Monroe Doctrine

The intent and effect of the doctrine persisted for over a century after that, with only small variations, and would be invoked by many U.S. statesmen and several U.S. presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.

[11]: 153–5 Great Britain shared the general objective of the Monroe Doctrine, and even wanted to declare a joint statement to keep other European powers from further colonizing the New World.

[12] The U.S. resisted a joint statement because of the recent memory of the War of 1812; however, the immediate provocation was the Russian Ukase of 1821[13] asserting rights to the Pacific Northwest and forbidding non-Russian ships from approaching the coast.

[14][15] The full document of the Monroe Doctrine, written chiefly by future-President and then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, is long and couched in diplomatic language, but its essence is expressed in two key passages.

The first is the introductory statement, which asserts that the New World is no longer subject to colonization by the European countries:[16] The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.The second key passage, which contains a fuller statement of the Doctrine, is addressed to the "allied powers" of Europe; it clarifies that the U.S. remains neutral on existing European colonies in the Americas but is opposed to "interpositions" that would create new colonies among the newly independent Spanish American republics:[6] We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.

[4] Prince Klemens von Metternich of Austria was angered by the statement, and wrote privately that the doctrine was a "new act of revolt" by the U.S. that would grant "new strength to the apostles of sedition and reanimate the courage of every conspirator.

Crow, author of The Epic of Latin America, states, "Simón Bolívar himself, still in the midst of his last campaign against the Spaniards, Santander in Colombia, Rivadavia in Argentina, Victoria in Mexico—leaders of the emancipation movement everywhere—received Monroe's words with sincerest gratitude".

They knew that the president of the United States wielded very little power at the time, particularly without the backing of the British forces, and figured that the Monroe Doctrine was unenforceable if the U.S. stood alone against the Holy Alliance.

This began the process of annexing Hawaii to the U.S.[24] On December 2, 1845, U.S. President James K. Polk announced that the principle of the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced, reinterpreting it to argue that no European nation should interfere with American western expansion ("manifest destiny").

The American Civil War ended in 1865, and following the re-assertion of the Monroe Doctrine by the U.S. government, this prompted Spanish forces stationed within the Dominican Republic to extradite back to Cuba within that same year.

[26] In 1862, French forces under Napoleon III invaded and conquered Mexico, giving control to the puppet monarch Maximilian I. Washington denounced this as a violation of the doctrine but was unable to intervene because of the American Civil War.

"[31] Venezuela sought to involve the U.S. in a territorial dispute with Britain and hired former U.S. ambassador William L. Scruggs to argue that British behavior over the issue violated the Monroe Doctrine.

President Grover Cleveland through Secretary of State, Richard Olney, cited the doctrine in 1895, threatening strong action against Great Britain if the British failed to arbitrate their dispute with Venezuela.

[36] The "Big Brother" policy was an extension of the Monroe Doctrine formulated by James G. Blaine in the 1880s that aimed to rally Latin American nations behind U.S. leadership and open their markets to U.S. traders.

[39] The doctrine's authors, chiefly future President and then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, saw it as a proclamation by the U.S. of moral opposition to colonialism, but it has subsequently been re-interpreted and applied in a variety of instances.

[citation needed] The Venezuela crisis of 1902–1903 showed the world that the U.S. was willing to use its naval strength to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts, in order to preclude European intervention to do so.

This re-interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine went on to be a useful tool to take economic benefits by force when Latin American nations failed to pay their debts to European and U.S. banks and business interests.

[4] Christopher Coyne has argued that the addition of the Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine began the second phase of "American Liberal Empire" and "can be understood as a foreign policy declaration based on military primacy."

[44] The so-called "Lodge Corollary" was passed[45] by the U.S. Senate on August 2, 1912, in response to a reported attempt by a Japan-backed private company to acquire Magdalena Bay in southern Baja California.

[47] The December 1941 conquest of Saint Pierre and Miquelon by Free French forces from the control of Vichy France was seen as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine by Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

[48] After 1898, jurists and intellectuals in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, especially Luis María Drago, Alejandro Álvarez, and Baltasar Brum, reinterpreted the Monroe Doctrine.

The era of the Good Neighbor Policy ended with the ramp-up of the Cold War in 1945, as the United States felt there was a greater need to protect the western hemisphere from Soviet influence.

[7] In 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles invoked the Monroe Doctrine at the 10th Pan-American Conference in Caracas, denouncing the intervention of Soviet communism in Guatemala.

[51] When the Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) established a communist government with ties to the Soviet Union, it was argued that the Monroe Doctrine should be invoked to prevent the spread of Soviet-backed communism in Latin America.

[52] Under this rationale, the U.S. provided intelligence and military aid to Latin and South American governments that claimed or appeared to be threatened by communist subversion (as in the case of Operation Condor).

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 in 1984, arguing that eschewing U.S. intervention in Nicaragua would be "totally to abandon the Monroe Doctrine".

[56] President Donald Trump implied potential use of the doctrine in August 2017 when he mentioned the possibility of military intervention in Venezuela,[57] after CIA director Mike Pompeo declared that the nation's deterioration was the result of interference from Iranian- and Russian-backed groups.

[60] Russian permanent representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya criticised the U.S. for what Russia perceived as an implementation of the Monroe Doctrine at the 8,452nd emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on January 26, 2019.

"[62][63] Historians have observed that while the doctrine contained a commitment to resist further European colonialism in the Americas, it resulted in some aggressive implications for U.S. foreign policy, since there were no limitations on its own actions mentioned within it.