The accompanying article by Nancy and Ed Spannaus clearly spells out the intent and history of the original Monroe Doctrine, motivated and principally authored by Secretary of State and later US President John Quincy Adams. The intent of Adams and Monroe was to prevent any interventions into the Western Hemisphere by the European colonial powers, and to support the emergence of sovereign republics throughout the Hemisphere. No part of the original Monroe Doctrine even suggested that the United States was claiming control over any hemispheric nation outside the US borders. Indeed, the United States promoted and defended the independence and sovereignty of Mexico and Venezuela against European interferences and at no time made any claims on any other nation, including the right of intervention for debt collection, as was the case with the British, French, and Spanish intervention into Mexico while President Lincoln was occupied with the defense of the Union against British and French machinations to support the Confederacy.
The addition of the Teddy Roosevelt Corollary and the more recent Trump Corollary (“The Donroe Doctrine”—sic) have no relationship to the original Monroe Doctrine and were and are based on false claims to American imperial sovereignty over the entire Hemisphere. Students of history and contemporary policy makers would do well to read and absorb the importance of the attached article and realize that the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine has been violated by the subsequent efforts to justify American gunboat diplomacy, debt collection, and regime change. Both John Quincy Adams and James Monroe are rolling over in their graves at the abuse of their good names and the policies they invoked to secure the perfect sovereignty of every nation of the Western Hemisphere.- Jeffrey Steinberg
With the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine on Dec. 2, 1823, the United States pledged itself as the unique and sole defender of the republican independence of the nation-states of the Western Hemisphere, against the oligarchical adventures and intrigues of the European nations of the Holy Alliance. This fact surprises most Americans, who have been told that President James Monroe’s declaration was the beginning of a new Anglo-American alliance for imperialist domination of the emerging nations of Latin America. But a review of American history shows that the primary target against which the Monroe Doctrine was established, and against which it has been invoked by U.S. Presidents, was the grasping British empire, and that the Monroe Doctrine is a fundamental extension of U.S. constitutional law.
Great Britain had by no means given up hopes of expansion in the Western Hemisphere by the early 1 820s, hardly a decade after the War of 1812. The United States had recognized the independence of Colombia, Peru, Chile, Buenos Aires (capital of what is now Argentina, then the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata), and Mexico, but Great Britain had recognized none. Pleased that the empires of Spain and France had been curtailed in the New World, the British still had by no means reconciled themselves to the end of colonialism-as their control of colonial Canada today underlines.
Yet in 1823 British Prime Minister George Canning made an offer to the United States which he believed it could not refuse. In discussions with U.S. Ambassador to London Richard Rush, Canning proposed a joint U .S.-British declaration to guarantee the emancipation of Spain’s colonies in the Western Hemisphere. The five-point declaration stated that Spain’s former colonies should not be recoverable by Spain, nor transferred to any other power, although it renounced claims by the authors to impede negotiations between Spain and the colonies or take possession themselves. Within this Wilsonesque rhetoric, however, there was one tell-tale omission: Rather than recognizing the former Spanish colonies as independent states, the Canning proposal said: “We conceive the question of the recognition of them, as Independent States, to be one of time and circumstances.”
John Quincy Adams-the statesman who represented the very best of the American System tradition inherited from his father John Adams and his mentor Benjamin Franklin-was the only principal in the Monroe administration not taken in by the Canning declaration. While President Monroe was receiving advice from former Presidents Jefferson and Madison to the effect that such a de facto alliance with Great Britain would be the best protection for the militarily weak United States, Quincy Adams launched a campaign for a unilateral U.S. declaration against all the oligarchical powers of Europe.
No community of principle with Britain
Quincy Adams, who was to be elected to the presidency the next year, had, throughout his service as a statesman, worked to strengthen America’s commitment to the spread of republicanism in Latin America. Even before the United States had recognized many of the continent’s new nations, Quincy Adams wrote: “The emancipation of the South American continent opens to the whole race of man prospects of futurity in which this Union will be called in the discharge of its duties to itself and to unnumbered ages of posterity to take a conspicuous and leading role …. That the fabric of our social connections with our southern neighbors may rise in the lapse of years with a grandeur and harmony of proportions corresponding with the magnificance of the means placed by Providence in our power and that of our descendants; its foundations must be laid in principles of politics and of morals, new and distasteful to the thrones and dominations of the elder world …. ” (Letter to Richard Anderson, U.S. minister in Bogota, Colombia, May 27, 1823.)
When Canning’s proposal reached his desk later in 1823, world events made clear to Quincy Adams the necessity of defending the principles of non-colonization, and non-interference in the Western Hemisphere by all ,the powers of the Holy Alliance. Russia was at the very same time in negotiations with the United States about lands it claimed along the Pacific coast in what is today the state of Oregon. France also had claims against Middle America.
On the face of it, Britain was the only one of the Holy Alliance powers willing to renounce colonization, and was the strongest of these powers in military terms. But John Quincy Adams argued that as long as Great Britain would not recognize the sovereign independence of the new nations in the Western Hemisphere, the United States could not even entertain the idea of signing a parallel declaration with the British, much less a joint declaration. He wrote: ” So long as Great Britain withholds the recognition of that [independence], we may, as we certainly do, concur with her in the aversion to the transfer to any other power of any of the Colonies in this Hemisphere, heretofore or yet, belonging to Spain; but the principles of that aversion, so far as they are common to both parties, resting only upon a casual coincidence of interests, in a national point of view selfish on both sides, would be liable to dissolution by every change of phase in the aspect of European politics …. Britain and America … would not be bound by ‘any permanent community of principle.’ ”
Adams’s concept of a community of principle was well-known among the proponents of the American System at the time, including the Marquis de Lafayette. It meant relations between states were to be based on mutual respect for national sovereignty, that sovereignty itself being defined not by mere brute exercise of power, but by the commitment to the betterment of its population morally and materially. Such a commitment to the principle of sovereignty demanded peaceful relations among states and stood in total contrast to the maneuverings for looting arrangements that characterized the relations among the European powers.
Thus John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary of Nov. 7, 1823 that an independent American declaration of support for republics of Latin America against the European powers was necessary because: ” It affords a very suitable and convenient opportunity for us to take our stand against the Holy Alliance and at the same time to decline the overture of Great Britain. It would be more candid, as well as more dignified, to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of war.”
Promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine
President Monroe was won to Quincy Adams’s position. On Dec. 2, 1823, the Monroe Doctrine was promulgated, echoing the policy enunciated in the Federalist Papers and George Washington’s great Farewell Address, in which our first President warned of entanglements with the politics or controversies of Europe on the grounds that the United States as a constitutional republic must not subordinate its interests to those of the European oligarchies . The Monroe Doctrine extended this protection to all the nations of the hemisphere: “as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, … the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers …. In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observors . The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective Governments; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted . We owe it. therefore. to candor and the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”
Within a few years of Monroe’s proclamation, it had become a guideline for U.S. foreign policy. In 1825, President John Quincy Adams’s Secretary of State Henry Clay sent a set of instructions to Joel Poinsett, the U.S. minister in Mexico, directing Poinsett to bring the Mexicans’ attention to Monroe’s message “asserting certain important principles of intercontinental law. in the relations of Europe and America.” The first principle was that the Americas would no longer be considered subjects for colonization by European powers. The second principle, wrote Clay, is that “we should regard as dangerous to our peace and safety” any effort on the part of Europe “to extend their political system to any portion of this hemisphere. The political systems of the two continents are essentially different.”
In 1863, Mexican President Benito Juarez urged the United States to invoke the Monroe Doctrine against the attempts of the Swiss financial oligarchy to impose a monarchy on Mexico to guarantee the payment of that nation’s foreign debt . Under the London Convention of October 1863, the navies of France, England, and Spain, and more than 20,000 troops, had combined to mount an invasion of Mexico to revoke the Mexican government’s sovereign decision to impose a debt moratorium against those countries.
The weakness of the war-torn United States prevented Lincoln from going to the aid of his ally Juarez. There are numerous documents demonstrating that Lincoln’s strategy was to fight his battles one at a time, with this basic concern at that time being to safeguard the Union, and to neutralize British agents of influence, who, like his Secretary of State Seward, were working against him from within.
The Venezuela dispute
In 1895, President G rover Cleveland invoked the Monroe Doctrine against Britain during the British-Venezuela boundary dispute concerning ” British” Guiana. The British raised the objection that the Monroe Doctrine was incomplete and not a part of international law. Cleveland responded that the doctrine “was intended to apply to every stage in our national life and cannot become obsolete while our republic endures .” Cleveland added that the doctrine “has its place in the code of international law as certainly and securely as if it were specifically mentioned.”
At Cleveland’s instruction, his Secretary of State Richard Olney delivered a long message to the U.S. ambassador in London for transmittal to Lord Salisbury. The Monroe Doctrine, wrote Olney, applied the logic of Washington’s Farewell Address by declaring that American non-intervention in European affairs necessarily implied European non-intervention in American affairs. :”The rule is … that no European power or combination of European powers shall forcibly deprive any American state of the right and power of self-government and of shaping for itself its own political fortunes and destines. That the rule thus defined has been the accepted public law of this country ever since its promulgation cannot be fairly denied.” Olney continued: “What is true of the material, is no less true of what may be termed the moral interests involved …. Europe as a whole is monarchical, and, with the single important exception of the republic of France, is committed to the monarchical principle. America, on the other hand, is devoted to exactly the opposite principle.”
In the 20th century
Although it is the case that British-influenced occupants of the White House and State Department in the 20th century-especially Theodore Roosevelt-have more often applied the Monroe Doctrine in service of the financial interests of the European oligarchy, the spirit · of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams’s original declaration was still alive in the April 19, 1939 speech of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the Pan-American Congress. “The American family of nations pays honor to the oldest and most successful association of sovereign nations which exists in the world,” Roosevelt told the Congress. “What is it that has protected us from the tragic involvements which are today making the old world a new cockpit of old struggles? The answer is easily found. A new and powerful ideal-that of the community of nations-sprang up at the same time the Americas became free and independent. … The American peace we celebrate today has no quality of weakness in it. We are prepared to maintain it and defend it to the fullest extent of our strength, matching force to force if any attempt is made to subvert our institutions, or impair the independence of any one of our group.
“Should the method of attack be that of economic pressure, I pledge that my own country will also give economic support, so that no American nation need surrender any fraction of its sovereign freedom to maintain its economic welfare. This is the spirit and the intent of the Declaration of Lima: the solidarity of the American continent. … ”
Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, May 11, 1982
Tags: James Monroe, John Quincy Adams