“No public policy of the United States has ever taken such hold upon the imagination of the American people as the so-called Monroe Doctrine. It has been quoted, discussed, stated, re-stated, revised, and re-issued for nearly a hundred years”.[1] No American can deny the profound impact the Monroe Doctrine has had upon the country. It can easily be credited as the first occurrence of the United States’ rise to a world super power. “Over the years, James Monroe's doctrine took on various meanings and implications, depending upon shifting policies and preferences, but nevertheless consistently served as a mainstay in the articulation of U.S. goals and purposes in the Western Hemisphere.”[2] However, the full text of the Monroe Doctrine is lengthy and hidden in political semantics, but its core is articulated in two crucial sections; the first is the preliminary declaration. “The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that 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.”[3] The second significant part, is directed to the "allied powers" of Europe, otherwise known as the Holy Alliance; it explains that the United States continues to be neutral on present European settlements in the Americas but it is against impositions that would create new settlements in the freshly liberated Spanish American nations.
We owe it, therefore, to candor and to 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. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.[4]
In this way, the Monroe Doctrine was a policy of self-defense put in place as a means to expand the country.
1. A.B. Hart, The Monroe Doctrine: An Interpretation (Little Brown, 1917), V.
2. Mark T. Gilderhus, The Monroe Doctrine: Meanings and Implications (Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, 2006), 5-6.
3. James Monroe. The Monroe Doctrine (U.S. Department of State, 1823)
4. Ibid
We owe it, therefore, to candor and to 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. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.[4]
In this way, the Monroe Doctrine was a policy of self-defense put in place as a means to expand the country.
1. A.B. Hart, The Monroe Doctrine: An Interpretation (Little Brown, 1917), V.
2. Mark T. Gilderhus, The Monroe Doctrine: Meanings and Implications (Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, 2006), 5-6.
3. James Monroe. The Monroe Doctrine (U.S. Department of State, 1823)
4. Ibid