Monroe Doctrine

A brief examination of the history of European colonization of the Americas is necessary to understand President James Monroe’s motivation for issuing the foreign-policy statements that came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. In 1823, the United States had been an independent nation for only about half a century. Mexico had won its independence from Spain only two years before, in 1821, and a wave of revolutions in Central and South America had just begun to overthrow European colonialism. In this context, the United States—itself still a young and vulnerable republic—had reason to fear that any further European colonization or re-colonization of territories in the Western Hemisphere represented a threat to its own independence. In declaring the Western Hemisphere an American sphere of influence, Monroe hoped to preempt European ambitions in the region. 

The Age of Discovery and Conquest began in the late 15th century when Portugal and Spain effectively split the world between them for exploration and colonization through the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). Britain, France, and the Netherlands followed soon after. In the 17th century, Britain and France controlled most of North America, with Spain dominating in Central and South America and the Caribbean. France claimed the territory known as New France, originally a vast region stretching from Northeastern Canada to present-day Louisiana, while Britain oversaw the Thirteen Colonies and had a foothold in Canada as well. In 1763, France lost two wars—the French and Indian War (1754-1763) in North America and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) in Europe—and as a result ceded most of its North American possessions to Britain. Some 20 years later, Britain lost the Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Meanwhile, Russia began its exploration of North America in 1732 and subsequently began settling in Alaska with the help of the Russian-American Company. Russia engaged in fur trapping and sent a limited mission by the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1812, it claimed Fort Ross in California. Each of these major events changed the balance of power in the Americas and left the nature of the relationship between the powers in question.

In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, adding a large area to the United States to be explored and developed. In 1819, the US also acquired Florida from a Spain that had been weakened by the wars of independence in Central and South America. In 1810, Chile and Columbia were on a path to independence from Spain. In 1811, Venezuela also gained independence from Spain, followed by Mexico in 1821 and Peru in 1824. All these individual conflicts should be viewed within the general framework of the Spanish American Wars of Independence (1808-1833).

As the US grew, both through territorial acquisition from Spain and France and through westward expansion, it also began to establish itself in the international arena. From the US perspective, the War of 1812 between the US and its former colonial ruler, Britain, defended American interests on the continent and beyond. In fact, it was Russia that acted as an arbiter and ruled in the US’s favor over the disagreements that arose interpreting the postwar Treaty of Ghent (1814). Despite the amicable Russian-American relations in this period, the US was concerned that the Russian settlements in the northwest would threaten its own expansionist drive toward the Pacific Ocean. Thus, Tsar Alexander I’s decree claiming the territory north of the 51st parallel for Russia served as an immediate catalyst for Monroe’s 1823 foreign-policy statement. Monroe also feared that Spain would recolonize the Latin American states that had gained independence from it. Thus, at this time, the main purpose of the Monroe Doctrine was defensive. It is important to note that the term “doctrine” was not used to describe Monroe’s foreign-policy points until the 1850s.

Until the late 19th century, US expansion primarily occurred across the continent, accompanied by armed conflict and ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous North American population inspired by the concept of Manifest Destiny. The US also settled uninhabited guano islands in search of this natural fertilizer for its growing population. A victory over Spain in the Spanish-American War (1898) served as a key turning point for the US, as it became a formally imperialist, colonial power. As a result, the US acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam from Spain. Cuba gained independence, but the unequal Platt Amendment (1901) allowed the US to intervene in Cuban affairs to a significant extent.

It was at this time that President Theodore Roosevelt issued the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904), which allowed the US to meddle in Latin American affairs in various ways, including military, to protect US interests and the existent regional order. What followed was a period of extensive American interventionism. For example, the US occupied Nicaragua between 1912 and 1933. American intervention was not always direct. In some cases, the US achieved its goals by exerting significant economic control—for instance, through the United Fruit Company (1899), which dominated some Latin American countries, influenced local and national politics, and gave rise to the term “banana republic” in reference to one-product economies in countries like Guatemala. By the early 20th century, the originally defensive Monroe Doctrine had become an instrument of US imperialism within the Western Hemisphere. There are many examples of the US achieving its goals in Latin America through direct interference in the internal affairs of Latin American countries, including attempting to assassinate Cuba’s revolutionary socialist leader Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs (1961) invasion and funding the extremist guerillas, the Contras, in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

However, the most famous use of the Monroe Doctrine during the Cold War—a global conflict between the US and the Soviet Union—came during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The US initiated the crisis by placing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in Turkey and Italy, within reach of the Soviet Union. In response, the Soviet Union started preparations to place similar missiles in post-revolutionary Cuba, less than 100 miles from the coast of Florida and well within the sphere of influence defined by the Monroe Doctrine. This act precipitated one of the most dangerous situations of the Cold War, as mutual paranoia and miscommunication arguably came within minutes of sparking nuclear war. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev managed to de-escalate the crisis by late October, removing the respective missiles through negotiations. In the 21st century, the United States typically does not explicitly invoke the Monroe Doctrine. However, US foreign policy implicitly continues to perceive the Americas as its exclusive “backyard.”