The Monroe Doctrine by Mackinley Clevinger, March 14, 2016
In the nineteenth century, there was a growing threat in the relatively new lands of America of European interference and the use of the Latin American region as an arena for old power struggles between the numerous European countries colonizing that area. In a time when many of these colonies had struck true their independence from their mother countries, a measure had to be taken to ensure that the old world would not interfere with the development of the new one, and that any such attempt would be taken as an act of aggression to the entire region as a whole. To make such a thing happen, President James Munroe of the United States of America, in cooperation with the United Kingdom, initiated the Monroe Doctrine, which would lay the groundwork for much of the United States of America’s future foreign policy in Latin America.
The Monroe Doctrine describes two primary ideas of foreign policy: First, that the American continents are no longer subject to colonization by the European powers, protecting them from having their freedoms or lands infringed upon by the old world. Secondly, it asserts that such colonies of Europe that still remained intact would not be interfered with by the United States of America, but that any attempts by Europe to extend their reach further into the new lands would be taken as an act of aggression on the region and responded to as such. This Monroe Doctrine would, under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, undergo a further change, known as the Roosevelt Corollary, which stated that the United States of America was permitted to intervene in the Latin American region as they saw fit in an effort to curb activity that threatened the region with the possibility of European interference, essentially setting themselves up as a manager of the region that would oversee and interfere with the developments of Latin America.
As a solely U.S. declaration of political intent, their lack of a strong militaristic or any other kind of power internationally in the early nineteenth century led the Monroe Doctrine to be a political speaking point, but not one that would be enforced for several decades from its issue in 1823; ignoring the British taking of the Falkland Islands while allowing for the annexing of Hawaii for the benefit of the United States, telling Europe that Hawaii was off-limits to their interference. They called dibs. In 1845, it was declared that the Monroe Doctrine would from then-on be strictly enforced, the opportunity arising in 1862 when French forces conquered Mexico, abolished the old government, and set up a puppet monarch known as Emperor Maximillian. Three years later, after the conclusion of the American Civil War, militaristic forces were placed on the border of Mexico, the actions of France denounced under the Monroe Doctrine. France pulled out of the region, Maximillian was executed by Mexican nationalists, and the United States of America had enforced the Monroe Doctrine successfully for the first time, keeping foreign interests out of the Americas and setting up the U.S. as the watchdog of that region.
In 1895, Venezuela and Britain would have a territorial dispute over Guayana Esequiba, the United States of America pulled into the matter at the bequest of Venezuela, citing the Monroe Doctrine as reasoning for the U.S. to arbitrate the matter and get involved. There was an argument between the U.S. and Britain, however, in that the involvement of the U.S. was a very liberal use of the Monroe Doctrine, it’s use in this case allowing for U.S. interference with Latin America outside of attempted raising of new colonies by Europe. Ultimately, Britain backed down and allowed the U.S. to enter the negotiations, setting a dangerous precedent for unwarranted American behavior in Latin America despite temporarily strengthening bonds between the U.S. and both Britain and Latin America. Allowing the United States of America to broaden the definition and permissions lain down in the Monroe Doctrine coupled with their growing as an international power led to the establishment of the Roosevelt Corollary, which would set a further precedent for U.S. interference in Latin America that would see considerable abuse in that region at the hands of this foreign policy.
In rejection of the Drago Doctrine, stating that no European power could use force against an American nation to collect debt and introduced when Britain, Germany, and Italy came calling to Venezuela looking for their money, Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This addition allowed the United States of America to interfere however they saw fit in the Latin American region, so long as it was in an attempt to preempt any kind of involvement by European creditors trying to collect their debts. The U.S. could intervene in the doings of a Latin American nation in occasions of misconduct that could lead to European interests taking ahold there due to the aftermath of their actions. The Roosevelt Corollary allowed the U.S. to go into the Latin American region whenever they so wished to halt European influence, giving the U.S. freedom to do whatever they liked there underneath a well-enforced piece of foreign policy. The fact that the Monroe Doctrine now allowed for preemptive interference with the entirety of Central and Southern America gave America the freedom to do whatever it so liked in that region as a matter of fact, able to cite the possibility of European interest taking hold to excuse whatever damage they may do there in playing policeman to that entire part of the world. Critics rightly opposed this addition, stating that it turned the intention of the Monroe Doctrine from a measure to separate the old and the new worlds into spreading U.S. influence further and farther as a matter of legality, any misconduct performed there explained as being for the better good of the region against European incursion.
To further this newfound freedom of exploitation, enter the Clark Memorandum in 1928, stating that the U.S. need not even cite the Monroe Doctrine to interfere with Latin America as a matter of self-defense against the possible, theoretical threat of future European interference due to the current-actions of Latin American nations. It would be a given fact that in any matter of U.S. involvement in Latin America, they would be doing it in self-defense as justifiable reasoning.. In 1954, the United States of America used the Monroe Doctrine to justify deposing a democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, and install a militaristic regime run by Carlos Armas in Guatemala, an operation carried out by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, or more commonly known as the CIA. The reason why the U.S. deposed Arbenz? His efforts towards social reform for the good of his country, such as minimum wage laws, increased educational funding, near-universal suffrage, and granting land to peasants who had been victims of debt-slavery before his presidency sounded a little too much like Communism to then-presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as cutting into the profits of the United Fruit Company that had been profiting heavily off of brutal labor practices that Arbenz was undoing as a part of his social reforms. A private company and fear of Communism drove the U.S. to lean on Guatemala, funding a private army to invade Guatemala and ultimately force Arbenz to resign, replaced with the leader of that private army, Carlos Castillo Armas, where the country fell to a dictatorship that tortured political opponents and reversed social reforms. America maintained an authoritarian government there until 1996, during which time a civil war bloomed, leading to the established government of Guatemala to commit massive human rights violations against civilians, like a genocidal campaign against the Maya people.
Then, when Cuba installed a communist government, the U.S. called up the Monroe Doctrine to support feeding intelligence and military aid to numerous Latin and South American governments in the war on Communism, overthrowing democratically elected governments left and right during the Cold War at the barest hint of the presence of Communism, the CIA training guerilla soldiers in Honduras to destabilize Nicaragua and overthrow their president, Daniel Ortega. From 1979 to the early 1990s, only a bare two decades ago, the U.S. funded numerous militia groups, the money coming from a secretly facilitated arms deal with Iran during an arms embargo underneath the watch of President Ronald Reagan, misinformation spread about the matter and numerous documents on the matter being destroyed in a scandal known as the Iran-Contra affair. Using illegally obtained funds from an embargoed country, the U.S. funded Contra militants to perform terrorist actions and throw Nicaragua into chaos, committing numerous human rights violations along the way, all the while backed and supported by the U.S. government that tried to use propaganda to spin public favor towards the Contras, a bunch of terrorists in Latin America that the U.S. funded and promoted in an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected president, excused by the Monroe Doctrine as being an obvious attempt to exclude European intervention from the region.
While the Monroe Doctrine started out as being a measure taken to safeguard a new land from old power struggles and greedy interests, its chief enforcer would soon use it for personal gain in the Latin American region, citing it as explanation for numerous covert operations that overthrew democratic governments to replace them with militaristic dictatorships when it so benefited the U.S. and their friends, no care given for the thousands upon thousands that would die from numerous terrorist-rebel groups trained and funded by the United States of America. Numerous human rights violations can be lain at the feet of the men and women who facilitated these events, quite notably Hillary Clinton, currently running for president of the United States of America in March of 2016, who was involved in the 2009 coup-d’état in Honduras, where democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power and replaced with Roberto Micheletti, Honduras now left to an oppressive government that the U.S. ignores as it jails its citizens with no given reason and falls deeper into corruption, a change in the country that the U.S. publicly spoke out against, but privately were communicating with the group that performed the coup-d’état, offering support then and now to the oppressive government, and not to its people, a hallmark of the foreign policy performed by the United States of America underneath the Monroe Doctrine.