The United States and the Defense of the Western Hemisphere, 1815-1940

Abstract

ONE OF THE essential facts, if indeed it was not the most basic fact, in the situation that produced the original Monroe Doctrine was the existence of a distinct European system. The great continental powers of Europe united in suppressing with force the appearance of any of the ideas of the French Revolution in any of the countries of Europe. If extended to the new world this system of intervention in the internal affairs of other countries and of dictating the political institutions other peoples might employ would have seriously endangered the United States. An application of the system to Latin America would have left the United States the last bulwark of those ideas in the world, a more or less democratic republic, born of the successful assertion of a right of revolution, and with a government based on the precise political philosophy which was anathema to the European powers. Of course the system was not extended to the Western Hemisphere. In fact it broke down in Europe itself within a comparatively short time. In 1830 it failed to function, and by 1848 it had clearly disintegrated beyond hope of restoration. From then until the 1930's there was no European system of the character Monroe referred to in his message. In this respect the political system of Europe was essentially the same as that of America. Consequently the Monroe Doctrine lost the most valid of its original reasons for existence. Other reasons there might be, but they rested on different grounds. For example, the American antipathy to the French intervention in Mexico in the 186o's arose, so far as it was not blind devotion to a traditional policy, not from the belief that there was any European system which, if extended to America, would endanger the United States but from the fear of having a powerful and aggressive neighbor. It was therefore not as close to the original Monroe Doctrine as to what might be called the Jefferson Doctrine-the policy of resisting the appearance in Louisiana in i802 of a powerful and aggressive power. Although no writer has adequately traced the significance of the disappearance of a European system for the ideological background of the Monroe Doctrine, an appreciation of the fact was one of the reasons why