Monroe’s Message to Congress
According to Monroe’s message (drafted largely by Adams), the Old World and the New World were fundamentally different, and should be two different spheres of influence. The United States, for its part, would not interfere in the political affairs of Europe, or with existing European colonies in the Western Hemisphere.
“The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for colonization by any European powers,” Monroe continued. Any attempt by a European power to exert its influence in the Western Hemisphere would, from then on, be seen by the United States as a threat to its security.
Monroe Doctrine in Practice: US Foreign Policy
At the time Monroe delivered his message to Congress, the United States was still a relatively minor player on the world stage. It clearly did not have the military or naval power to back up its assertion of unilateral control over the Western Hemisphere, and Monroe’s bold policy statement was largely ignored outside U.S. borders.
In 1833, the United States did not invoke the Monroe Doctrine to oppose British occupation of the Falkland Islands; it also declined to act when Britain and France imposed a naval blockade against Argentina in 1845.
But as the nation’s economic and military strength grew, it began backing up Monroe’s words with actions. When the Civil War drew to a close, the U.S. government supplied military and diplomatic support to Benito Juárez in Mexico, enabling his forces to overthrow the regime of Emperor Maximilian, who had been placed on the throne by the French government, in 1867.
Roosevelt Corollary
From 1870 onward, as the United States emerged as a major world power, the Monroe Doctrine would be used to justify a long series of U.S. interventions in Latin America. This was especially true after 1904, when President Theodore Roosevelt claimed the U.S. government’s right to intervene to stop European creditors who were threatening armed intervention in order to collect debts in Latin American countries.
But his claim went further than that. “Chronic wrongdoing...may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation,” Roosevelt announced in his annual message to Congress that year. “In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”
Known as the “Roosevelt Corollary” or the “Big Stick” policy, Roosevelt’s expansive interpretation was soon used to justify military interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba.
Some later policymakers tried to soften this aggressive interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who introduced a Good Neighbor policy to replace the Big Stick.
But though treaties signed during and after World War II reflected a policy of greater cooperation between North and South American countries, including the Organization for American States (OAS), the United States continued to use the Monroe Doctrine to justify its interference in the affairs of its southern neighbors.
Cold War Into the 21st Century
During the Cold War era, President John F. Kennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when he ordered a naval and air quarantine of Cuba after the Soviet Union began building missile-launching sites there. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan similarly used the 1823 policy principle to justify U.S. intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua, while his successor, George H.W. Bush, similarly sanctioned a U.S. invasion of Panama to oust Manuel Noriega.
With the end of the Cold War and the dawn of the 21st century, the United States reduced its military involvements in Latin America, while continuing to assert a powerful influence in the affairs of the region.
At the same time, socialist leaders in Latin America, such as Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, have earned support from their citizens by resisting what they view as U.S. imperialism, underscoring the complicated legacy of the Monroe Doctrine and its defining influence on U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.
Sources