Application and extension of the Monroe Doctrine

The Monroe Doctrine, in asserting unilateral U.S. protection over the entire Western Hemisphere, was a foreign policy that could not have been sustained militarily in 1823. Monroe and Adams were well aware of the need for the British fleet to deter potential aggressors in Latin America. Because the United States was not a major power at the time and because the Continental powers apparently had no serious intentions of recolonizing Latin America, Monroe’s policy statement (it was not known as the “Monroe Doctrine” for nearly 30 years) was largely ignored outside the United States.

The United States did not invoke it nor oppose British occupation of the Falkland Islands in 1833 or subsequent British encroachments in Latin America. In 1845 and again in 1848, however, U.S. Pres. James K. Polk reiterated Monroe’s principles in warning Britain and Spain not to establish footholds in Oregon, California, or Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Polk reinterpreted the doctrine in terms of the prevailing spirit of Manifest Destiny. Whereas Monroe had said only that the Western Hemisphere was no longer open to European colonialism, Polk now stated that European nations should not interfere with projected territorial expansion by the United States:

The nations of America are equally sovereign and independent with those of Europe. They possess the same rights, independent of all foreign interposition, to make war, to conclude peace, and to regulate their internal affairs. The people of the United States cannot, therefore, view with indifference attempts of European powers to interfere with the independent action of the nations on this continent.

At the conclusion of the American Civil War, the United States massed troops on the Rio Grande in support of a demand that France withdraw its puppet kingdom from Mexico. In 1867—partly because of U.S. pressure—France withdrew.

After 1870, interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine became increasingly broad. As the United States emerged as a world power, the Monroe Doctrine came to define a recognized sphere of influence. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, which stated that in cases of flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American country, the United States could intervene in that country’s internal affairs.

Although characterized as a corollary, Roosevelt’s assertion of hemispheric police power was actually a significant extension of the doctrine rather than an interpretation of it. Nonetheless, it was intended to preclude violation of the Monroe Doctrine by European countries seeking redress of grievances against unruly or mismanaged Latin American states, as the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany had done in 1902 when they established a blockade of the coast of Venezuela in an attempt to compel that country to pay its debts. Roosevelt had countered these actions with a show of force by the U.S. Navy. His announcement of a new Latin American policy would come as part of his annual message to the U.S. Congress in 1904 and 1905. The Roosevelt Corollary became closely associated with Roosevelt’s Big Stick policy, which called for the assertion of U.S. domination when such dominance was considered a moral imperative.

From the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt to that of Franklin Roosevelt, the United States frequently intervened in Latin America, especially in the Caribbean. Since the 1930s the United States has attempted to formulate its Latin American foreign policy in consultation with the individual nations of the hemisphere and with the Organization of American States. Yet the United States continues to exercise a proprietary role at times of apparent threat to its national security, and the Western Hemisphere remains a predominantly U.S. sphere of influence.

Charles Evan Hughes’s article on the Monroe Doctrine appeared in the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (see the Britannica Classic: Monroe Doctrine).