James Cooper
On Dec. 2, 1823, during his seventh annual message to Congress, later to be called the State of the Union address, President James Monroe provided the foreign policy position of the United States that would dominate the Western Hemisphere for the coming 200 years: The Americas were for the United States to influence and the United States only. The U.S. would view any interference by foreign powers — the Europeans who had once colonized the region — as a hostile act. Washington would tolerate no colonies, no puppet monarchs, nor any political influence from Europe.
In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt provided his eponymous Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine to Congress, extending it to mean that the U.S. reserved the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of countries in the Americas as “the international police power.” While the Monroe Doctrine was meant to keep foreign powers out, the Roosevelt Corollary was used to justify the U.S. sending its military into countries around the region. The U.S. intervened in Mexico in 1914, in the Dominican Republic in 1904, in Nicaragua in 1911, and in Haiti in 1915.
Many more interventions ensued in the subsequent years. When the Soviet Union was constructing missile sites in Cuba in 1962, the U.S. government again invoked the Monroe Doctrine, albeit symbolically.
In the past few decades, however, the Western Hemisphere has experienced unprecedented foreign influence — and not from the United States. President Monroe would not be pleased. This trend has been fueled by a resource-hungry People’s Republic of China; by Russia providing investment in and increasing numbers of advisers to Venezuela; India’s preferential trade agreements throughout the region; and an opportunist regime in Iran anxious to extend its foothold in the Americas. A revitalized anti-Americanism has found favor across Central and South America with those who are anxious to reverse U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere — be it socially, economically or, for sure, geopolitically.
Take Bolivia, for example. The U.S. lost influence there some 15 years ago when the Evo Morales government kicked out the Peace Corps and Fulbright scholars. U.S. diplomats had a difficult time winning friends, let alone spending USAID money. Bolivia became susceptible to outside (non-U.S.) influences: Croatian nationalists are working to carve out the Media Luna region, home to hydrocarbons and soya industries, for autonomy. China needs Bolivia’s lithium as it competes with the United States to power the disruptive technology industries of the future. Bolivia is also the home to uranium mines, of much interest to current and wannabe nuclear powers.
Long the stable state of the Southern Cone, for nearly three decades Chile has seen alleged provocateurs from abroad who may foment discord and engage in criminal activities, according to law enforcement. Ecuador is fast becoming a client state of China, given Beijing’s massive investment in the Andean nation and their recent trade deal. Suriname is in serious debt to Chinese creditors. Argentina, reliant on Chinese consumption of Argentine agricultural exports, recently received China’s help to avert a default with the International Monetary Fund.
In short, the rest of the world pays little or no attention to the Monroe Doctrine. Uncle Sam is clearly on the outs, short of an invitation to the cool kids’ party.
None of this should come as a surprise. During the Cold War, the U.S. covertly intervened to foment coups d’état against democratically elected leaders — think the overthrows of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 and Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 — resulting in repressive military regimes that committed systemic and egregious human rights abuses.
Other, less overtly threatening U.S. presidential policies that were more economic, and less militaristic, in nature have brought mixed results: William Howard Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy,” Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy,” John F. Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress,” the “Washington Consensus” of the 1990s, and President Joe Biden’s nascent “Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity.” Globalization through hemispheric free trade has not made all boats rise, unfortunately, and has kept the chronically underdeveloped — including campesinos, Indigenous Peoples, and other traditionally marginalized communities — well, underdeveloped.
For close to two centuries, the United States was able to successfully keep non-American influences out of the Western Hemisphere, save, perhaps, the French military invasion of Mexico in the 1860s. Sure, some countries fell to socialist rule for a time, but the political pendulum often swings back — as we witnessed with Argentina’s presidential election result recently — to undo many of those experiments. But the region continues its long march toward development and equity, with different recipes being tried out beyond the standard American playbook. Moreover, the countries of the Western Hemisphere take the right of self-determination and the international legal principle of non-intervention seriously.
It may be, though, that the Western Hemisphere was never really the United States’ to influence in the first place. For the same reasons that President Monroe staked his claim in 1823, Washington still needs to work to keep markets open for U.S. businesses, access to natural resources free of obstacles, friendly leaders in power, and adversaries and competitors at bay. The United States may just have to play a little bit nicer.
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