How the Monroe Doctrine Turned into American Imperialism

When President James Monroe issued his Monroe Doctrine in 1823, he intended it to keep European colonial powers from dominating Latin America or interfering in its political affairs. President Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Doctrine, eight decades later, turned Monroe’s foreign policy legacy into a weapon of American colonialism—which still sours American relations with Latin America.

That lingering animosity has made coequal relationships and willing cooperation nearly impossible by creating diplomatic difficulties for the US government, which has rarely been able to draw concessions without strong-arming those countries. 

It has also created negative relations with immigrants in the US—of which Latin Americans make up a plurality. The atrocities that the American government has committed against these countries for over 12 decades give many a sense of entitlement. That has turned them into political pawns for American political forces and driven domestic division.

Why did James Monroe issue the Monroe Doctrine?

President Monroe, on December 2, 1823, laid out the Doctrine in his annual address to Congress. It comprised four principles:

• The US would not interfere in the political affairs or wars of Europe.
• The US recognize existing European colonies in the Western Hemisphere and would not interfere with them.
• The Western Hemisphere was closed to colonization.
• The US would view any attempt by European powers to recolonize or further colonize portions of the Western Hemisphere as a hostile act.

Monroe’s reasoning rested on fears that European powers–particularly France and Spain–would try to gain a larger foothold in the Western Hemisphere. Most of Spain’s former colonies had recently gained independence, and the US recognized them.

Britain’s Foreign Minister George Canning initially suggested the US and Britain make a joint statement, but Secretary of State John Quincy Adams convinced Monroe that it should be an American doctrine.

Monroe also initially considered commenting on aspects of Europe–such as condemning France’s aggression in Spain and recognizing Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire–but Adams convinced him America should express no opinion on these matters.

Even in cases of European aggression or nations defending their independence from tyrants, America would not intervene. 

Likewise, even in cases where Europeans saw legitimate moral or strategic interests in intervening in the Western Hemisphere, the US would oppose it.

At this time, the US was a young and relatively weak power. It was an age in which American elites–like Spanish-speaking elites in Latin America–wanted to be treated equally by European powers but remain distinct from Europe and its traditions.

In many ways, America saw more similarity in itself and Latin American countries than itself and Europe, and it saw the struggle for independence of the Latin American Spanish–later called Hispanics–as similar to its own breakaway from Britain.

There were also national security concerns. The US and Britain both worried about Russian expansion in the northwest of the continent. There was also no guarantee that independence in Latin America would guarantee stable governments, which could lure European powers to control those countries.

Did the US follow the Monroe Doctrine?

Although Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine as an American policy, the US had no way to enforce it. Rather, it relied on the British navy to exercise broad police powers in keeping other European powers out of Latin America–which, ironically, required Britain to keep a foothold in the hemisphere.

The joint Anglo nature of the Doctrine became obvious in 1832 when a group of Argentinians seized several American sealing ships off the coast of their country in the Falkland Islands. The US sent a punitive expedition, however, it was the British who drove off the last Argentinians and founded a colony there. The US did not protest or claim the British were in violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine clearly did not apply to Americans’ Anglo cousins in Britain as the Doctrine had initially been proposed as a joint Anglo declaration. But until the Cuban War for Independence, America largely abided by the Monroe Doctrine when it could.  

America’s birthrate grew exponentially in the first half of the 19th century, turning it into a world power through natural increase alone. Although a small, weak nation when Monroe issued his Doctrine, by the mid-century, America had expanded its population from coast to coast and conquered Mexico–the only other significant military power in the hemisphere. Its newfound power meant it no longer had to rely on Britain to enforce its foreign policy doctrines.

The chance for a European power to violate the Monroe Doctrine came while Americans were embroiled in their civil war. France invaded Mexico for the latter’s failure to pay its debts. The French installed the Habsburg prince Maximillian as the King of Mexico and planned to make the young nation part of its new American empire.

President Abraham Lincoln never recognized the French puppet government but there was little he could do about it other than protest.

When General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, Grant sent General Phillip Sheridan to Texas with 50,000 troops to put down any further Confederate resistance. With the South conquered, these troops posed a potential threat to French forces in Mexico who were already engaged in a bitter struggle with Mexican independence fighters. The financial and military strain became too much, and in 1867, France withdrew.

Why did Roosevelt issue the Roosevelt Corollary?

President Theodore Roosevelt gained his immortal status in the American pantheon of heroes on San Juan Hill in Cuba, in 1898. It should come as no surprise that, as president, he concocted an addendum to the Monroe Doctrine to justify American intervention in Latin America as the hemisphere’s police force.

The US violated its own self-imposed limits in the Monroe Doctrine when it sided militarily with Cuba against Spain. Although it claimed moral platitudes like defending freedom and stopping genocide, the Monroe Doctrine left no caveats for that. Cuba was a colony when Monroe issued his Doctrine.

But America’s altruism in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines was not limited to overthrowing the Spanish. It held the Philippines until 1946, it holds Puerto Rico to this day, and its intervention and economic domination of Cuba led to the rise of Fidel Castro.

At the turn of the century, Venezuela faced a similar situation to Mexico’s in 1861. It owed debts to European creditors that it could not pay. When it defaulted, British, Italian, and German gunboats blockaded it. 

To keep Europe from dominating countries in America’s hemisphere, the US had to satisfy all parties. Europeans would not allow themselves to be defrauded.

So, to satisfy European creditors, Roosevelt gave himself and his country the authority to intervene in countries in the Western Hemisphere for as little as poor fiscal management.

To him, it seemed the only solution. If America didn’t want Europe to recolonize neighboring countries, America would have to act as the hemisphere’s policeman to make those countries behave to remove the pretext for recolonization.

Chronic wrongdoing…may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation,” he announced in his annual message to Congress in December 1904, “and 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.

This marked a drastic change in attitude toward other countries in the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine treated nations of the Western Hemisphere as equals—all having recently thrown off the yoke of European imperialism.

Roosevelt lumped America and European countries together as civilized nations, clearly distinguishing them from the uncivilized peoples to America’s south.

To be fair, in contrast to the US, most Latin American nations had behaved irresponsibly. They had experienced perpetual turmoil, falling from one corrupt administration to another. The Monroe Doctrine, however, in no way, gave the US international police power over its neighbors. 

Monroe did not even issue assurances that the US recognized and respected the sovereignty of Latin American countries—something American presidents today think they have to reiterate constantly. He didn’t have to. 

Monroe wasn’t assigning himself hemispherean policeman. His Doctrine resembled more of a concerned neighbor, warning off bullies across the track not to pick on any of his neighborhood pals. 

How does the Roosevelt Corollary support American imperialism?

It didn’t take long for Roosevelt to put his new foreign policy into action.

Based on his Corollary, a corrupt government, political unrest, or a politician unfavorable to the president—and eventually the foreign policy establishment in Washington, DC—all justified American intervention.

The following is a list of mostly military interventions in countries in the Western Hemisphere. These interventions were often used as a last resort after political and economic bullying failed to produce the desired results. 

• 1905: US Marines invaded Honduras.
• 1904-1906: The US governed Cuba directly.
• 1912-1925: US Marines occupied Nicaragua.
• 1914: The US occupied Veracruz, Mexico to influence the Mexican Revolution.
• 1915-1934: US Marines occupied Haiti.
• 1916-1917: US forces invaded Mexico.
• 1916-1924: US Marines occupied the Dominican Republic.
• 1917-1922: US troops occupied Cuba.
• 1918: US troops occupied Panama to protect the United Fruit Company.
• 1920-1921: US troops supported a coup in Guatemala.
• 1926-1933: US troops occupied Nicaragua.
• 1936: US intervenes in Nicaragua
• 1954: The CIA overthrew Guatemalan Preisent Jacobo Arbenz
• 1961: Bay of Pigs
• 1964: US overthrows Brazilian President Joao Goulart and installs a military dictatorship.
• 1965: US troops intervened in a Dominican civil war.
• 1973: US-backed coup overthrows Chilean President Salvador Allende.
• 1981-1986: US intervenes in Nicaraguan Civil War.
• 1981-1988: US intervenes in Salvadoran Civil War.
• 1983: US invaded Grenada to keep it from allying with Cuba.
• 1989: US invaded Panama to oust Manuel Noriega.
• 1994: US invaded Haiti to oust its government.
• 2002: US ousted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for two days.
• 2009: US helped overthrow Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

The Roosevelt Corollary was nothing short of a doctrinal justification for American imperialism.

America’s coming to Cuba’s rescue openly violated the Monroe Doctrine. Many Cuban and other Latin American intellectuals understood that the Spanish-American War was simply a new empire supplanting the old. 

The US was a small republic when Monroe issued the original Monroe Doctrine. By Roosevelt’s time, it was large enough to become the most powerful nation in the world but punched below its weight in colonies. Roosevelt made sure to change that.