The Monroe Doctrine has received a lot of attention lately, prompting many followers of the news to wonder what the Monroe Doctrine is and what is the new “Trump Corollary” to it.
The Monroe Doctrine is a section of President James Monroe’s annual message to Congress in 1823 in which he states that “the American continents…are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”
In other words, Monroe wanted it to be clear that European colonizers were not welcome in the Americas after that date.
This was a bold position, since New France and New Spain, not to mention British, Russian, and other European interests, had been settled in the Americas centuries before the United States. But the United States was determined to control North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and wasn’t willing to accept any further incursions from Europe.
The United States wouldn’t interfere
In the same speech, Monroe said that the United States wouldn’t interfere with any of the existing European colonies in the Americas. That included the vestiges of New Spain, Russia’s fur trading posts, France’s Caribbean and South American colonies, Britain’s land in Canada and the Caribbean, Portugal’s Brazil, and some Dutch holdings as well. Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, most of these places became independent, and the United States had a hand in some of those transitions.
“[W]e should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety,” Monroe said. “With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere.”
However, even into the early 20th century, the United States feared European incursions into land that the U.S. either held or wanted. Also at the turn of the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt added his assertion that if one of the other nations in the Americas was in serious trouble, the United States could jump in and help. This position, called the Roosevelt Corollary, has been used to justify a number of interventions in Latin American nations in the 20th and 21st centuries. It may also have been used to justify the abduction of Maduro from Venezuela.
The Trump Corollary
In a recent National Security Strategy document, the White House outlined a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, saying, “[T]he United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
This statement extends the warning from the European colonial nations of the 1800s to the powerful nations of the Eastern Hemisphere such as Russia and China. It also does not limit U.S. protection only to colonization or invasion, but extends the unwelcome actions to “threatening capabilities” and “control.”
