Which president enforced the monroe doctrine

In a speech to Congress in , President James Monroe warned European powers not to attempt further colonization or otherwise interfere in the Western Hemisphere, stating that the United States would view any such interference as a potentially hostile act. Later known as the Monroe Doctrine, this policy principle would become a cornerstone of U. By the early s, many Latin American countries had won their independence from Spain or Portugal, with the U.

Yet both Britain and the United States worried that the powers of continental Europe would make future attempts to restore colonial regimes in the region. Russia had also inspired concerns of imperialism, with Czar Alexander I claiming sovereignty over territory in the Pacific Northwest and banning foreign ships from approaching that coast in Though Monroe had initially supported the idea of a joint U.

He convinced Monroe to make a unilateral statement of U. The United States, for its part, would not interfere in the political affairs of Europe, or with existing European colonies in the Western Hemisphere. Any attempt by a European power to exert its influence in the Western Hemisphere would, from then on, be seen by the United States as a threat to its security. At the time Monroe delivered his message to Congress, the United States was still a young, relatively minor player on the world stage.

In , the United States did not invoke the Monroe Doctrine to oppose British occupation of the Falkland Islands; it also declined to act when Britain and France imposed a naval blockade against Argentina in As the Civil War drew to a close, the U. From onward, as the United States emerged as a major world power, the Monroe Doctrine would be used to justify a long series of U.

This was especially true after , when President Theodore Roosevelt claimed the U. But his claim went further than that. Some later policymakers tried to soften this aggressive interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt , who introduced a Good Neighbor policy to replace the Big Stick. But though treaties signed during and after World War II reflected a policy of greater cooperation between North and South American countries, including the Organization for American States OAS , the United States continued to use the Monroe Doctrine to justify its interference in the affairs of its southern neighbors.

Kennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine during the Cuban Missile Crisis , when he ordered a naval and air quarantine of Cuba after the Soviet Union began building missile-launching sites there. For their part, the British also had a strong interest in ensuring the demise of Spanish colonialism, with all the trade restrictions mercantilism imposed. Earlier in British Foreign Minister George Canning suggested to Americans that two nations issue a joint declaration to deter any other power from intervening in Central and South America.

Secretary of State John Quincy Adams , however, vigorously opposed cooperation with Great Britain, contending that a statement of bilateral nature could limit United States expansion in the future.

He also argued that the British were not committed to recognizing the Latin American republics and must have had imperial motivations themselves. The bilateral statement proposed by the British thereby became a unilateral declaration by the United States. In exchange, the United States pledged to avoid involvement in the political affairs of Europe, such as the ongoing Greek struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, and not to interfere in the existing European colonies already in the Americas.

If they were all Germanized, the whole world, including the United States, would be permanently richer. In fact, the ties of trade and friendship between us and a possible Germanized state in South America would normally tend to be close than they seem likely to be with the Spanish-American peoples. Neither is there the slightest evidence that Germany would ever threaten to introduce tyrannical forms of government into South America, or to oppress the native peoples.

Indeed, so far as it is good for the United States to govern the Philippine Islands for the betterment of their people, the same argument holds in favor of any reasonable method, for example, through purchase or by the final consent of the people, for the extension of German law and political institutions into ill-governed South American states.

I do not care to press this argument, which is only valid for those Americans who believe in our colonial experiment. But the argument is far stronger for possible German colonies than it is for the United States, inasmuch as South America is a natural and legitimate field for German immigration, being largely a wilderness, while no large number of Americans will ever care to settle in the Philippine Islands.

The time may naturally come when Germany would have the same kind of interest in the welfare of her people beyond the seas that England has in that of the Englishmen in South Africa. There can be no good reason why the United States should look upon such an interest with jealousy or suspicion.

For we are unlikely to have any legitimate colonial interest in the southern half of our continent. Meanwhile, the whole history of colonial settlements goes to show the futility of holding colonies with which the home government is not bound by the ties of good will. Thus Canada and Australia uphold the British Empire, because they possess practical freedom; while England has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year, badly needed by her own poor people, merely in order to keep her hold over India.

All precedents go to show that the Empire of Germany would only weaken herself, in case she should endeavor to meddle in South America, against the interests and the good will of the people there.

Let us ask another question, hitherto too little considered. On what ground of right is the United States justified in continuing to assert the Monroe Doctrine? We may warn trespassers off our own land. Have we the right to bar our neighbors from lands to which we have no shadow of a title? Suppose that we may do this as the stronger people, for the sake of humanity, to protect weaker people from oppression. It is surely a dangerous concession to permit a single state, however civilized it deems itself, to assume the right to become a knight-errant, to adjust wrongs in the world, and incidentally to be sheriff, judge, and jury on its own motion.

But grant this concession for a moment in favor of the United States. While it may have been true eighty years ago that the American people were filled with sympathy for the republics which revolted from Spain, it would be hypocrisy to claim to-day that our people are seriously concerned over the troubles of their South American neighbors. We are rather apt to say that they are unfit to govern themselves.

The United States to-day holds eight millions of people on the other side of the globe, very like the South Americans, on the distinct ground that they are not yet fit for independence. Our own course, therefore, bars us from sensitiveness over the perils which South America suffers from the bare possibility of the interference of European states. Moreover, we have shown that there is no state in Europe which has a mind to do any wrong to South America.

So far as the promise of higher civilization goes, the planting of bona fide colonies in the vast areas of our southern continent signifies a good to humanity. We must fall back upon a totally different line of reasoning in order to find the only legitimate defense of our Monroe Doctrine. The argument is this: that a nation has the right to safeguard herself against the menace of aggression.

Concede that this might have been a sound argument when the Monroe Doctrine was first proclaimed. Our government saw a peril in the setting up of a European system of despotism on this continent. We have made it clear, however, that this peril which disturbed out fathers appears to have vanished forever.

No one can show what actual danger to our liberties is threatened by any governmental system that European powers can set up in South America. Let us not even imagine that we are in fear of such a chimerical peril. We have no fear that Germany wishes to harm us while she stays at home in Europe.

We have no more ground for fear if Germany were by some magic to fill South America as full of sturdy German people as Canada is now full of friendly English, Scotch, and Frenchmen. The better civilized our neighbors are, the less peril do they threaten to our liberties. Let us then disabuse our minds of any fear of European aggression, to injure American liberties.

But it may be urged that the European governments, as was shown in the late Venezuelan episode, may prove disagreeable in their efforts to collect debts due to their subjects, or, on occasion, in safe-guarding the rights of their colonists in the disorderly South American states. The condition of these states, it is urged, offers points of serious friction between us and our European neighbors.

The class of issues here raised stands quite aside from the original intent of the Monroe Doctrine. Here is the need of new international law, of the services of the Hague Tribunal, very likely of the establishment of a permanent Congress of Nations. How far ought any nation to undertake by warships and armies to collect debts for venturesome subjects who have speculated in the tumultuous politics of semi-civilized peoples?

How far is the real welfare of the world served by punitive expeditions dispatched in the name of missionaries, travelers, and traders, who have chosen to take their own lives in their hands in the wild regions of the world? There is no call for a Monroe Doctrine on these points.

The issue is international, not American. The question is not so much whether France and England may send a fleet to take the customs duties of a dilapidated South American port, as it is, what course ought any government to take when wily promoters ask its assistance in carrying out their schemes in Bogota or Caracas, or Pekin; or again an equally pertinent question , what remedy, if any, international law ought to give when one of our own cities or states defaults its bonds held in Paris or Berlin.

Grant that it is uncomfortable to our traders in South America to see European sheriffs holding ports where we wish to do business. We evidently have no right to protest against other nations doing whatever we might do in like circumstances.

If we can send armored ships to South America, all the others can do so. If we like to keep the perilous right to collect debts, we must concede it to others. We may not like to see strangers, or even our own neighbors, taking liberties and quarreling in the next field to our own. But who gives us the right forcibly to drive them out of a field which we do not own? The rule here seems to be the same for the nation as for the individual. In other words, whatever the Monroe Doctrine historically means, it no longer requires us to stand guard with a show of force to maintain it.

In its most critical form, when it meant a warning against despotism, it only needed to be proclaimed, and never to be defended by fighting ships. In the face of governments practically like our own, the time has come to inquire whether there remains any reasonable issue under the name of the Monroe Doctrine, over which the American people could have the least justification for a conflict of arms with a European government.

The interests of the United States in South America are not different from those of other powers, like England and Germany.