Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Monroe Doctrine

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

When the United States became independent in the late 18th century, it didn’t have much of a foreign policy. Their primary concern was creating the framework of a country that hadn’t existed before.  However, after a few decades, the United States grew in confidence and eventually asserted its own unique foreign policy objectives.  The objectives eventually coalesced during the administration of President James Monroe, and many of the objectives of this early foreign policy still remain in place today. Learn more about the Monroe Doctrine, how it was created, and how it has been implemented on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the United States became independent in the late 18th century, it didn't have much of a foreign policy. Their primary concern was creating the framework of a country that hadn't existed before. However, after a few decades, the United States grew confident and eventually asserted its own unique foreign policy objectives. The objectives eventually coalesced during the administration of President James Monroe, and many of the objectives of this early foreign policy still remain in place today. Learn more about the Monroe Doctrine, how it was created and how it's been implemented on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day and tonight. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. In the Republic's early days, the United States' form. policy was pretty simple. In those early years, everything revolved around a few European countries, primarily Britain, France, and Spain, but also the Netherlands, Russia, and Portugal as well. Despite being located far from Europe, everything around them was controlled by those countries.

In the following years, they fought an undeclared war called the quasi-war with France, they fought another war with Great Britain in 1812, and the country eventually grew in size, strength and confidence. One of the unofficial standing policies of the United States was to support the independence for any European colony which was located in the Americas. Of course, when this finally happened, the first country other than the United States to become independent was Haiti, but that really wasn't what the Americans were thinking of. And the story of the Haitian revolution and its subsequent snub by the United States is a story for another episode. However, over time, other European colonies did become independent, and the United States quickly recognized them.

In 1882, the United States recognized the new republics of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. Not only were there new independent republics in the Americas, but it looked like there would soon be other new ones in the future. Despite the optimism of the era and the progress that was being made, there were worries that the various European powers were not going to let this stand. Russia had begun to claim territory in the Pacific Northwest under Tsar Alexander I, who banned ships from approaching the coast. There was also a growing concern that Spain would try and re-insert itself in the region, possibly recolonizing several of the newly independent countries. The British also shared these concerns, although their interest in the region was different than that of the Americans.

The British were playing great power politics and didn't want to see their rivals regain any of the territory that they had lost. Nonetheless, the British and Americans did have a confluence of interest at the time on this topic. Neither country wanted to see continued European meddling in the Americas. The U.S. President at the time was James Monroe. Originally elected in 1816, he was re-elected in 1820, and basically ran unopposed. The Federalist Party had collapsed, and his Democratic Republican Party was the only party to put up a national candidate. Monroe won the electoral vote in every state, and the only reason he didn't win unanimously in the electoral college was due to a handful of electors who just voted for random people.

It was known as the era of good feelings, but in reality, it was a short-lived era of one-party rule. The dominance of the Democratic Republicans gave Monroe a great deal of leeway in setting policy. He and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, considered issuing a joint resolution with the British against the establishment of any new colonies in the Americas, but eventually decided against it because they weren't entirely certain of British intentions in the region. And just as a side note, you may recognize the name John Quincy Adams as that of the sixth president of the United States and the son of President John Adams. By his own admission, he was a pretty lackluster president.

However, many historians rank him as the greatest secretary of state in American history. and one of the reasons why he's considered such a successful Secretary of State was because of the events outlined in this episode. Monroe and Adams eventually decided to make a unilateral statement regarding the United States policy for the Western Hemisphere. In his address to Congress on December 2, 1823, President Monroe outlined the new doctrine in U.S. foreign policy, which became known as the Monroe Doctrine, although it was largely written and developed by Secretary of State Adams. The original Monroe Doctrine had several major parts. First, the United States would not interfere with existing European colonies in the Americas,

but European powers were warned against establishing any new colonies in the Western Hemisphere. Second, the United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of European nations, and in return, European powers were expected to refrain from interfering in the affairs of independent nations and the Americas. And third, the United States asserted the right to defend its interests and ensure the security of the Western Hemisphere against external threats. Basically, President Monroe said that the Western Hemisphere was a separate sphere of influence and that Europe should stick to Europe.

When the Monroe Doctrine was announced, the United States had very little ability to actually enforce it. Compared to the major European powers at the time, they didn't have the Navy or army to back it up. However, the British did. The British supported it simply because it hurt their enemies. As countries became independent in the Americas, they could establish their own trade policies with the British, rather than being stuck in a colonial mercantile system. The rest of Europe was rather irritated at the doctrine, but actually, didn't think much of it because America couldn't do anything about it.

The other newly independent countries in Latin America were generally supportive of the idea of Europeans keeping out of the affairs of countries in the new world, but were also somewhat suspicious of the intentions of the United States. While it was effectively U.S. policy, the United States did nothing when the British took over the Falkland Islands in 1833. From 1838 to 1850, the French and the British imposed a naval blockade on Argentina and the United States did nothing about it then either. However, as the United States got larger and more powerful, they began to do more to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, and they expanded the scope of the doctrine. In 1845, President James Polk reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine and also expanded it to

include European interference with American expansion, aka Manifest Destiny. When France invaded Mexico and installed Maximilian I first as emperor, which I covered in a previous episode, The United States didn't do anything overt to prevent it, mainly because they were in the middle of a civil war. However, once a civil war ended, they funneled money and weapons to Benito Juarez to provide more active support against Maximilian in France. Also during the civil war, the independent Dominican Republic reverted back to becoming a colony of Spain, and there wasn't much that the U.S. could do about it. After the civil war, however, the United States was in a totally different position. They had raised a large army that was battle-tested and now had a reasonably

sized Navy. Beginning in 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant and his Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, began to enforce the Monroe Doctrine more actively. They attempted to annex the Dominican Republic and used the Monroe Doctrine as their justification. In 1895, Venezuela and Britain had a clash about the border of Venezuela and Guyana. The U.S. threatened Britain into arbitration with Venice, Venezuela. The Secretary of State under President Grover Cleveland, Richard Olney, sent a message to the British which said, quote, the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confides its interposition. End quote. In 1898 for the first time, the United States actually used military force against a European power in the very brief Spanish-American

war. Entering the 20th century, the United States did not abandon the Monroe Doctrine. In fact, they doubled down on it. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt announced an extension of the Monroe doctrine, which became known as the Roosevelt Corollary. The first part of the Roosevelt Corollary held that the United States could prevent European creditors who threatened to use the military to collect debts in Latin America. Moreover, Roosevelt went even further and stated that the United States could interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries in the hemisphere in order to prevent European powers from doing so. as he stated before Congress in that year, quote,

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. End quote. This became known as the Big Stick Policy. The United States began military interventions in several Latin American countries over the next several decades, including Cuba, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. Many of these interventions went on for years.

For example, the United States' presence in Haiti lasted from 1915 to 1935. President Roosevelt modified Theodore Roosevelt's Big Stick policy and decided to take a less aggressive position, which he called the Good Neighbor policy. During the Second World War, the United States unilaterally extended protection from invasion by the Axis powers to the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, while, though to be honest, there was no immediate threat of invasion. After the war, the United States changed its strategy, not abandoning the Monroe doctrine, but willing to show a more multilateral approach. The organization of American states was founded in 1948 under the auspices of the United States. The OAS was intended to be,

quote, a multilateral regional body focused on human rights, electoral oversight, social and economic development and security in the Western Hemisphere. Not surprisingly, the headquarters of the OAS is located in Washington, D.C. After the war, with the rise of the Cold War, the focus of the Monroe doctrine shifted from preventing further European colonization to preventing the spread of communism. As in the early 20th century, once again, the United States implemented the Monroe Doctrine, oftentimes through direct military intervention. The biggest failure of the Monroe Doctrine is, during this period was the communist revolution which took place in Cuba in 1959. Soviet supported revolutionaries over through the government of the American-backed Cuban dictator

Fulgencio Batista. The Monroe Doctrine was a large part of what was behind the U.S. response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. To ensure the Cuban Revolution didn't repeat itself, the U.S. was behind anti-communist efforts all over the Western Hemisphere. This included sending troops to the Dominican Republican in 1965, supporting a coup in Chile in 1973, supporting resistance fighters in Nicaragua in the late 70s and early 80s, and an invasion of the tiny country of Grenada in 1983. In 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced the war on drugs, the Monroe Doctrine was invoked in the fight against drugs and narcotics, even though it had nothing to do with European or even foreign involvement in the Americas, which was the original premise of the Monroe

doctrine. This resulted in American involvement in fighting drug cartels and countries such as Colombia, and eventually a full-blown invasion and regime change in Panama. By the 21st century, the United States had officially declared that the Monroe doctrine was dead. The concerns of European meddling back in the 19th century, or even during the Cold War, no longer existed. Many of the interventions of the 20th century ended up backfiring against the United States, which ended up causing even greater problems for U.S. foreign policy. But the interesting thing is that for almost 200 years, one of the foundational elements of American foreign policy was made by the fifth president of the United States and his secretary of state who would later replace him. Despite the policy

evolving and morphing over time, turning eventually into something quite different than what it was originally designed to do, American foreign policy, going well into the 20th century, all began in an attempt to stop Spain from trying to recolonize the Americas. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only

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