Is this the secret to understanding US foreign policy? How a powerful doctrine from 1823 reshaped America
Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Greg Grandin traces the evolution of the Monroe Doctrine, from its origins in the Spanish-American revolutions to its role in interventions, the Cold War, and beyond
In December 1823, US President James Monroe delivered his annual State of the Union address. Tucked away in the long speech were two simple but far-reaching ideas that would continue to resonate for centuries.
First, he declared that the Americas were “henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation by any European powers.” In other words, the New World was closed to new imperial claims.
Second, he warned that attempts by Europe to extend its “system” into the western hemisphere would be viewed as “dangerous to our peace and safety.” He added that it was “impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent, without endangering our peace and happiness.” This suggested that, with the American Revolution still lingering in the memory, the United States reserved the right to respond if its interests were threatened.
This formed the basis of what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. It wasn’t written as a detailed strategy, yet it has evolved into one of the most enduring – and divisive – foundations of US foreign policy.
“It’s hard to talk about the Monroe Doctrine because, as Woodrow Wilson put it in 1919: every time I tried to define the Monroe Doctrine, it escapes definition,” explains historian Greg Grandin, author of America, América: A New History of the New World, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.
An anti-colonial gesture with hidden teeth
When Monroe spoke, the Americas were in upheaval. To the south and across the lower hemisphere, Spanish colonies from Mexico to Argentina were breaking away from their former rulers. At the same time, European powers debated whether to help Spain reconquer its former territories.
The United States, itself only a few decades old, wanted to signal its place in this shifting order. Monroe declared that the western hemisphere was to be protected from European expansion.
“It was positioning the United States for the inevitable independence of Spanish America from Spain. And one of the things that it did [was announce] that it would not permit the recolonisation of the new world by the old world,” Grandin explains.
Latin American leaders welcomed the statement. “They cheered it, they thought this is an affirmation of what we’ve been talking about,” he adds.
But hidden elsewhere in Monroe’s message was a different principle.
“The Monroe Doctrine also says that the United States has a right to intervene as it deems necessary, if its interests are threatened,” explains Grandin.
That tension – between solidarity with independence movements, and an assertion of US authority and power – has for generations shaped how the doctrine was read.
From protector to policeman
Over the 19th century, the interventionist side of the Monroe Doctrine grew stronger. Instead of simply rejecting European interference, the US began to cast itself as an enforcer of order across the hemisphere.
The clearest example came in 1904, when Theodore Roosevelt issued his famous Roosevelt Corollary. He argued that the US had a duty to step in if Latin American governments failed to maintain stability or honour debts.
“One of the most famous examples is Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. He imagined the world as a giant police station with the United States, basically the headquarters,” Grandin says.
This outlook fuelled decades of gunboat diplomacy. Into the following century, US Marines landed in Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, sometimes occupying countries for years. For many Latin Americans, the Monroe Doctrine no longer looked like a shield against Europe, but a sword wielded by those in Washington DC.
Wilson’s impossible balancing act
In the early 20th century, US President Woodrow Wilson tried to restore the Doctrine’s original anti-colonial spirit. He linked it to his broader vision of Pan-Americanism, a cooperative community of equal nations, and later to the ideals of the League of Nations.
“He often invoked the Monroe Doctrine in its more idealistic form. He said: this is what we want, we want an anti-colonial world of equal nations,” Grandin explains.
Yet Wilson’s actions often told another story. The president ordered interventions in Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic – even as he spoke of non-intervention. When negotiating the League’s Covenant, he ensured that nothing would compromise America’s special role in the western hemisphere.
To ensure this, Grandin says, Wilson “had a statement inserted in the Covenant… that the League of Nations would not invalidate the Monroe Doctrine.”
Even Wilson, advocate of self-determination abroad, refused to give up unilateral authority close to home.
The Cold War: communism as ‘foreign’
The Monroe Doctrine gained new life during the Cold War. As left-wing and revolutionary movements spread through Latin America, Washington DC invoked the doctrine to portray communism as an alien ideology, incompatible with (and a direct threat to) the foundations of the New World.
This framing cast communism not as a local movement but as a foreign contagion imported from Moscow or Beijing. During the fight against it, Grandin explains that thousands were killed because of US action “in countries like Guatemala and El Salvador and Nicaragua, and Argentina and Chile.”
- Read more | The 5 most notorious presidents in US history
“Even if we’re talking about indigenous peasants in Guatemala or copper miners in Chile… communism itself was seen as a foreign ideology and Monroe Doctrine was invoked as a way to justify putting it down.”
The result was decades of US support for coups, dictatorships and covert operations – from the CIA-backed coup in Guatemala in 1954 to backing Pinochet’s regime in Chile. Each time, the Monroe Doctrine was cited as justification.
More than 200 years on, the Monroe Doctrine can still be seen as a tenet within American foreign policy. President Ronald Reagan cited it in the 1980s during interventions in Central America. More recently, US officials have used Monroeist language when addressing crises in Cuba and Venezuela.
Was the doctrine about protecting American freedom against Europe? Or was it always about extending power by quelling threats to the American status quo?
Either way, what originated as a short passage in President Monroe’s 1823 speech soon became a framework for preserving and expanding American power that has been redefined and repurposed across centuries.
Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution
Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story.Listen to all episodes now
Greg Grandin was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Authors
James Osborne is a digital content producer at HistoryExtra where he writes, researches, and edits articles, while also conducting the occasional interview