The Monroe Doctrine - Then and Now

 

The Monroe Doctrine, about which everyone of my generation learned in grade school history class, but which may suddenly be news to many people today, was originally a U.S. foreign policy statement warning European powers against any further colonization or attempts at recolonization in the Americas, effectively establishing the Western Hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of influence, while correspondingly committing the U.S. to non-interference in European affairs. Although largely the work of his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, President James Monroe formally articulated the doctrine during his annual State of the Union Address to Congress on December 2, 1823. By then, nearly all of the formerly Spanish colonies in the the Americas had achieved independence. Monroe effectively divided the Old and the New Worlds into separate spheres of influence, and clarified that further efforts by European powers (e.g. the Holy Alliance) to regain imperial control of or influence over the newly independent  states in the region would be viewed as a threat to U.S. security. In turn, the United States would continue to recognize and not interfere with existing European colonies, nor would it meddle in the internal affairs of European countries (their sphere of influence).

“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. …

 

“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”

In actual practice, the U.S. lacked both a credible army and navy at the time of the doctrine's proclamation, and its enforcement depended upon the cooperation of the United Kingdom whose Royal Navy controlled the Atlantic and which shared the U.S. interest in keeping the continental powers from regaining significant influence in the Western hemisphere. Obviously, over tine the balance of power has shifted, and the United States has long enjoyed the ability to enforce its interpretation the Monroe Doctrine - opposing, for example, Maximilian's Hapsburg Empire in Mexico in the 1860s and the basing of Soviet offensive missiles in Cuba in 1962.

The so-called "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, expanded the claimed right to intervene in internal regional politics, ostensibly to prevent foreign intervention by guaranteeing domestic stability in regional states and their ability to repay foreign creditors. This justified famous military interventions in Cuba and Haiti. In 1934, FDR's "Good Neighbor Policy" was seen at least in part as superseding his predecessor's corollary.

Now the Monroe Doctrine is in the news again. After an 80-year, post-World War II interval, in which the United States dominated the globe and established a network of alliances and rules to attempt to guarantee a world order of relative peace and security, the U.S. seems to be withdrawing from that role in favor of a return to the historically more typical, pre-World War II order. One image that has been mooted about is a world of three spheres of interest - China in Asia and the Pacific, Russia in Europe, and the United States in the Western hemisphere. Of course, Russia is really a decadent petro-state and can only assert imperial pretensions in Europe as a direct result of U.S. withdrawal from Europe. (Remember that the original post-war European goal, as reflected eventually in NATO, was to keep "Germany down Russia out, and America in.")

That the U.S. is the primary and dominant power in the American hemisphere is obvious. That is has an interest in keeping other world powers (e.g., China) from increasing influence in the Americas is likewise reasonably obvious. That it needs to do so by directly interfering militarily in the internal politics of Latin American states is much less evident and seems more likely to be counter-productive in the long run - not least because of the contemporary resurgence of isolationist sentiment in the U.S. and the American voters' allergy to foreign military commitments that risk American lives. That to maintain its sphere of influence in the American hemisphere, the U.S. would do well to abandon its post-World War II alliances and commitments and allow, for example, Russia to rebuild the Tsarist Empire by reconquering Ukraine seems both morally wrong and strategically short-sighted.

But what about Greenland? When Germany occupied Denmark in 1940, the U.S. rightly regarded Greenland as Western hemisphere territory which should not be allowed to fall from Danish to German control. One year later, on April 9, 1941, the U.S. - still officially neutral in the war -  authorized sending U.S. troops to occupy Greenland. The next day, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution officially reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine. After the war, the U.S. returned Greenland to Denmark in 1945, but the U.S. maintained military presence through treaties, while Denmark rejected U.S. suggestions that it purchase the territory. Greenland may indeed remain a vital security interest of the U.S. in the Arctic region, but anything the U.S. actually needs in terms of fostering hemispheric security in the Arctic it already has access to through its bases in Greenland and its treaties with Denmark. An attempt to conquer Greenland by force from Denmark would contravene the Monroe Doctrine's own recognition of existing European interests in the hemisphere, as well as effectively destroying NATO.

I was foreseeing none of this on the Monroe Doctrine's 200th anniversary, when I wrote, "the 'Monroe Doctrine,' like so much of our inherited legacy from the very different world of the founding era, seems to remain in dubious reserve for whatever ambiguous ends it may yet be employed."

Photo: President James Monroe White House portrait.