Monroe Doctrine

Monroe Doctrine. In his message of 2 December 1823, President James Monroe articulated two principles that by the 1850s were regarded as the basis for the so‐called Monroe Doctrine. The first stipulated 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 Power.” The second embodied Monroe's support for the newly independent Latin American republics by stating that the American and European political systems were “essentially different,” and that the United States would consider efforts by European nations “to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

James K. Polk, in the 1840s, was the first president to invoke Monroe's message as a form of policy justification, but his conduct did not immediately set a precedent. For much of the nineteenth century the Monroe Doctrine was ignored or violated far more than it was observed. U.S. acquiescence in such developments as the British occupation of the Falkland Islands (1833), British activities in the Central American isthmus throughout the 1850s, Spain's reannexation of Santo Domingo in 1861, and France's installation of a Bourbon monarch in Mexico in the 1860s were hardly in accord with the principles of 1823.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in response to rising concerns about European imperialism coupled with a more assertive sense of American nationalism, the United States began to invoke the Monroe Doctrine more consistently. This was particularly so in 1895, when the Cleveland administration insisted, successfully, that Great Britain submit to arbitration a long‐standing boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana. On that occasion Secretary of State Richard Olney formulated the first major corollary to the 1823 message by asserting that “the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.”

After the turn of the century, the United States redefined the Monroe Doctrine in ways that were also intended to justify greater U.S. activity in the Americas. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt, anxious that financial malfeasance in the nations of Central America and the Caribbean might provoke intervention by European creditor nations, announced a second major corollary to the Monroe Doctrine to the effect that no American nation could use the doctrine “as a shield to protect it from the consequences of its own misdeeds against foreign nations.” In effect, this required the United States to intervene in the affairs of other American nations. Acting on this basis, the United States took over the management of the finances of the Dominican Republic (in 1907) and of Nicaragua (in 1911), and in 1915 it actually occupied the republic of Haiti.

The assumptions behind the “Roosevelt corollary,” although repudiated in the 1930s in favor of Franklin D. Roosevelt's “Good Neighbor” policy, continued to influence U.S. policy in the Americas through the 1980s. Beginning with Woodrow Wilson, U.S. presidents have sought to reconcile the regional principles of the doctrine with the increasingly global reach of their foreign policies. Worried about aggression from Nazi Germany, Franklin Roosevelt even expanded the doctrine to include both Canada and Greenland.

In the early years of the Cold War after 1945, the United States internationalized the democratic and noninterventionist principles of the Monroe Doctrine in the Truman Doctrine of 1947, while at the same time it preserved its regional hegemony in the Americas through the framework of the Rio Pact (1947) and the Organization of American States (1948). The concern to keep communism out of the Americas subsequently led to U.S. intervention in various forms in Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961), the Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973), and Grenada (1983), as well as to active involvement in the insurgencies in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s. In each case the United States either overthrew, or attempted to overthrow, left‐wing regimes in order to replace them with dictatorial governments whose members supported U.S. priorities. Critics argued that these repressive governments violated the principles that Monroe had proclaimed in 1823.

The most serious crisis of the Monroe Doctrine occurred in Communist Cuba in 1962. As early as 1960, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev openly proclaimed that the Monroe Doctrine was dead. Two years later, Khrushchev installed intermediate‐range missiles on the island to protect Fidel Castro's regime. Throughout the ensuing Cuban Missile Crisis, which was eventually resolved by the removal of the missiles, President John F. Kennedy did not invoke the Monroe Doctrine in defense of his actions, but concern for its traditions was never far from his mind.

With the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the disappearance of any regional threats to the security of the United States in the western hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine might be fairly regarded as moribund, if not entirely dead. The doctrine was never accepted as valid international law by any European nation, and it would be inaccurate to say that it saved Latin America from any form of recolonization. Nor did the doctrine ever receive much support in Latin America; indeed, to the extent that the United States invoked it in the twentieth century, it became increasingly unpopular there as a symbol of an overbearing Yankee supremacy. The true significance of the Monroe Doctrine, however, has always depended on circumstances.
[See also Caribbean and Latin America, U.S. Military Involvement in the; Dominican Republic, U.S. Military Involvement in the; El Salvador, U.S. Military Involvement in; Nicaragua, U.S. Military Involvement in.]

Bibliography

Dexter Perkins , A History of the Monroe Doctrine, 1941; rev. ed. 1955.
Gaddis Smith , The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine 1945–1993, 1994.

J. C. A. Stagg