The Monroe Doctrine and the League Covenant

1936 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-413
Author(s):  
John H. Spencer

The recent changes effected in the foreign policy of the United States both as regards the relations of that State with its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere and as regards its position as a world Power have brought again to the fore the question of the validity of the Monroe Doctrine. There are reasons to believe that this traditional policy, if not completely repudiated by the very State which brought it into being, will, at least, remain uninvoked during some period of time. In fact, it would appear that in so far as it is concerned with the problem of intervention, the doctrine has been definitely rejected by the present administration through the so-called “good neighbor policy.” Furthermore, it has but recently been observed in the Congressional debates preceding the passage of the Neutrality Joint Resolution of August 31 of last year, that the imposition of an impartial arms embargo against belligerents would preclude the United States from applying the Monroe Doctrine in case a weak American State should be the object of aggression by a foreign Power.

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-81
Author(s):  
Payam Ghalehdar

This chapter serves as an introduction to the first three case studies of the book’s empirical analysis, which comprise Part I. It sketches the evolution of US attitudes toward states in the Western Hemisphere. It shows how US interpretations of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine became more hegemonic with the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary and how US expectations toward hemispheric states were relaxed in the interwar years, culminating in the Good Neighbor Policy. The chapter briefly illustrates how the attenuation of hegemonic expectations allowed Franklin D. Roosevelt to abstain from intervening in the 1933 Cuban Crisis. The aftermath of World War II put an end to the Good Neighbor Policy. Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, John F. Kennedy expanded hegemonic expectations again, now to include domestic economic policy decisions of hemispheric states. The chapter concludes by showing that after the end of the Cold War, the United States has continued to harbor hegemonic expectations toward the Western Hemisphere.


1946 ◽  
Vol 3 (02) ◽  
pp. 161-167
Author(s):  
Joseph F. Thorning

In the terrible flames of World War II, the Good Neighbor policy, as conceived by its architect, Sumner Welles, and promulgated by its popularizer, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, met the supreme test of “blood, sweat and tears.” Tried in the crucible of worldwide conflict, inter-American friendship met the challenge of totalitarian Nazi-Fascism triumphantly. As our Good Neighbors themselves often proclaimed in the course of the last five years, “Las Américas unidas, unidas vencerán.” “The united Americas will find victory in their united front.” To emphasize the contribution of the other American Republics and Canada to our recent victory is a simple act of justice. The historical record discloses that, almost immediately after the Japanese sneak-attack at Pearl Harbor, the tiny Republic of Costa Rica, democratic to the core, hours before the Congress of the United States of America swung into action, had declared war upon the warlords of Tokyo. Although only Canada and the United States of Brazil actually despatched complete army divisions to fight on the battlefields of Europe, the other peoples in this Hemisphere, in overwhelming numbers, sympathized effectively with our cause, while their Governments, one by one, broke diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. In a most critical hour for the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, the spiritual unity of the American Republics and Canada established itself as a precious, sacred reality. Our enemies were regarded as the enemies of America; our friends the faithful allies of humanity, liberty and democracy.


1946 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-167
Author(s):  
Joseph F. Thorning

In the terrible flames of World War II, the Good Neighbor policy, as conceived by its architect, Sumner Welles, and promulgated by its popularizer, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, met the supreme test of “blood, sweat and tears.” Tried in the crucible of worldwide conflict, inter-American friendship met the challenge of totalitarian Nazi-Fascism triumphantly. As our Good Neighbors themselves often proclaimed in the course of the last five years, “Las Américas unidas, unidas vencerán.” “The united Americas will find victory in their united front.”To emphasize the contribution of the other American Republics and Canada to our recent victory is a simple act of justice. The historical record discloses that, almost immediately after the Japanese sneak-attack at Pearl Harbor, the tiny Republic of Costa Rica, democratic to the core, hours before the Congress of the United States of America swung into action, had declared war upon the warlords of Tokyo. Although only Canada and the United States of Brazil actually despatched complete army divisions to fight on the battlefields of Europe, the other peoples in this Hemisphere, in overwhelming numbers, sympathized effectively with our cause, while their Governments, one by one, broke diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. In a most critical hour for the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, the spiritual unity of the American Republics and Canada established itself as a precious, sacred reality. Our enemies were regarded as the enemies of America; our friends the faithful allies of humanity, liberty and democracy.


1984 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger R. Trask

Between 1945 and 1947, Argentina posed a complex and exasperating problem for the United States as it endeavored to develop policy to guide its relations with Latin America. Among the questions involved were how to deal with an alleged neofascist dictator in Argentina, how to preserve the aura of the so-called Good Neighbor policy, whether to provide arms and economic aid to Latin America, and whether to enter into a collective security agreement for the western hemisphere.


1958 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-430
Author(s):  
Gustave Weigel

One of the constant worries of the United States, since the role of a dominant world-power has been thrust on her, is the situation of Latin America. Relations with Canada require thought and preoccupation but they produce no deep concern. Canada and the United States understand each other and they form their policies in terms of friendly adjustment. Yet the same is not true when we consider the bloc of nations stretching to the south of the Rio Grande. They form two thirds of the geographic stretch of the western hemisphere, and they constitute a population equal to ours. The dependence on Latin America on the part of the United States in her capacity as an international power is evident. What is not evident is the way to make our friendship with our southern neighbors a more stable thing than the fragile arrangement which confronts us in the present.


Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
Francis X. Gannon

As President Carter prepared for his first official visit to Mexico in February, 1979, to discuss, among other things, U.S. access to its neighbor's new-found oil, the U.S. secretary of energy, James R. Schlesinger, warned that the security of the Western democracies could be completely undermined if instability became endemic in the Persian Gulf and the flow of oil to Europe, Japan, and the United States was sharply curtailed.There was considerable irony in this situation. As columnist James Reston observed in the New York Times, the president was not going to Mexico "to deal with the price of Mexican gas—though that is an immediate and divisive problem—but with the price of neglect.


Author(s):  
Brian Loveman

U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America in the 19th century initially focused on excluding or limiting the military and economic influence of European powers, territorial expansion, and encouraging American commerce. These objectives were expressed in the No Transfer Principle (1811) and the Monroe Doctrine (1823). American policy was unilateralist (not isolationist); it gradually became more aggressive and interventionist as the idea of Manifest Destiny contributed to wars and military conflicts against indigenous peoples, France, Britain, Spain, and Mexico in the Western Hemisphere. Expansionist sentiments and U.S. domestic politics inspired annexationist impulses and filibuster expeditions to Mexico, Cuba, and parts of Central America. Civil war in the United States put a temporary halt to interventionism and imperial dreams in Latin America. From the 1870s until the end of the century, U.S. policy intensified efforts to establish political and military hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, including periodic naval interventions in the Caribbean and Central America, reaching even to Brazil in the 1890s. By the end of the century Secretary of State Richard Olney added the Olney Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (“Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition . . .”), and President Theodore Roosevelt contributed his own corollary in 1904 (“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 wrongdoing or impotence, to exercise an international police power”). American policy toward Latin America, at the turn of the century, explicitly justified unilateral intervention, military occupation, and transformation of sovereign states into political and economic protectorates in order to defend U.S. economic interests and an expanding concept of national security.


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