A major statement of American foreign policy, proclaimed in 1823, attributed to President James Monroe, but written by secretary of state John Quincy Adams. The doctrine was issued after renewed interest in the Americas by European powers, especially Britain and Russia, following the Spanish-American revolutions for independence. It announced (1) the existence of a separate political system in the Western hemisphere, (2) US hostility to further European colonization or attempts to extend European influence, and (3) non-interference with existing European colonies and dependencies or in European affairs.
The Monroe Doctrine, in 1823, proclaimed the United States' opinion that European powers should no longer colonize the Americas or interfere with the affairs of sovereign nations located in America, such as the United States of America, Mexico, Latin America, and others.
The doctrine was issued by President James Monroe during his seventh annual State of the Union address to Congress.
The doctrine was conceived by its authors, especially John Quincy Adams, as a proclamation by the United States of moral opposition to colonialism, but has subsequently been re-interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including by President Theodore Roosevelt as a license for the U.S. to practice its own form of colonialism (known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.)
Background
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 marked the breakup of the Spanish Empire in the New World.
But President James Monroe and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, were not willing to risk war for nations they did not know would continue to survive.
The United Kingdom was torn between monarchical principle and a desire for new markets;
The United States was also negotiating with Spain to purchase Florida, and once that treaty was ratified, the Monroe administration began to extend recognition to the new Latin American republics — Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico were all recognized in 1822.
In 1823, France invited Spain to restore the Bourbons to power, and there was talk of France and Spain warring upon the new republics with the backing of the Holy Alliance (Russia, Prussia and Austria).
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." In Monroe's Annual Message to Congress on December 2, 1823, he delivered what we have come to call the Monroe Doctrine. Essentially, the United States was informing 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."
This explicitly stated intent was contradicted by cooperation with European powers in the repeated re-occupation of various territories of the island of Hispaniola, regions of which were in this period variously known as Santo Domingo and Haiti. In practice, the U.S used the Monroe Doctrine to side with whatever side of Caribbean conflicts favoured the United States' short-term economic interests, rather than definitively drawing a barrier against European interventionism.
Legacy
Although it would take decades to coalesce into a notably identifiable policy, John Quincy Adams did raise a standard of an independent U.S. foreign policy so strongly that future administrations could not ignore it.
The first use of the yet unnamed doctrine was in 1836 when Americans objected to Britain's alliance with 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 (see Manifest Destiny).
In 1852, some politicians used the principle of the Monroe Doctrine to argue for forcefully removing the Spanish from Cuba. Americans proclaimed this as a violation of "The Doctrine" (see Maximilian Affair), but were unable to intervene due to the American Civil War. This was the first time the Monroe Doctrine was widely referred to as a "Doctrine". Grant extended the Monroe Doctrine, saying that the U.S. would not tolerate a colony being transferred from one European country to another.
In 1895, U.S. Secretary of State Richard Olney extended the Monroe Doctrine to give the U.S. authority to mediate border disputes in South America.
The Drago Doctrine was announced on December 29, 1902 by the Foreign Minister of Argentina. Extending the Monroe Doctrine, it set forth the policy that no European power could use force against an American nation to collect debt.
In 1904, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted the right of the U.S. to intervene in Latin America. This was the largest extension that has ever been added to the Monroe Doctrine.
In 1930, the Clark Memorandum was released, concluding that the Doctrine did not give the U.S. any right to intervene in Latin American affairs when the region was not threatened by Old World powers, thereby reversing the Roosevelt Corollary.
| 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. |
Main Points
The Monroe Doctrine states three major ideas, with one more added by President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt added to the doctrine, and summed up his additions with the statement, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."
Criticism
Some have interpreted the Monroe Doctrine as isolationist in intent - see United States non-interventionism. Others allege that, in practice, the Monroe Doctrine has functioned as a declaration of hegemony and a right of unilateral intervention over the nations of the Western Hemisphere - limited only by prudence, as in the case of British possessions.
Hence, much of Latin America has come to resent this "Monroe Doctrine", that has been resumed there in the phrase: "America for the Americans" (América para los Americanos), which when translated into Spanish, sounds very much like a call to share a common destiny, as the term American (Americano) is used to name the inhabitants of the whole continent.
The 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 US, 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. (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. 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".
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 (even though an American nation, Argentina, attacked the possession of an existing European power, Britain, that predated the Doctrine). The Monroe Doctrine: Its Modern Significance. The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism, 1843-1849. Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of U.S. Empire. The Monroe Doctrine, 1823-1826. The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993. Argues that the Monroe Doctrine became irrelevant after the end of the Cold War.
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