Monroe Doctrine

U.S. President James Monroe.

The Monroe Doctrine is a U.S. doctrine which, on December 2, 1823, stated that European powers were no longer to colonize or interfere with the affairs of the newly independent states of the Americas. The United States would not interfere with existing colonies or their dependencies in the Western Hemisphere. However, any attempt by a European nation to oppress or control any nation in the western hemisphere would be seen as an act of aggression and the United States would intervene. President James Monroe first stated the doctrine during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress, a defining moment in the foreign policy of the United States. Most recently, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (added during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt) was invoked as a reason to intervene militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of European influence.

One of the longest standing tenets of American foreign policy is the Monroe Doctrine, which was enunciated by President James Monroe on December 2, 1823, during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to the United States Congress. It would have been impossible for him to envision that its intent – and impact – would persist, with minor variations, for almost two centuries. Its primary objective was to free the newly independent colonies of Latin America from European intervention and control. The doctrine advocated that the New World and the Old World were to remain distinctly separate spheres of influence, for they were comprised of entirely separate and independent nations (Britannica 269).

It was born from concerns of both the United States and Great Britain that Spain would attempt to restore its influence over Spain's former colonies.

President Monroe claimed the United States of America, although only a fledgling nation at the time, would not interfere in European wars or internal dealings, and in turn, expected Europe to stay out of the affairs of the New World. The Western Hemisphere was never to be colonized again and any attempt by a European power to oppress or control any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be perceived as a direct threat to the U.S. (Britannica 269). This quid pro quo was presumptuous on its face, yet has stood the test of time.

The formalized document known as the Monroe Doctrine essentially served to inform the powers of the Old World that the Americas were no longer open to European colonization, and that any effort to extend European political influence into the New World would be considered by the United States "as dangerous to our peace and safety." Basically, the doctrine warned the European powers “to leave America for the Americans.” It also created a sphere of influence that would grow stronger with the addition of the Roosevelt Corollary.

Not surprisingly, because the U.S. lacked both a credible navy and army at the time, the doctrine was largely disregarded internationally (Britannica 269). Howewer, the Doctrine met with tacit British approval, and the Royal Navy mostly enforced it tacitly, as part of the wider Pax Britannica, which enforced the neutrality of the seas.

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External forces

The United Kingdom was torn between the monarchical principle and a desire for new markets. If these nations were no longer independent, England feared they would be cutoff from commerce (Britannica 269). When Russia and France proposed that Britain join in helping Spain regain her New World colonies, Britain vetoed the idea. British naval power, commercial interests, and common cultural, philosophical, and political links to the United States effectively reinforced the doctrine. George Canning, the British Foreign Minister at the time, sought to create a doctrine with the United States that would preclude any future colonization of Latin America. The U.S, however, ultimately elected to institutionalize the declaration as an overt statement of American foreign policy (Britannica 269).

Concurrently, the United States was negotiating with Spain to effect a change of control and ownership of what ultimately became the State of Florida and once that treaty was ratified, the Monroe administration began to extend recognition to the new Latin American nations – Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico which were recognized in 1824.

In the same year, France invited Spain to restore the House of Bourbons to power, and there was talk of France and Spain warring upon the new American republics in concert with the Holy Alliance (Russia, Prussia and Austria). The British government was distraught at this prospect – all the work of James Wolfe, William Pitt and other eighteenth-century British statesmen to expel France from the New World would be undone. Moreover, the former Spanish colonies, recently opened to British trade, faced the prospect of being closed off if Spain regained control.

British Foreign Minister George Canning proposed that the United States and the United Kingdom jointly ward off France and Spain from intervention in the Western Hemisphere. Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison urged President Monroe to acquiesce to this proposal, but John Quincy Adams was more suspicious. Adams also was quite concerned about the efforts of Russia and Mexico to extend their influence over the Oregon Country, which had already been jointly claimed by the Americans and British.

At the Cabinet meeting of November 7, 1823, Adams argued against Canning's offer, and declared, "It would be more candid, as well as more dignified, to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war." He argued and finally won over the Cabinet to an independent policy.

The Monroe Doctrine’s explicitly stated intent was occasionally contradicted by cooperation with European powers in the repeated re-occupation of various territories on the island of Hispaniola, which had been divided between France and Spain. Both nations were interested in re-claiming their territories in Hispaniola, or re-exerting their influence. Ultimately, the new Republic of Haiti not only resisted re-colonization attempts but also gained control of the other portion of the island, controlling it until 1844 when it gained its independence as the Dominican Republic. In practice, the United States’ repeated reliance upon the Monroe Doctrine favored its short-term economic interests, rather than definitively drawing a barrier against European interventionism.

Political climate of Latin America at the time of the Doctrine

The reaction in Latin America to the Monroe Doctrine was undeniably upbeat. John Crow, author of The Epic of Latin America, states, “Bolivar himself, still in the midst of his last campaign against the Spaniards, Santander in Columbia, Rivadavia in Argentina, Victoria in Mexico—leaders of the emancipation movement everywhere - received Monroe’s words with sincerest gratitude” (Crow 676). Crow argues that the leaders of Latin America were realists. They knew that the President of the United States wielded very little power at the time, particularly without the backing of the British forces. Furthermore, they figured that the Monroe Doctrine was powerless if it stood alone against the Triple Alliance (Crow 676). While they appreciated and praised their support in the north, they knew that their future of independence was in the hands of the powerful Great Britain.

In 1826, Bolivar called upon his Congress of Panama to host the first “Pan-American” meeting. In the eyes of Bolivar and his men, the Monroe Doctrine was to become nothing more than a tool of national policy. According to Crow, “It was not meant to be, and was never intended to be, a charter for concerted hemispheric action” (Crow 676).

During the first half of the nineteenth century, it was Great Britain’s preoccupation with exerting its power on the rest of the world that led it to decide to support the Monroe Doctrine. At the time, South America as a whole constituted a much larger market for British goods than the United States. Without question, it was ultimately the support of Great Britain, not the Monroe Doctrine, which protected the sovereignty of Latin America’s newly independent nations (Crow 677).

Use of the Monroe Doctrine

The first use of the yet unnamed doctrine was in 1836 when the United States Government objected to Britain's alliance with the newly created Republic of Texas on the principle of the Monroe Doctrine. On December 2, 1845, U.S. President James Polk announced to Congress that the principle of the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced and that the United States should aggressively expand into the West, oftem termed as Manifest Destiny.

In 1852, some politicians used the principle of the Monroe Doctrine to argue for forcefully removing the Spanish from Cuba. In 1898, following the Spanish-American War, the United States obtained Puerto Rico from Spain and began an occupation of Cuba that lasted until 1902.

The doctrine's authors, chiefly future-President and then secretary-of-state John Quincy Adams, saw it as a proclamation by the United States of moral opposition to colonialism, but it has subsequently been re-interpreted and applied in a variety of instances. President Theodore Roosevelt asserted the right of the United States to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of small nations in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts. This interpretation, intended to forestall intervention by European powers that had lent money to those countries, has been termed the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy cited the Monroe Doctrine as a basis for America’s “eyeball-to-eyeball” confrontation with the Soviet Union that had embarked on a provocative campaign to install ballistic missiles on Cuban soil.

In 1863, French forces under Napoleon III invaded Mexico and set up a French puppet regime headed by Emperor Maximilian; Americans proclaimed this as a violation of "The Doctrine,” but were unable to intervene due to the American Civil War. This marked the first time the Monroe Doctrine was widely referred to as a "Doctrine”. After the civil war came to an end, the U.S. brought troops down to the Rio Grande in hopes of pressuring Napoleon to withdraw his troops. In 1867, Napoleon did, in fact, withdraw (Britannica 269).

In the 1870s, President Ulysses S. Grant extended the Monroe Doctrine, claiming that the United States would not tolerate a colony in the Americas being transferred from one European country to another.

President Grover Cleveland cited the Doctrine in 1895, threatening strong action against the United Kingdom if the British failed to arbitrate their dispute with Venezuela. His Secretary of State, Richard Olney extended the Monroe Doctrine to give the United States the authority to mediate border disputes throughout South America. This is known as the Olney interpretation. There was scarce precedent to support this unilateral expansion of the concept.

The Drago Doctrine was announced on December 29, 1902 by the Foreign Minister of Argentina, Luis Maria Drago. Extending the Monroe Doctrine, it set forth the policy that no European power could use force against an American nation to collect debt.

Roosevelt corollary

As the United States emerged as a world superpower, the Monroe Doctrine came to define a recognized sphere of control that few dared to challenge (Britannica 269). In 1904, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted the right of the United States to intervene in Latin America in cases of “flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American Nation” (Britannica 269). This was the most significant amendment to the original doctrine and was widely opposed by critics, who argued that the Monroe Doctrine was originally meant to stop European influence in the Western Hemisphere (Britannica 269). This amendment was designed to preclude violation of the doctrine by European powers that would ultimately argue that the independent nations were “mismanaged or unruly” (Britannica 269).

Critics, however, argued that the Corollary simply asserted U.S. domination in that area, essentially making them a "hemispheric policeman." To this day, it is hard to argue that the Western Hemisphere is not entirely a United States sphere of influence (Britannica 269).

Clark Memorandum

In 1928, the Clark Memorandum was released, concluding that the United States need not invoke the Monroe Doctrine as a defense of its interventions in Latin America. The Memorandum argued that the United States had a self-evident right of self-defense, and that this was all that was needed to justify certain actions. The policy was announced to the public in 1930.

In 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles evoked the Monroe Doctrine at the Tenth Inter-American Conference, denouncing the intervention of Soviet Communism in Guatemala. This was used to justify Operation PBSUCCESS. U.S. President John F. Kennedy said at an August 29, 1962 news conference:

"The Monroe Doctrine means what it has meant since President Monroe and John Quincy Adams enunciated it, and that is that we would oppose a foreign power extending its power to the Western Hemisphere, and that is why we oppose what is happening in Cuba today. That is why we have cut off our trade. That is why we worked in the Organization of American States and in other ways to isolate the Communist menace in Cuba. That is why we will continue to give a good deal of our effort and attention to it."

Criticism

Many authors, including professor Noam Chomsky, argue that in practice the Monroe Doctrine has functioned as a declaration of hegemony and a right of unilateral intervention over the Western Hemisphere – limited only by prudence, as in the case of British military. Critics including Chomsky and Butler also point to the work of mercenaries such as William Walker, who briefly installed himself as president of Nicaragua, as inspired by the Monroe Doctrine.

Many Latin American popular movements have come to resent the "Monroe Doctrine", which has been summarized there in the phrase: "America for the Americans", translated into Spanish ironically as América para los americanos. The irony lies in the fact that the Spanish term americano is, in all Latin America countries, used to name the inhabitants of North, Central and South America. However, in English, the term American is related almost exclusively to the nationals of the United States, although this wasn't always the case. Thus, while "America for the Americans" sounds very much like a call to share a common destiny, it becomes apparent that it could really imply: America (the continent) for the United States. At the turn of the century, popular resentment in Latin America gave rise to a series of left of center leaders who questioned Washington's sincerity. In order to explicitly explain what is meant, the phrase is usually changed to "America for North American Americans". Other critics have interpreted the Monroe Doctrine as isolationist in intent.

Cold War

During the Cold War, the Monroe Doctrine was applied to Latin America by the framers of U.S. foreign policy. When the Cuban Revolution established a socialist regime with ties to the Soviet Union, after trying to establish fruitful relations with the U.S., it was argued that the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine should be again invoked, this time to prevent the further spreading of Soviet-backed Communism in Latin America. During the Cold War, the United States thus often provided intelligence and military aid to Latin and South American governments that claimed or appeared to be threatened by Communist subversion. This, in turn, led to some domestic controversy within the United States, especially among some members of the left who argued that the Communist threat and Soviet influence in Latin America was greatly exaggerated. (See Operation PBSUCCESS.)

The debate over this new spirit of the Monroe Doctrine came to a head in the 1980s, as part of the Iran-Contra Affair. Among other things, it was revealed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had been covertly training "Contra" guerrilla soldiers in Honduras in an attempt to destabilize and overthrow the Sandinista revolutionary government of Nicaragua and its President, Daniel Ortega. CIA director Robert Gates vigorously defended the Contra operation, arguing that avoiding U.S. intervention in Nicaragua would be "totally to abandon the Monroe doctrine". In a case brought before the International Court of Justice by Nicaragua, however, the court ruled that the United States had exercised "unlawful use of force." The U.S. ignored the verdict. The Carter and Reagan administrations embroiled themselves in the civil war in El Salvador, again citing the Monroe Doctrine as justification. The conflict was marked by large scale human rights abuses and the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero by right-wing death squads. The Monroe Doctrine was also cited during the U.S. intervention in Guatemala and the invasion of Grenada. Critics of the Reagan administration's support for Britain in the Falklands War charge that the U.S. ignored the Monroe Doctrine in that instance.

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