Monroe Doctrine

10 Key excerpts on "Monroe Doctrine"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Nineteenth Century America in the Society of States

  Reluctant Power

  • Cornelia Navari, Yannis A. Stivachtis(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Deudney, 2019 ). Except on the question of its hemispheric scale, perhaps, it also fails the test of being an international idea of particularly American provenance. Nor, however, does a survey of the doctrine simply provide corroborative evidence for the Realist view of ideas as cudgels, taken up and put down again as needed in the pursuit of power and interests. What it does do is provide us with a useful reminder of the English School’s insight into the complex relations which exist between people, ideas, and actions. The Monroe Doctrine appears at intervals in the history of American foreign relations in a variety of guises—geographical, civilizational, ideological, and geopolitical—promoted by different people and states for different purposes and with different consequences. While it never dominates, however, it never entirely disappears because the Monroe Doctrine and thinking in doctrinal terms are both deeply woven into not how Americans see the world but how they see themselves. This being so, the doctrine is better thought of as an expression of foreign policy and the way it is justified rather than as a contribution to international life and the terms on which it is undertaken.

  Origins

  The Monroe Doctrine,1 although it was not identified as such for another quarter century, received its first articulation in 1823, when President Monroe declared to Congress that the people of

  1 Sources for the Monroe Doctrine include DeConde, A., (1963). A History of American Foreign Policy. New York, NY, Scribner; Merrill, D. and Patterson, T.G. (Eds.). (2010). Major Problems in American Foreign Relations (7th edition). Boston, MA, Cengage Learning; Perkins, D. (1955). A History of the Monroe Doctrine. New York, NY, Little, Brown; Pratt, J.W. (1967). A History of American Foreign Policy. New York, NY, Routledge; and Sexton, J. (2011). The Monroe Doctrine. New York, NY, Hill and Wang.

  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 a European power [and that the United States] should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portions of this hemisphere, as dangerous to our peace and safety.

  Monroe went on to add that the United States had not interfered with “the existing Colonies or dependencies of any European power” but that any European attempt to oppress or control the destiny of states whose independence the American government had acknowledged could not be viewed “in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States” (Sexton, 2011 ). The immediate prompts for his statement were the upheaval in South America caused by the struggles for independence from the Spanish Empire of its colonies there, together with an inquiry by the European great powers in the form of the Holy Alliance between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, regarding America’s position on their possible intervention in support of Spain. The Americans were concerned that Spain’s position in South America might be restored. They were even more concerned, however, that the great powers’ interventions in the concurrent revolutions in Greece and Spain itself would provide models for them becoming directly involved in the Western Hemisphere. There, the Americans argued, there should be no new colonization or re-colonization, no new interventions, and no transfers of territories from one European power to another (DeConde, 1963

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Encyclopedia of U.S. Military Interventions in Latin America

  [2 volumes]

  • Alan McPherson(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  U.S. Statutes at Large 471 (1811).

  2. Monroe Doctrine (1823)

  The Monroe Doctrine was included in President James Monroe’s seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. Drafted by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Monroe’s message—it was not known as a “doctrine” until decades later—was a response to Latin America’s newfound independence from Spain. U.S. policymakers wanted to encourage such republicanism but without appearing to interfere in European affairs, just as it warned European powers to stay out of the affairs of independent American nations. By the end of the 19th century, this defensive principle for the continent became an offensive one, justifying to some the use of U.S. military intervention to keep the Americas from any behavior that might bring about European intervention

  .

  . . . . The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. . . . 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. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Revolution And Intervention In Grenada

  The New Jewel Movement, The United States, And The Caribbean

  • Kai Schoenhals, Richard Melanson(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Several of the islands exchanged overlords numerous times, and a few of them prospered, raising and trading sugar, tobacco, and slaves. But as these plantation economies begin to decline in the early nineteenth century, European interest in them waned. Yet as the wars of independence engulfed Spanish America after the Napoleonic Wars, it seemed likely that European powers might seek to impose their own imperia on these territories. The United States responded to this crisis (and to the alleged threat of Russia to the U.S. Northwest) with the Monroe Doctrine—a set of pragmatic and visionary principles that staked out (in 1823) U.S. moral and security claims on the Western Hemisphere. President James Monroe noted that because the political institutions of Europe were fundamentally different from those of the United States, "we would consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." Monroe renounced any desire to interfere with "the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power," but he warned that any attempt to interpose "for the purpose of oppressing" governments "who have declared their independence and maintained it" or of "controlling in any other manner their destiny" would be viewed "as the manifestation of 0 any unfriendly disposition toward the United States." 2 At the core of the Monroe Doctrine lay a remarkable claim: The health of the U.S. domestic institutions was significantly and necessarily affected by the kinds of institutions maintained by other states in the Western Hemisphere. By a neat amalgamation of geopolitical and ideological considerations Monroe had, in effect, proclaimed the New World a "moral sphere of influence" for the United States

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  No Higher Law

  American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776

  • Brian Loveman(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  In the years following the War of 1812, the interplay between foreign policy and domestic politics vectored America toward ascendancy in the Western Hemisphere. President Madison’s (1809–17) incursions into the Floridas and his invasion of Canada during the War of 1812, followed by President James Monroe’s renewed aggression against East Florida (1817–19), set the United States against Spain and England. Calls from American legislators to support Spain’s rebellious colonies, beginning in 1811, provoked Spanish, French, and even Russian anger. As wars raged across the Spanish American empire (1810–26), American merchants, mercenaries, and emissaries undermined Spanish rule. In 1822, the United States became the first nation to recognize the independence of several Spanish American republics — a unilateral and revolutionary initiative challenging the European monarchies and the rules of “legitimacy” in the existing international system. 3 In December 1823, President James Monroe announced foreign policy principles regarding the Western Hemisphere, which would come to be called the Monroe Doctrine. Americans slowly converted this doctrine into a foundation of the country’s foreign policy. Yet, at the time Monroe delivered his message to Congress, his intent was not to create doctrine but only to address immediate domestic political concerns and the foreign policy challenges posed by Britain and the Holy Alliance that supported Spain’s King Ferdinand VII and monarchism in Europe. Given the virtually sacred status achieved later by the Monroe Doctrine in American politics, it is worth asking what confluence of domestic and international circumstances led to this defining moment in inter-American relations and in American foreign policy more generally. The Monroe Doctrine James Monroe had been reelected unopposed in 1820. He received all but one of the votes in the electoral college

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  America's Backyard

  The United States and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror

  • Grace Livingstone(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Zed Books

    (Publisher)

  criollo ). The independence leaders were inspired by the Enlightenment, but they found it impossible to build their idealized republics in countries that had virtually no middle class, and instead sported small, quarrelsome oligarchies who feared and loathed the poor and uneducated masses. Post-independence governance fluctuated between bouts of fragile constitutional rule and authoritarianism, and all governments faced regular budget crises because most inhabitants were too poor to tax. These countries were easy prey for a new generation of colonialists. European powers in particular sought markets, raw materials, investment opportunities, land and trade routes.

  The Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny

  President James Monroe warned the European powers in 1823 that any incursions into the Western Hemisphere would be considered a threat to the peace and safety of the United States itself. Britain, France and Russia, as well as Spain, all were interested in Latin America’s land, labour and raw materials. Britain, at the peak of its imperial might, sought new markets and strategic ports in the region. At the time, President Monroe’s speech was essentially a defensive, isolationist statement, but the Monroe Doctrine, as it became known, was later used as a justification for US intervention in Latin America.

  The Monroe Doctrine, 1823 ‘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 …

  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. With the existing colonies or dependences of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere.’

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Handbook Of Research On The International Relations Of Latin America And The Caribbean

  • G. Pope Atkins(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  No Transfer: An American Security Principle (1961), gives a scholarly account of the principle expressed in a congressional resolution of 1811 that anticipated the broader application by President Monroe. Logan says that the no-transfer warning to Europe “was power politics resorted to in order to banish power politics from America.”

  The Monroe Doctrine was always met with general disapproval in Europe and, after the turn of the twentieth century, hostility in Latin America. Among the early works was that of French writer Hector Petin, Les Etats-Unis et la Doctrine de Monroe (1900). He traced the history of the doctrine in terms of its beginnings as a declaration by the United States against European military intervention in Spanish America to a vindication for its own intervention there. More dispassionately, Horace Dominique de Barral-Montferrat, De Monroe a Roosevelt, 1823—1905 (1905), chronicles U.S. expansionism, diplomatic and military intervention, and isthmian canal actions. He concludes that the doctrine was no longer credible once the United States engaged in its own extrahemispheric actions. Herbert Kraus, Die Monroe-Doktrin, in ihren Beziehungen zur amerikanischen Diplomatie und zum Voelkerrecht (1913), a masterful scholarly analysis, was the standard history for two decades after its publication. Mexican diplomat and historian Carlos Pereyra, El mito de Monroe (1914), an extension of the authors earlier work on the subject, is a lengthy condemnation of the doctrine as pretense for its imperialism in Latin America. He further asserts that the doctrine never benefited Latin America and that U.S. policy would have been the same with or without it. Alejandro Alvarez, The Monroe Doctrine: Its Importance in the International Life of the States of the New World (1924), is by the distinguished Chilean jurist. It is a classic Latin American interpretation and was long a leading work—although it contains only 110 pages of legal and case analysis and 449 pages of full-text documents. Alvarez emphasizes that the Monroe Doctrine is not a matter of international law but a unilateral proclamation of principle by the United States. Camilo Barcía Trelles, La Doctrina de Monroe y la cooperación internacional (1931), was another of the leading works from Latin America. The author traces the “American ideal” to the sixteenth-century writings of Spanish scholar Francisco Vitoria, whom Latin Americans consider the father of international law. He laments that after 1823 the United States did not accept Spanish American proposals to “Americanize” the doctrine as a multilateral security doctrine. Gaston Nerval, Autopsy of the Monroe Doctrine: The Strange Story of Inter-American Relations (1934), was widely circulated when published and reflected a broad sector of Latin American opinion. It is a lengthy complaint that the United States willfully misinterpreted and misused Monroes statement as a justification for its imperialism in the Americas. British writer Albert B. Hart, The Monroe Doctrine: An Interpretation (1916), written in the midst of World War I, is encyclopedic in detail and a heavily documented multithematic interpretation. Another popular treatment was Charles H. Sherrill, Modernizing the Monroe Doctrine (1916). David Y. Thomas, One Hundred Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1823-1923 (1923), writing on the hundredth anniversary of the proclamation, recommended that if the doctrine was not extended to include Latin Americans then it should be abandoned. Jorge Roa, Los Estados Unidos y Europa en Hispano America: interpretatión politica y económica de la Doctrina Monroe, 1823—1933

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Latin America and the United States

  Addresses by Elihu Root

  • Elihu Root, Robert Bacon, James Brown Scott, (Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  The international importance achieved by your government and your country had its beginning when President Monroe gave to the world his famous doctrine, so debated, so misunderstood, and perhaps so dangerous, if—as has sometimes been thought—it might be used as a means of illegitimate preponderance at the expense of the sovereignty of other nations. The Monroe Doctrine embodies, nevertheless, and we should not hesitate to say so, the first principle of international law of a great part of this continent, if not the whole. This it means for us Mexicans, ever since the President of the Republic announced it to Congress in his memorable message of April, 1896, received with general acclamation by the national representatives, and later by the whole country. The integrity of the nations of this continent is of vital interest to all, collectively, and not alone to the country immediately affected. Any attack on this integrity should constitute an offense in the eyes of the other nations of America. Accordingly, one of our great thinkers and statesmen has wisely said: "America for Americans means each country for its own people, to the exclusion of all foreign interference, whether this comes from other countries of this continent or whether it comes from any other nation whatsoever. And we in our trying struggles of the past have given ample proof to the whole world of our homage to independence and our hatred of all foreign intervention"—to use President Díaz's own words.

  From among the various formulas adopted by the interpreters of the Monroe Doctrine, we Latin American nations should gather and keep as a precious pledge, that which Theodore Roosevelt embodied in his famous speech delivered on the occasion of the opening of the Buffalo Exposition. Addressing the republics of the New World, the illustrious statesman, then Vice-President of the United States of America, said:

  Passage contains an image

  I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine is not to be invoked for the aggrandizement of any one of us here on this continent at the expense of any one else on this continent. It should be regarded simply as a great international Pan American policy, vital to the interests of all of us. The United States has and ought to have, and must ever have, only the desire to see her sister commonwealths in the western hemisphere continue to flourish, and the determination that no Old World power shall acquire new territory here on this western continent. We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old World power, and that, on the other hand, among ourselves each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and interests of the others, so that, instead of any one of us committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the expense of our neighbors, we shall all strive upward in honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  Available until 20 Sep |Learn more

  International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond

  • Antony Best, Jussi M. Hanhimäki, Joseph A. Maiolo, Kirsten E. Schulze(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth Century America (New York, 2012).

  The classic account of Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy is Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Baltimore, MD, 1956); for different interpretations see Richard Collin and Theodore Roosevelt, Culture, Diplomacy, and Expansion (Baton Rouge, LA, 1985), Thomas Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge, LA, 1980) and William H. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic (New York, 1999). Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are contrasted in John M. Cooper’s The Warrior and the Priest (Cambridge, MA, 1983), while Wilson himself is analysed in Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson, Revolution, War, and Peace (Arlington Heights, IL, 1979), Lloyd Gardner, Safe for Democracy (New York, 1984) and Fredrick S. Calhoun, Power and Principle: Armed Intervention in Wilsonian Foreign Policy (Kent, OH, 1986). The Wilson administration’s intervention in Mexico is detailed in Mark T. Gilderhus, Diplomacy and Revolution (Tucson, AZ, 1977), Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico (Chicago, 1981) and Ramon Ruiz, The Great Rebellion (New York, 1980). On Wilson’s failed efforts to bring about a ‘new world order’, see Arthur Walworth, Wilson and the Peacemakers (New York, 1986) and Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York, 2009). The myth of a German threat to US dominance in Central America is effectively exposed in Nancy Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America (Chapel Hill, 1999).

  Gunboat diplomacy and the ‘Good Neighbor’ policy in the Caribbean are detailed in Irwin F. Gellman, Good Neighbor Diplomacy (Baltimore, MD, 1979), Michael Grow, The Good Neighbor Policy in Paraguay (Lawrence, KS, 1981), Stephen J. Randall, The Diplomacy of Modernization: Colombian–American Relations, 1920–1940 (Toronto, 1977), Dana G. Munro, The United States and the Caribbean Republics, 1921–1933 (Princeton, NJ, 1974), G. Pope Atkins and Larman C. Wilson, The United States and the Trujillo Regime

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Grover Cleveland's New Foreign Policy

  Arbitration, Neutrality, and the Dawn of American Empire

  • N. Cleaver(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  This raises an important contradiction in the Cleveland administration’s foreign policy, a policy that occasionally demonstrated an assertiveness bordering on paternalism in Latin American affairs while simultaneously endeavoring to undermine European imperialism in the region. This complicated balance between the rights and interests of the United States, European powers, and American nations would be a recurring factor in the administration’s dealings with Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba. The late nineteenth century had already seen Central American nations invoke the Monroe Doctrine while appealing to the United States for help in disputes with European powers (as illustrated by Nicaragua itself in 1888). By actively asserting the Monroe Doctrine, Gresham and Cleveland essentially placed the United States in the position of regional hegemon, if a benign and conservative one. Whether this constitutes imperialism is then a matter of definition, since a lack of desire to directly influence the actions of other governments in the Americas did not negate a paternalistic stance toward those governments. However one chooses to define the policy, once again it can clearly be seen as an attempt by Cleveland and Gresham to set out their shared vision of how American power should be applied to defend the traditional U.S. sphere of influence in the western hemisphere. This would be even more starkly demonstrated in relation to Venezuela the next year. Further evidence of Gresham’s determination to defend—and perhaps even reinvigorate—the Monroe Doctrine can be seen in his next exchange with Bayard

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  US National Defense for the Twenty-first Century

  Grand Exit Strategy

  • Edward A. Olsen(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Continental expansionism produced conflict, and foreign trade raised tensions throughout early US history. Both caused the United States to respond in the international arena. So the Monroe Doctrine and the United States' fling with nineteenth-century imperialism in the Philippines deviated from the non-interventionist norm. These exceptions proved the rule, but on those occasions Americans were not obliged to become involved in foreign conflicts. Avoiding entangling obligations was the key to US policy. Americans became involved, and sometimes entered into temporary commitments only when direct US national interests dictated. Still, the United States wisely avoided foreign involvement which might gratuitously endanger territorial national security. In particular, Americans prudently rejected being trapped in the perennial squabbles of the old world.

  World War I was a serious deviation from the legacies of the founding fathers. It proved costly in terms of personnel, money and the American psyche. It did not produce the lasting, regulated peace for which Americans fought. Disillusioned by their experience with modern warfare emanating from a petty old-world quarrel, which amounted to a de facto civil war among the European family of nations, Americans fell back upon their tried and true preference for non-interventionism. In the 1920s and 1930s, guided by conservative instincts, they demonstrated their reluctance to become internationalists. As noted above, this cautious policy has been widely mislabeled 'isolationism'. This predilection was again tested on the eve of World War II when aggression in Europe and Asia threatened world peace and stability. That tension was only resolved by an attack on US territory at Pearl Harbor that changed American thinking about the dangers posed by the Axis powers. War in the Pacific soon escalated to global war. In the course of World War II Americans once again succumbed to the logic of liberal internationalism which first took root in the World War I years, with consequences which shape our lives to this day.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book