Download 1 Neocolonialism, Monroe Doctrine and Latin America New

1
Neocolonialism, Monroe Doctrine and
Latin America
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas | 2005 | Becker, Marc |Copyright
Anti-colonialism: Latin America
Over the past five hundred years, Latin America has experienced three and
possibly four periods of colonization, all of which gave rise to anti-colonial
movements. The first period symbolically began with Christopher Columbus's
arrival in the Americas on 12 October 1492, launching three centuries of
Spanish, Portuguese, and British colonial control over the hemisphere, with the
French, Dutch, Danish, and other European powers competing for slices of the
action in the Caribbean. In most of Latin America, this period came to an end
with the wars of independence from about 1810 to 1825. Political independence
ushered in a second period (known as neocolonialism), in which the countries of
Latin America were still subject to foreign economic control—this time largely by
the British. During the third period, corresponding to the twentieth century, this
economic dependency shifted from the British to the United States, and anticolonial responses increasingly assumed anti-imperialistic characteristics. The
twenty-first century arguably introduced a fourth period of neocolonialism, in
which Latin America has become subject to control through the maquiladora
system to transnational capital not necessarily rooted in one country and in which
the export commodity is labor rather than raw materials.
Independence
The Latin American movement most closely associated with anti-colonialism
corresponds to the period at the beginning of the nineteenth century during which
most of the region gained its political independence from European colonial
powers. This "postcolonial era began before many territories became colonial,"
Robert Young notes, and "before some European imperial powers, such as
Germany and Italy, had even become nations themselves" (p. 193). As in the
United States, independence represented a shift of economic wealth and political
power from a colonial elite to a domestic elite. In Latin America, this was
expressed as a struggle between peninsulares (those born on the Iberian
peninsula, i.e., Spain and Portugal) and creoles (those born in the New World).
Independence did not result in any corresponding shift in social relations, nor did
it result in the abolition of slavery or more rights for women. In fact, without the
paternalistic protection of the European crowns the position of peasants and
2
Indians actually worsened.
The 1780 Tupac Amaru uprising in the South American Andes is one of the
largest, earliest, and most significant anti-colonial movements in the history of
Latin America. The leader of this uprising, José Gabriel Condorcanqui (d. 1781),
a descendant of the Incas, first attempted to petition for the rights of his people
through legal channels. When legal attempts failed, he took the name of the last
Inca ruler (Tupac Amaru) and led an uprising that quickly spread throughout the
southern Andes. The insurgents sacked Spanish haciendas and obrajes (textile
mills), driven by messianic dreams of a renewed Inca empire that would free the
indigenous peoples from hunger, injustice, oppression, and exploitation. The
Spanish captured Tupac Amaru and other leaders of the uprising six months later
and executed them in Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca empire. This did not
end the rebellion but shifted its focus south to Bolivia, where under the leadership
of Aymara people it entered a more radical, violent, and explicitly anti-colonial
phase. In this phase, the insurgents captured and held the city of La Paz for
several months and threatened the silver mines at Potosí—a direct challenge to
Spanish wealth and power. The Spanish finally captured and executed the
leaders and the uprising eventually collapsed. This revolt has sometimes been
seen as a forward-looking antecedent to the successful creole independence
movements that came forty years later and sometimes as a reactionary
messianic movement that sought to return to the time of the Inca empire. Sinclair
Thomson positions these uprisings in the context of local struggles against
abusive colonial practices and for self-determination and equality. Although the
uprising ultimately failed, it reveals a widening gap between the colonial elites
and the subaltern masses, as well as a refusal of indigenous peoples to
passively accept their marginalized role in society.
The Haitian slave revolt provides another stark contrast to the creole
independence movements and in essence underscores the lack of a compelling
anti-colonial discourse in those events. Haiti was a French colony, and its
production of sugar, cotton, and indigo made it one of the most important
colonies in the world. Soaring sugar profits for French planters in the eighteenth
century led to a dramatic increase in the number of African slaves they imported
to work the plantations. By the end of the century, about 80 percent of the Haitian
people were overworked and underfed slaves. Nevertheless, Haitian
independence movements began in 1789 not as a slave revolt but from the small
elite class of planters, who had been influenced by the French Revolution's
rhetoric of "liberty, equality, fraternity." For the planters, liberty meant home rule
and freedom from French tariff structures. The whites armed the slaves to fight
3
the French, but instead, under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743–
1803), slaves took advantage of the opportunity to revolt and destroyed the old
society. The result was perhaps one of the few true social revolutions the world
has ever seen, in which members of a mass movement completely obliterated
the ancien régime and claimed power for itself. By the time Jean-Jacques
Dessalines declared Haitian independence in 1804, the sugar economy had
disappeared, having been displaced by subsistence agriculture. The example of
a black slave republic sent a terrifying chill through creole elites, which had
begun to agitate for independence elsewhere in Latin America. The only other
independent country in the hemisphere, the United States, refused to recognize
the Haitian government. The dangers exemplified by the first successful anticolonial movement in Latin America put the brakes on other independence
movements, delaying their completion by perhaps a generation.
Neocolonialism
By the 1820s, most of Latin America had gained political independence from its
colonial masters. With Iberian mercantile restrictions gone, northern European
(and particularly British) capital flooded the region. As critics have noted, a
legacy of colonization was a blocking of moves toward industrialization, which
would have represented little gain for colonial powers. This trend continued with
the British (and later the United States) extracting raw materials from and
importing finished goods into the region. The infrastructure, such as the railroad
systems, was designed to transport products from mines and plantations to
seaports rather than to integrate a country. The economic benefits of this trade
accrued to foreign powers, with wages and living standards remaining depressed
as resources were drained away from the domestic economy. Neocolonialism
also led to cultural shifts. For example, predominantly Catholic Latin American
countries implemented freedom of religion in order to encourage foreign
investment from Protestant powers. Despite formal independence, external
economic forces determined many of the domestic policies in Latin America. This
irony has come to be known as neocolonialism.
Nineteenth-century examples of neocolonialism include the export of Peruvian
guano and Chilean nitrates, which fueled an agricultural boom in Europe.
Neocolonialism, and Latin America's subsequent falling behind relative to
economic growth in northern industrial economies, was not inevitable nor was it
the only possible option. In The Poverty of Progress, E. Bradford Burns points to
Paraguay as a viable example of autonomous economic development. The
country's leaders eliminated large estates and emphasized domestic food
production, and they restricted foreign penetration of the economy. Rapid
4
economic development without outside foreign development alarmed the elitist
governments in the neighboring countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, who
feared the model Paraguay offered to the poor in their own countries. Their
opposition led to the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), which devastated
Paraguay and destroyed this alternative model to neocolonialism.
The concept of formally independent countries that remained economically
dependent on outside powers first was articulated in Marxist circles in the 1920s,
though the term neocolonialism was not introduced until the 1960s. It has always
been closely associated with anti-imperialism, as was demonstrated at the 1966
Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba, which linked anti-colonial struggles
in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Although U.S. neocolonial control is largely a
twentieth-century phenomenon, it is rooted in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which
declared Latin America to be part of the U.S. imperial sphere of influence.
Anti-Imperialism
When the Haitian sugar economy collapsed with the slave revolt at the end of the
eighteenth century, much of this production shifted to the neighboring island of
Cuba. As a result, while other colonial economies stagnated, leading to elite
discontent with European rule, the Cuban economy took off, undercutting any
impetus for a serious anticolonial movement. As a result, the island remained a
Spanish colony until the end of the nineteenth century. José Martí (1853–1895)
perhaps best represents Cuban anticolonial movements. Born to peninsular
parents (his father was a Spanish official), he was a teenage rebel who was
exiled to Spain for his political activities and later worked in the United States as
a journalist. He was killed in battle on 19 May 1895, when he returned to the
island to join the anti-colonial struggle. Much of Martí's ideology emerged out of
the context of nineteenth-century liberalism, but his contact with radical
movements in the United States also imbued his anti-colonialism with aspects of
social revolution. Rather than seeking to merely change one elite for another, as
had happened when colonialism ended in most other American republics, he
wanted true social changes. He was an anti-imperialist and a revolutionary
nationalist who worked against economic dependency as well as for political
independence. Martí, like Venezuelan independence leader Simón Bolívar
(1783–1830) before him and Argentine-born guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che"
Guevara (1928–1967) after him, called for a unified America to confront the
common problems left by a legacy of European colonization.
After Martí's death, with Cuba on the verge of gaining its independence in 1898,
5
the United States intervened in order to control the economic wealth of the
colony for its own benefit and to prevent the establishment of another black
republic on the Haitian model. Disguising its efforts as altruism, the U.S. Senate
passed the Teller Amendment, which declared that the United States would not
recolonize the island. Although this legislation thwarted the imperial intent of the
United States to annex the island, the 1901 Platt Amendment declared "that the
government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to
intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a
government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty"
(Bevans, pp. 116–117). This led to a unique colonial situation, in which Cuba had
a civilian government but not one that could be called a democracy. The island
became an extension of Miami, and U.S. intervention promoted and perpetuated
corruption, violence, and economic stagnation. This set the stage for the
successful 1959 Cuban Revolution, which freed the country from economic
colonization, much as independence in 1898 had freed it from Spain's political
colonization. After the triumph of the revolution, Cuba became a global leader in
postcolonial anti-imperialist struggles.
Although the Teller Amendment prohibited the annexation of Cuba to the United
States, the legislation stood mute on Spain's few remaining colonial possessions
in the Caribbean. Most importantly, this led the United States to occupy the
island of Puerto Rico, a territory it continues to hold in the twenty-first century. In
fact, after Namibia was freed from South African control in the 1980s, Puerto
Rico became the sole remaining item on the agenda of the United Nations's
decolonization committee, although anti-colonial struggles continue elsewhere,
notably in French Polynesia. For the United States, Puerto Rico remains an
unresolved and seemingly irresolvable colonial question. In the early twenty-first
century the island is an Estado Libre Asociado (literally, Associated Free State,
but defined by the United States as a commonwealth), which means that it is an
unincorporated territory that belongs to, but is not part of, the United States. This
leaves Puerto Rico subject to the whims of the United States, and its residents
with few legal avenues through which to address offenses committed against
them. As an example of the colonial relationship, residents on the island were
made U.S. citizens during World War I so that they could be drafted to fight in
Europe, but even in the early twenty-first century they do not have the right to
political representation in Washington. However, the economic advantages of
their status, including the ability to migrate freely to the United States to work,
create a situation where only a small percentage of Puerto Ricans favor
independence for the island, but resentment at the island's colonial status is
nonetheless widespread and deeply felt.
6
Anti-colonial sentiments in Puerto Rico flourished during the second half of the
twentieth century, and in part gained a focus around political campaigns to halt
U.S. naval bombing practice at Vieques Island. In 1941, with World War II on the
horizon, the United States military acquired most of the land at Vieques as an
extension of the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in order to develop a base like
Pearl Harbor for its Atlantic fleet. Noise from bombs and low-flying airplanes
engaged in practice maneuvers disturbed inhabitants and disrupted the fishing
economy. The later use of napalm, depleted uranium, and other experimental
weapons left the area heavily contaminated. The imperialist nature of the
military's occupation of Vieques quickly gave rise to popular sentiments against
the navy's presence and calls for them to leave. Finally, on 19 April 1999, two offtarget bombs destroyed an observation post, killing David Sanes Rodríguez, a
local civilian employee. This triggered a massive civil disobedience campaign
that finally forced the navy to leave Vieques on 1 May 2003. Independence
leaders such as Pedro Albizu Campos and Rubén Berríos Martínez provided
leadership to the campaigns, seeing Vieques as an important part of an anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggle. Their slogan became "Today Vieques,
tomorrow Puerto Rico."
Non-Spanish Caribbean
European colonization of the Caribbean began with Colombus's arrival in 1492,
and the region was so highly valued that it remained under the control of various
European empires longer than any other part of the hemisphere. Spain
maintained—and then lost—control over the largest and most populous islands
of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico, known as the Greater Antilles. Other
European powers, including the British, French, and Dutch, intruded into the
Spanish domain and established a significant presence, particularly on the
smaller islands, known as the Lesser Antilles, where descendants of African
slaves and Asian indentured workers imported to replace the decimated
indigenous population led many of the anti-colonial movements.
As they did in Africa and Asia, modern nationalist anti-colonial movements in
much of the Caribbean emerged in the aftermath of World War II, with its
emphasis on the values of democracy and self-determination. As Cary Fraser
argues, independence movements in the Caribbean must be understood in the
context of these broader decolonization efforts. During the second half of the
twentieth century, some of the islands gained their independence, although the
British, French, and Dutch still retained colonial control over several smaller
islands. Many of the residents benefited economically from access to European
7
welfare systems, which dampened anticolonial agitation.
Even after independence, many of the colonies maintained close relationships
with their mother countries, leaving imprints on their political culture that marked
them as significantly different from Latin America. For example, the former British
colonies remained part of the Commonwealth and retained the British queen as
their monarch.
As the European empires collapsed, U.S. economic, political, and ideological
interests gained increased hegemony over the Caribbean. Tourism and providing
tax havens for foreign banks and corporations became the area's primary roles in
the global economy. An example of the United States' ambiguous commitment to
self-determination and its growing neocolonial control was its successful efforts
to unseat Cheddi Jagan and his People's Progressive Party from the presidency
of British Guiana in the early 1960s. United States opposition to Japan, who was
influenced by Marxist ideology and maintained friendly ties with the communist
world, indicated that the Caribbean (as well as Latin America in general) would
remain within the U.S. sphere of influence..
Bibliography
Barreto, Amílcar Antonio. Vieques, the Navy, and Puerto Rican Politics.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.
Bevans, C. I., ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United
States of America, 1776–1949. Vol. 8. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1971.
Burns, E. Bradford. The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth
Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Fraser, Cary. Ambivalent Anti-colonialism: The United States and the Genesis of
West Indian Independence, 1940–1964. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1994.
Geggus, David Patrick, ed. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic
World. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2001.
Pérez, Louis A. The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and
Historiography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
8
Thomson, Sinclair. We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of
Insurgency. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Young, Robert J. C. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford and
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001.
Monroe Doctrine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2,
1823. It stated that further efforts by European countries to colonize land or
interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed as acts of aggression
requiring U.S. intervention (however, the wording referred to the entire Western
Hemisphere, which actually includes much of Europe and Africa). The doctrine
was introduced by President Monroe when he was enraged at the actions being
executed around him.[1] The Monroe Doctrine asserted that the Americas were
not to be further colonized by European countries but that the United States
would neither interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal
concerns of European countries. The Doctrine was issued at a time when many
Latin American countries were on the verge of becoming independent from the
Spanish Empire. The United States, reflecting concerns raised by Great Britain,
ultimately hoped to avoid having any European power take over Spain's
colonies.[2]
The US President, James Monroe, first stated the doctrine during his seventh
annual State of the Union Address to Congress. It became a defining moment in
the foreign policy of the United States and one of its longest-standing tenets, and
would be invoked by many U.S. statesmen and several U.S. presidents, including
Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Ronald
Reagan and others.
It would have been nearly impossible for Monroe to envision that its intent and
impact would persist with only minor variations for almost two centuries. Its
primary objective was to free the newly independent colonies of Latin America
from European intervention and control (thus ensuring US national security). The
doctrine put forward that the New World and the Old World were to remain
distinctly separate spheres of influence, for they were composed of entirely
separate and independent nations.[3]
Background
9
As the revolutionary Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) ended, Prussia, Austria, and
Russia formed the Holy Alliance to defend monarchism. In particular, the Holy
Alliance authorized military incursions to re-establish Bourbon rule over Spain
and its colonies, which were establishing their independence.[2]
Allowing Spain to re-establish control of its former colonies would have cut Great
Britain from its profitable trade with the region. For that reason, Great Britain's
Foreign Minister George Canning proposed to the United States that they
mutually declare and enforce a policy of separating the new world from the old.
The United States resisted a joint statement because of the recent memory of
The War of 1812, leading to the unilateral statement.
However, the immediate provocation was the Russian Ukase of 1821[4]
asserting rights to the Northwest and forbidding non-Russian ships from
approaching the coast.[5][6]
Effects of the Monroe Doctrine
International Response
Because the U.S. lacked both a credible navy and army at the time, the doctrine
was largely disregarded internationally.[3] However, the Doctrine met with tacit
British approval, and the Royal Navy mostly enforced it tacitly, as part of the
wider Pax Britannica, which enforced the neutrality of the seas. This was in line
with the developing British policy of laissez-faire free trade against mercantilism:
fast-growing British industry was ever seeking outlets for its manufactured goods,
and were the newly independent Latin American states to become Spanish
colonies once more, British access to these markets would be cut off by Spanish
mercantilist policy.[7]
The Special Relationship
The Monroe Doctrine was as a precursor to the Special Relationship. Similar to
the United Kingdom's proposal to the United States of a League of Nations nearly
100 years later, Canning's proposal "injected ideas into the American decisionmaking process in such a manner that they imperceptibly seemed to be a part of
Washington's own".[8]
Latin American reactions in the 1820s
The reaction in Latin America to the Monroe Doctrine was undeniably upbeat.
10
John Crow, author of The Epic of Latin America, states, “[Simón] Bolívar himself,
still in the midst of his last campaign against the Spaniards, Santander in
Colombia, Rivadavia in Argentina, Victoria in Mexico—leaders of the
emancipation movement everywhere— received Monroe's words with sincerest
gratitude”.[9] Crow argues that the leaders of Latin America were realists. They
knew that the President of the United States wielded very little power at the time,
particularly without the backing of the British forces. Furthermore, they figured
that the Monroe Doctrine was powerless if it stood alone against the Triple
Alliance.[9] While they appreciated and praised their support in the north they
knew that their future of independence was in the hands of the powerful Great
Britain. In 1826, Bolivar called upon his Congress of Panama to host the first
“Pan-American” meeting. In the eyes of Bolivar and his men, the Monroe
Doctrine was to become nothing more than a tool of national policy. According to
Crow, “It was not meant to be, and was never intended to be a charter for
concerted hemispheric action”.[9]
During the first half of the nineteenth century, it was Great Britain’s preoccupation
with exerting its power on the rest of the world that led it to decide to support the
Monroe Doctrine. At the time, South America as a whole constituted a much
larger market for British goods than the United States. Crow argues that it was
ultimately the support of Great Britain, not the Monroe Doctrine, which protected
the sovereignty of Latin America’s newly independent nations.[9]
Post-Bolivar
In 1836, the United States government objected to Britain's alliance with the
newly created Republic of Texas on the principle of the Monroe Doctrine. On
December 2, 1845, U.S. President James Polk announced to Congress that the
principle of the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced and that the United
States should aggressively expand into the West, often termed as Manifest
Destiny.
In 1842, U.S. President John Tyler applied the Monroe Doctrine to Hawaii, told
Britain not to interfere there, and began the process of annexing Hawaii to the
United States.
In 1852, some politicians used the principle of the Monroe Doctrine to argue for
forcefully removing the Spanish from Cuba. In 1898, following the SpanishAmerican War, the United States obtained Puerto Rico and the Philippines from
Spain and began an occupation of Cuba that lasted until 1902.
11
The doctrine's authors, chiefly future-President and then secretary-of-state John
Quincy Adams, saw it as a proclamation by the United States of moral opposition
to colonialism, but it has subsequently been re-interpreted and applied in a
variety of instances. President Theodore Roosevelt asserted the right of the
United States to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of small nations in the
Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international
debts. This interpretation, intended to forestall intervention by European powers
that had lent money to those countries, has been termed the Roosevelt Corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine.[10]
In 1863, French forces under Napoleon III invaded and conquered Mexico, giving
the country to Austrian-born Emperor Maximilian. Americans proclaimed this as a
violation of "The Doctrine," but were unable to intervene because of the
American Civil War. This marked the first time the Monroe Doctrine was widely
referred to as a "Doctrine." After the civil war came to an end, the U.S. brought
troops down to the Rio Grande in hopes of pressuring the French government to
end its occupation. Mexican nationalists eventually captured the Emperor and
executed him, reasserting Mexico's independence.
In the 1870s, President Ulysses S. Grant and his Secretary of State Hamilton
Fish endeavored to replace European influence in Latin America with that of the
United States. Part of their efforts involved expanding the Monroe Doctrine by
stating "hereafter no territory on this continent [referring to Central and South
America] shall be regarded as subject to transfer to a European power."[11]
1895 saw the eruption of the Venezuela Crisis of 1895, "one of the most
momentous episodes in the history of Anglo-American relations in general and of
Anglo-American rivalries in Latin America in particular."[12] Venezuela sought to
involve the US in a territorial dispute with Britain over Guayana Esequiba, and
hired former US ambassador William L. Scruggs to argue that British behaviour
over the issue violated the Monroe Doctrine. President Grover Cleveland through
his Secretary of State, Richard Olney cited the Doctrine in 1895, threatening
strong action against the United Kingdom if the British failed to arbitrate their
dispute with Venezuela. In a July 20, 1895 note to Britain, Olney stated, “The
United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the
subjects to which it confines its interposition.”[13] British Prime Minister Lord
Salisbury took strong exception to the American language. The United States
objected to a British proposal for a joint meeting to clarify the scope of the
Monroe Doctrine. Historian George Herring wrote that by failing to pursue the
issue further the British “tacitly conceded the U. S. definition of the Monroe
12
Doctrine and its hegemony in the hemisphere.”[14]
The Drago Doctrine was announced on December 29, 1902 by the Foreign
Minister of Argentina, Luis María Drago. Drago set forth the policy that no
European power could use force against an American nation to collect debt.
President Theodore Roosevelt rejected this as an extension of the Monroe
Doctrine, declaring "We do not guarantee any state against punishment if it
misconducts itself".[15]
In the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy cited the Monroe
Doctrine as a basis for America's "eyeball-to-eyeball" confrontation with the
Soviet Union that had embarked on a provocative campaign to install ballistic
missiles on Cuban soil.[16]
The "Big Sister"
The "Big Sister" policy was an extension of the Monroe Doctrine formulated by
James G. Blaine in the 1880s that aimed to rally Latin American nations behind
US leadership and to open their markets to US traders. Blaine served as
Secretary of State in 1881 in the cabinet of President James A. Garfield and
again from 1889 to 1892 in the cabinet of President Benjamin Harrison. As a part
of the policy, Blaine arranged and led the First International Conference of
American States in 1889.[17]
The "Roosevelt Corollary"
As the United States emerged as a world superpower, the Monroe Doctrine
came to define a recognized sphere of control that few dared to challenge.[3]
Before becoming president, Theodore Roosevelt had proclaimed the rationale of
the Monroe Doctrine in supporting intervention in the Spanish colony of Cuba in
1898. After he became president, and following the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–
1903, Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904.
This corollary asserted the right of the United States to intervene in Latin America
in cases of “flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American Nation”.[18]
The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was invoked to intervene
militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of European influence.[18]
The Roosevelt Corollary was the most significant amendment to the original
doctrine and was widely opposed by critics, who argued that the Monroe Doctrine
13
was originally meant to stop European influence in the Americas.[3] This
amendment was designed to preclude violation of the doctrine by European
powers that would ultimately argue that the independent nations were
“mismanaged or unruly”.[3]
Critics, however, argued that the Corollary simply asserted U.S. domination in
that area, essentially making them a "hemispheric policeman.[19] It is hard to
argue that the Americas are not entirely a United States sphere of influence, with
the obvious exceptions of Cuba and Venezuela.[3]
The Clark Memorandum
In 1928, the Clark Memorandum was released, concluding that the United States
need not invoke the Monroe Doctrine as a defense of its interventions in Latin
America. The Memorandum argued that the United States had a self-evident
right of self-defense, and that this was all that was needed to justify certain
actions. The policy was announced to the public in 1930.
In 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles invoked the Monroe Doctrine at
the Tenth Pan-American Conference, denouncing the intervention of Soviet
Communism in Guatemala. This was used to justify Operation PBSUCCESS.
U.S. President John F. Kennedy said at an August 29, 1962 news conference:
The Monroe Doctrine means what it has meant since President Monroe and John
Quincy Adams enunciated it, and that is that we would oppose a foreign power
extending its power to the Western Hemisphere [sic], and that is why we oppose
what is happening in Cuba today. That is why we have cut off our trade. That is
why we worked in the OAS and in other ways to isolate the Communist menace
in Cuba. That is why we will continue to give a good deal of our effort and
attention to it.[20]
The Cold War
During the Cold War, the Monroe Doctrine was applied to Latin America by the
framers of U.S. foreign policy.[21] When the Cuban Revolution established a
socialist government with ties to the Soviet Union, after trying to establish fruitful
relations with the U.S., it was argued that the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine should
be again invoked, this time to prevent the further spreading of Soviet-backed
Communism in Latin America.[22] During the Cold War, the United States thus
often provided intelligence and military aid to Latin and South American
14
governments that claimed or appeared to be threatened by Communist
subversion. This, in turn, led to some domestic controversy within the United
States, especially among some members of the left who argued that the
Communist threat and Soviet influence in Latin America was greatly
exaggerated.[who?]
The debate over this new spirit of the Monroe Doctrine came to a head in the
1980s, as part of the Iran-Contra affair. Among other things, it was revealed that
the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had been covertly training "Contra" guerrilla
soldiers in Honduras in an attempt to destabilize and overthrow the Sandinista
revolutionary government of Nicaragua and its President, Daniel Ortega. CIA
director Robert Gates vigorously defended the Contra operation, arguing that
avoiding U.S. intervention in Nicaragua would be "totally to abandon the Monroe
doctrine".[citation needed] In a case brought before the International Court of
Justice by Nicaragua, however, the court ruled that the United States had
exercised "unlawful use of force." The U.S. ignored the verdict. The Carter and
Reagan administrations embroiled themselves in the Salvadoran Civil War, again
citing the Monroe Doctrine as justification. The conflict was marked by large
scale human rights abuses and the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Óscar
Romero by right-wing death squads.[23] The Monroe Doctrine was also cited
during the U.S. intervention in Guatemala and the invasion of Grenada. Critics of
the Reagan administration's support for Britain in the Falklands War charge that
the U.S. ignored the Monroe Doctrine in that instance.[citation needed]
Criticisms
Critics of the Monroe Doctrine, such as Noam Chomsky,[24] argue that in
practice the Monroe Doctrine has functioned as a declaration of hegemony and a
right of unilateral intervention over the Americas: a sphere of influence “to leave
America for the Americans” that would grow stronger with the Roosevelt
Corollary. Chomsky points to the work of filibusters, most notably William Walker,
who tried to conquer and annex various countries in Latin America.[25]
Many Latin American popular movements have come to resent the "Monroe
Doctrine", which has been summarized there in the phrase: "America for the
Americans". Monroe Doctrine's true objectives, and the sincerity of its proclaimed
goals, are often questioned in Latin America[citation needed], especially after the
war between the United Kingdom and Argentina in 1982 where the SouthAmerican country did not receive any assistance from the United States.
The questioning of the Monroe Doctrine has also gained momentum in the
15
context of disputed US geopolitical legitimacy worldwide, particularly with the
Late-2000s financial crisis and the criticized Operation Enduring Freedom Afghanistan. This general loss of legitimacy and political reach Daniel Drezner
has argued could be a decisive factor in easing the emergence of BRIC countries
[26], of which Brazil may easily come to leverage the general resent against the
Monroe Doctrine across latin America. The disputing of the US geopolitical
influence over Latin America has been considered part of the concept of a "New
New World Order", that is, the inevitable rise of multilateralism in the international
relations concordantly to a disputed US legitimacy. In an essay published by EInternational Relations [27] Idriss Aberkane has come to compare the U.S.
involvement in Afghanistan to the French invasion of Russia and the disputing of
the Monroe Doctrine in South America to a contemporary Spanish uprising under
Napoleon's authority.
“
Richard Francis Burton wrote “Earth shifts her poles” [28] and the 21st
century of Pan-american geopolitics will be marked by a change of polarity the
intensity of which is mostly to be decided in Central Asia. When an empire is put
at a disadvantage all the frustration it has accumulated in its periphery and on
behalf of vassals expands as a gas and breaks all the valves. The Monroe
doctrine has produced such a situation and it is in focusing its attention on the
Great Game that the U.S. has most lost political hold of Latin America. There
economic and strategic alliances have never been more pronounced for the
liquidation of the Monroe Doctrine, from the “turn to the left” to the “pink tide”;
Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia have shown an unprecedented display of political
and economic unity towards Latin sovereignty. - I.J. Aberkane - March 2011 [29]
”
References
1. Rodrigue Tremblay (2004). The New American Empire (pp 133-134). Buy
Books on the web. ISBN 9780741418876. Retrieved 2008-12-20.
2. a b Herring, George C., From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations
Since 1776, (2008) pp. 153-155
3. a b c d e f Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc. "Volume 8". New Encyclopædia
Britannica, Fifteenth Ed.. p. 269. ISBN 1593392923.
4. See Fur-seal Arbitration, p. 16, for the text of the Ukase of 1821
5. http://books.google.com/books?id=gwP8bQsT908C&pg=PT267&lpg=PT267
16
6. http://books.google.com/books?id=FL_G_WdsCX0C&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136
7. Hobson, Rolf. Imperialism at Sea, Volume 163, page: 63 - further citations in
footnotes. Brill Academic Publishers Inc.. ISBN 9780391041059. Retrieved 200910-12.
8. Kissinger, Henry A.. Diplomacy, page:223.
9. a b c d John A. Crow. "Areil and Caliban". The Epic of Latin America, Fourth
Ed.. pp. 676. ISBN 0520077237.
10. Herring, George C., From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations
Since 1776, (2008) p. 371
11. Herring, George C., From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations
Since 1776, (2008) p. 259
12. R. A. Humphreys (1967), "Anglo-American Rivalries and the Venezuela Crisis
of 1895", Presidential Address to the Royal Historical Society 10 December
1966, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 17: pp131-164
13. Herring, George C. From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations
Since 1776, (2008) p. 307
14. Herring, George C., From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations
Since 1776, (2008) pp. 307-308
15. Herring, George C., From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations
Since 1776, (2008) p. 370
16. “The Durable Doctrine”, Time Magazine (September 21, 1962), [1] accessed
July 15, 2009.
17. Lens, Sidney; Howard Zinn (2003). illustrated. ed. The forging of the
American empire: from the revolution to Vietnam, a history of U.S. imperialism.
Human Security Series. Pluto Press. pp. 464. ISBN 0745321003.
18. a b Theodore Roosevelt (1904-12-06). "State of the Union Address".
TeachingAmericanHistory.org. Retrieved 2008-12-20.
19. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400597.html
20. News Conference 42 from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Museum &
Library
17
21. Dominguez, Jorge (1999). "US-Latin American Relations During the Cold
War and its Aftermath". The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda.
Institute of Latin American Studies and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin
Americas Studies. p. 12. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
22. "Study Prepared in Response to National Security Study Memorandum 15".
NSC–IG/ARA. July 5, 1969. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
23. "Official El Salvador apology for Oscar Romero's murder". BBC News. 201003-25. Retrieved 2010-03-25. "The archbishop, he said, was a victim of rightwing death squads "who unfortunately acted with the protection, collaboration or
participation of state agents"."
24. Noam Chomsky (2004). Hegemony Or Survival. Henry Holt. pp. 63–64. ISBN
9780805076882. Retrieved 2008-12-20.
25. Noam Chomsky. "Assessing Humanitarian Intent". The New Military
Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo, 1999. pp. 41. ISBN 0745316336.
26. Drezner, Daniel. The New, New World Order Foreign Affairs March/April
2007
27. Aberkane, Idriss. Brzezinski on a U.S. Berezina: anticipating a New, New
World Order E-International Relations March 31. 2011
28. Richard Francis Burton, 'The Kasidah of Haji Abdu el Yezdi'. [
http://books.google.com/books?id=xWqcT7NoI_gC&dq=burton+the+kasidah&so
urce=gbs_navlinks_s Forgotten Books] p.26
29. Aberkane, I. J. 'Brzezinski on a US Berezina: anticipating a New New World
Order' E-International Relations, March 31st 2011 permanent link
Further reading
Samuel Flagg Bemis. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American
Foreign Policy. 1949.
Donald Dozer. The Monroe Doctrine: Its Modern Significance. New York: Knopf,
1965.
Leonard Axel Lawson. The Relation of British Policy to the Declaration of the
Monroe Doctrine, Columbia University, 1922.
Ernest R. May. The Making of the Monroe Doctrine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1975.
18
Meiertöns, Heiko. The Doctrines of US Security Policy - An Evaluation under
International Law, Cambridge University Press, 2010, ISBN 9780521766487.
Mellander, Gustavo A.(1971) The United States in Panamanian Politics: The
Intriguing Formative Years. Daville,Ill.:Interstate Publishers. OCLC 138568.
Mellander, Gustavo A.; Nelly Maldonado Mellander (1999). Charles Edward
Magoon: The Panama Years. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial Plaza Mayor.
ISBN 1563281554. OCLC 42970390.
Merk, Frederick. The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism, 1843–1849.
New York: Knopf, 1966.
Murphy, Gretchen. Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives
of U.S. Empire. Duke University Press, 2005. Examines the cultural context of
the doctrine.
Perkins, Dexter. The Monroe Doctrine, 1823–1826. 3 vols. 1927.
Sexton, Jay. The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century
America (Hill & Wang; 2011) 290 pages; competing and evolving conceptions of
the doctrine after 1823
Gaddis Smith. The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945–1993. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1994. Argues that the Monroe Doctrine became irrelevant after
the end of the Cold War. ISBN 978-0809015689
Grahame, Leopold. "The Latin American View of the Monroe Dotrine." Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science 54 (1914): 57–62. A view
of what Latin America thinks of the Monroe Doctrine, according to an American.
Interesting, viewed somewhat skewed.
Bibliography
America.gov on Monroe Doctrine – most of the material (as of this writing on 2Dec-2002) was copied from this public domain source.
The Encyclopædia Britannica 15th Edition:1974 and The Columbia Encyclopedia
Sixth Edition:2008
“Monroe Doctrine.” The New Encyclopædia Britannica (volume 8) 15th Edition:
1993.