Trump Revives the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

Stopping the flow of illegal immigrants from our southern border. Using diplomacy to lessen China’s presence and influence near the Panama Canal. Calling for the U.S. acquisition of Greenland. Negotiating reciprocal trade agreements with Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Using military power to strike narco-terrorists in the Caribbean Sea. Flexing U.S. military muscle towards the Maduro regime in Venezuela. Call it the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine, the brainchild of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, was announced by President James Monroe on December 2, 1823. Monroe declared that the United States would “consider any attempt … [by outside powers] “to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” The Western Hemisphere, Monroe effectively said, was off limits to intervention by the powers in the Eastern Hemisphere. At that time, we lacked the power to enforce the doctrine, but our statesmen knew that Great Britain had a common interest in lessening other powers’ influence in the Western Hemisphere.

The Monroe Doctrine was also a shield behind which the United States continued its expansion across the central portion of North America. Our “Manifest Destiny,” noted the columnist John O’Sullivan in 1845, was to expand our control all the way to the Pacific Ocean. So, the Monroe Doctrine was inextricably linked to the westward expansion of our nation. And as U.S. economic and military power grew, our statesmen and strategists asserted an even greater role in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine.

In 1895, a dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela over the western frontier of British Guiana escalated. U.S. Secretary of State Richard Olney invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify American diplomatic intervention on behalf of Venezuela. Olney noted that “every administration since President Monroe’s has had occasion … to examine and consider the Monroe doctrine and has in each instance given it emphatic endorsement.” The security of the United States, Olney continued, demanded the “maintenance of the independence of every American state as against any European power.” Experience has taught the United States, Olney said, that “the relations of states to each other depend not upon sentiment nor principle, but upon selfish interest.”