Monroe Doctrine: The Controversial Cornerstone of US Foreign Policy
The Monroe Doctrine, a significant piece of United States foreign policy, was first articulated by President James Monroe in 1823, and it essentially warns the powers of Europe from meddling in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere, claimed by the US as its own sphere of influence. Initially, the doctrine was meant to oppose European colonialism while simultaneously asserting the US as a rising regional power. By the turn of the 20th century, it had taken on a new meaning and was often used as justification for the 'policing' of Latin America by the US. Since its inception, the Monroe Doctrine has routinely been invoked to justify various US foreign policy positions and remains relevant today.
Origins
Towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), a wave of revolutions swept across Latin America. Spain had been ravaged by the armies of Napoleon I (reign 1804-1814; 1815) and could barely afford to keep control over its colonial empire in the Americas, a weakness that liberty-seeking revolutionaries managed to exploit. Under the leadership of men like Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) and José de San Martín (1778-1850), the revolutionaries cast off the shackles of Spanish colonial rule and established independent republics based on the ideals of the Enlightenment. But even then, with the taste of victory still on their lips, it was clear that these republics' grasp on independence was tenuous at best. As the great European powers rallied and rebuilt after the downfall of Napoleon, it was clear that it would be only a matter of time before they turned their imperialist eyes back West, toward the lost colonies of the Americas.
Indeed, plans to recolonize the New World were already materializing in the Old. Austria, Prussia, and Russia – three of the victors in the wars against Napoleon – sought to cleanse the world of radical Enlightenment ideals and restore the kind of absolute monarchism that had been the status quo before the French Revolution (1789-1799) had turned the world upside down. These empires formed a coalition called the Holy Alliance and vowed, among other things, to return the Bourbon Dynasty to the Spanish throne and resubjugate the Latin American peoples to Spanish domination. Naturally, this worried the fledgling republics, which knew that they could do little to resist a European incursion upon their shores. Fortunately, there seemed to be two stronger nations that opposed the Holy Alliance and might be able to help.
The first of these potential allies was Great Britain, then the foremost world power. A constitutional monarchy, Britain was ideologically opposed to the absolutist empires of the Holy Alliance. Moreover, the British had spent years cultivating a lucrative market for trade in South America and would be loath to see these eager customers fall back under Spanish rule. The other nation, of course, was the United States. Another republic founded on Enlightenment ideals, the US had won its own independence barely half a century earlier and would not stand to see absolutism take root in its own backyard. Less altruistically, the US dreamt of expanding its own empire ever westward – an "empire of liberty" as Thomas Jefferson once put it – which would eventually put it at odds with Russia, which had long laid claim to the Pacific Coast, and a post-Napoleonic France, which was eyeing its own return to the Americas. If the US could not prevent European recolonization, it may as well kiss its own imperialist dreams goodbye.
Seeing as both Britain and the US opposed the Holy Alliance's intervention in Latin America, it seemed sensible for them to make common cause. Indeed, British Foreign Minister George Canning offered to do exactly that and proposed that the two nations issue a joint statement warning the Holy Alliance to stay out of the Americas. At first, US President James Monroe (served 1817-1825) thought this was a good idea, but he was soon dissuaded by his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848). A shrewd diplomat, Adams understood that by making a joint statement, the US would be perceived as merely a junior partner doing the bidding of Britain. But if the US were to issue a statement on its own, it would be asserting its authority in the Western Hemisphere and would be claiming the status of a rising power. "It would be more…dignified," Adams wrote, "to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France then to come in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war" (quoted in Crandall & Crandall). Monroe, ultimately, agreed.
Read More
⇒ Monroe Doctrine: The Controversial Cornerstone of US Foreign Policy
