Monroe Doctrine

Monroe Doctrine, a fundamental principle of U.S. foreign policy that rejects European expansion in the Western Hemisphere. The immediate causes for the doctrine's pronouncement were the fear that Spain might find European powers willing to assist with the restoration of her Latin American empire lost to wars for independence and concern over Russian activities on the northwestern coast of North America. At the same time, British foreign secretary George Canning did not want the Spanish colonies restored because of the trading links Britain had established with them. Anxious to placate the United States, Canning proposed a joint Washington-London declaration. To ensure that Spain would not receive help from other European nations, Canning secured a promise from France's ambassador to London, Prince Polignac, not to assist Spain with the recovery of her colonies, an agreement not known to the United States. In Washington, President James Monroe consulted with former presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who favored a joint declaration with the British, and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, who favored an independent course. Monroe determined that the United States should act independently of Britain. Therefore, in his message to Congress on 2 December 1823, Monroe asserted that the Western Hemisphere was not open to future European colonization, that Europe could no longer extend political control to any portion of the Western Hemisphere, and that the United States would not interfere in the affairs of Europe. While the principles dealt with contemporary issues—the possibility that the European powers would recover Spain's lost colonies in the New World, Russia's claims on the northwestern coast, and U.S. neutrality in the Greek Revolution—their origins predated the War of Independence in the United States and the belief that Europe's monarchical political system should not be extended to the New World. Since the time of independence, presidents George Washington, Jefferson, and Madison had enunciated similar statements.

Monroe's declaration was not well received in the capitals of Europe, and the Latin Americans were puzzled at the unilateral pronouncement. They all understood that Britain, not the United States, was the major supporter of the Latin American struggle for independence. In the nineteenth century, the doctrine did not deter European expansion in the Americas. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) recognized the British presence in Central America. The Monroe Doctrine failed to prevent Spain from reannexing Santo Domingo in 1861 or the French from placing Austrian Archduke Maximilian in the Mexican presidential palace in 1864. In Mexico, Secretary of State William H. Seward recognized the European right to debt collection, but held out the threat of future retribution should Napoleon maintain a European presence. Seward's threat kept Napoleon worried about a possible conflict with the United States once its civil war was over. Still, when the French withdrew from Mexico in 1866–1867, it was because of Mexican opposition to the French imposition, not due to U.S. policy. Corollaries have been attached to the Monroe Doctrine. In 1845, President James K. Polk declared that if any North American people desired to join the United States, the matter would be one for them and the U.S. government to determine without foreign interposition. Polk's declaration referred to British and French efforts to prevent the annexation of Texas, to the dispute with Britain over Oregon, and to suspicions that Britain intended to limit U.S. interests in California. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt added a corollary. He asserted that if any Latin American state behaved in a manner that invited European intervention, it was the obligation of the United States to intervene first, in order to prevent the European action. The Roosevelt Corollary justified intervention by the United States in the Caribbean region through 1933. In each instance the United States acted to put regional political and financial houses in order, in an effort to prevent possible European intervention, which might threaten the Panama Canal. In 1928, State Department official J. Reuben Clark repudiated the Roosevelt Corollary as a justifiable extension of the Monroe Doctrine, because the corollary dealt with inter-American affairs, not European relations.

In 1912, when a Japanese company considered the acquisition of a large land tract in Baja California, Mexico, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge introduced a resolution to the Senate disapproving the transfer of American territory to non-American private firms that could be serving as agents of foreign nations. Following World War II, many U.S. policymakers argued that the Monroe Doctrine became hemispheric policy with the Rio de Janeiro Treaty (1947), the Act of Bogotá (1948), and a resolution at the Caracas Conference (1954), all of which established a hemispheric defense system against foreign aggression and subversion. The United States, however, often acted unilaterally to remove what it perceived to be a European threat, specifically communism, to the security of the Western Hemisphere; among such interventions were Guatemala (1954), the Bay of Pigs (1961), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Dominican Republic (1965), and support of the Nicaraguan Contras (1980–1989). The paternalistic attitude embodied in the Monroe Doctrine, coupled with the unilateral actions of the United States, contributed to Latin America's nationalistic response to Washington's policies.

See alsoClark Memorandum; Dollar Diplomacy; Good Neighbor Policy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alejandro Alvarez, ed., The Monroe Doctrine: Its Importance in the International Life of the States of the New World (1924).

Dexter Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine, rev. ed. (1963).

Donald M. Dozer, ed., The Monroe Doctrine: Its Modern Significance (1965).

Harold Molineu, U.S. Policy Toward Latin America: From Regionalism to Globalism (1986).

Alonso Aguilar Monteverde, Pan-Americanism from Monroe to the Present: A View from the Other Side (1988).

Lester D. Langley, America and the Americas: The United States in the Western Hemisphere (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Dent, David W. The Legacy of the Monroe Doctrine: A Reference Guide to U.S. involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Hilton, Sylvia-Lyn. "La 'nueva' doctrina Monroe de 1895 y sus implicaciones para el Caribe español: Algunas inter-pretaciones coetáneas españolas." Anuario de Estudios Americanos 55:1 (January-June 1998): 125-151.

LaFeber, Walter. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993, pp. 19-85.

Smith, Gaddis. The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945–1993. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994.

                                      Thomas M. Leonard