I | INTRODUCTION |
Monroe
Doctrine, statement of United States policy on the activities and rights
of European powers in the western hemisphere. It was made by President James
Monroe in his seventh annual address to the Congress of the United States on
December 2, 1823; it eventually became one of the foundations of U.S. policy in
Latin America. Because it was not supported by congressional legislation or
affirmed in international law, Monroe's statement initially remained only a
declaration of policy; its increasing use and popularity elevated it to a
principle, specifically termed the Monroe Doctrine after the
mid-1840s.
II | BACKGROUND |
The Monroe Doctrine was developed because the
United States and Britain were concerned over the possibility of European
colonial expansion in the Americas. Britain feared that Spain would attempt to
reclaim its former colonies, which had recently gained independence. This would
have caused Britain's trade with these new nations to decline. The United States
wanted to ensure that no European nations would attempt further colonialization
in the western hemisphere. The British foreign minister George Canning suggested
a joint venture with the United States to preserve the interests of both
nations. However, John Quincy Adams, the secretary of state, convinced President
Monroe that the United States should develop its own policy which would
safeguard U.S. interests independent of Britain. Why, Adams asked, should the
United States appear “as a cockboat in the wake of a British man-of-war?”
III | THE ORIGINAL STATEMENT |
In his two most notable pronouncements,
Monroe asserted that European powers could no longer colonize the American
continents and that they should not interfere with the newly independent Spanish
American republics. He specifically warned Europeans against attempting to
impose monarchy on independent American nations but added that the United States
would not interfere in existing European colonies or in Europe itself. The last
point reaffirmed George Washington's Farewell Address in 1796, in which he urged
the United States to avoid entangling alliances; however, the Monroe Doctrine
did not represent an isolationist policy.
By thus separating Europe from America,
Monroe emphasized the existence of distinct American, and specifically U.S.,
interests. He rejected the European political system of monarchy, believing that
no American nation would adopt it and that its presence anywhere in the western
hemisphere endangered the peace and safety of the young United States. He also
implied that the United States alone should complete the remaining settlement of
North America.
Despite the boldness of his assertions,
Monroe provided no means to ensure the enforcement of his ideas. The United
States alone would not have been able to uphold this policy, but Monroe knew
that Britain, with its powerful navy, also opposed European intervention in
Spain's struggle to restore its colonies.
IV | FURTHER DEVELOPMENT IN THE 19TH CENTURY |
As far as the United States was concerned, the
Monroe Doctrine meant little until the 1840s, when presidents John Tyler and
then James Polk used it to justify U.S. expansion. In 1845 Polk invoked the
doctrine against British threats in California and Oregon, as Tyler had done in
1842 against French and British efforts to prevent the U.S. annexation of Texas.
In 1848 Polk warned that European involvement in the Yucatán could cause the
United States to take control of the region. Despite Polk's use of the doctrine
and its increasing popularity in the 1850s, the American Civil War greatly
reduced its effectiveness during the 1860s; hence, Spain's reacquisition of the
Dominican Republic (1861) and France's intervention in Mexico (1862-1867) went
largely unopposed.
During the 1870s and 1880s the Monroe Doctrine
took on new meaning. The United States began to interpret it both as prohibiting
the transfer of American territory from one European power to another, and as
granting the United States exclusive control over any canal connecting the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans through Central America. The latter claim was
recognized by Britain in the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in 1901. The United States
continued to expand the meaning of the doctrine when President Grover Cleveland
successfully pressured Britain in 1895 to submit its boundary dispute with
Venezuela to arbitration.
V | THE MONROE DOCTRINE IN THE 20TH CENTURY |
In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt claimed,
in what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary, that the United States could
intervene in any Latin American nation guilty of internal or external
misconduct. Roosevelt's statement was precipitated by Germany, Britain, and
Italy, which were trying to force Venezuela to repay debts to those countries.
Roosevelt involved the United States in settling the matter. The corollary was
part of President Roosevelt's address to Congress that year. Roosevelt's
corollary to the Monroe Doctrine set a precedent and therefore justified
subsequent U.S. intervention in Caribbean states during the administrations of
Presidents William Taft and Woodrow Wilson. By the 1920s Latin American
countries were protesting U.S. involvement.
In the 1920s and the 1930s, the United States
reduced the doctrine's scope by favoring action in concert with the other
American republics. The Platt Amendment, which was part of the U.S. treaty with
Cuba in 1903 and which provided for U.S. involvement in the rule of Cuba, was
revoked in 1934. This emphasis on acting with other nations, or Pan-Americanism,
continued during and after World War II with the Act of Chapultepec (1945) and
the Rio Pact (1947), which declared that an attack on one American nation was an
attack on all. The formation of the Organization of American States in 1948 was
designed to achieve the aims of the Monroe Doctrine through Pan-Americanism.
Subsequently, however, fear of Communism in Latin America prompted the United
States to return to unilateral actions against Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961),
and the Dominican Republic (1965), without consulting its Latin American
allies.
The administration of U.S. President Ronald
Reagan (1981-1989) openly espoused the Monroe Doctrine once again as it resisted
Communism in the Americas. This reaffirmed the original intent of the Monroe
Doctrine to prevent European expansion in the Americas. Despite this position,
Reagan supported Britain's claim to the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) off
the coast of Argentina in 1982.
VI | EFFECT |
As a component of foreign policy, the Monroe
Doctrine has had considerable effect and has had strong support in the United
States, in part because it has promoted U.S. interests. The doctrine has served
other American nations, too, particularly because it asserts their right to
independence. Because the doctrine as originally formulated made no clear
distinction between the interests of the United States and those of its
neighbors, however, the United States has used it to justify intervention in the
internal affairs of other American nations. Given growing U.S. anxiety about the
unstable politics of Latin American countries, intervention has been especially
prevalent and controversial in the 20th century.
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