themselves with the US to defend from Russia and China if they thought they could.

Chile is now a good ally and partner of the US and most free nations, maybe the strongest in S. America.