It's Time for America to Revisit the Monroe Doctrine

It's Time for America to Revisit the Monroe Doctrine

Recent events have shown America’s foes becoming more brazen in their penetration of the Western Hemisphere; the answer to this challenge lies in our past.

This “international police power” was intended to reinforce the Monroe Doctrine and ensure that the Western Hemisphere was secure for American interests. To Roosevelt, “a great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil,” a mission statement that has influenced American foreign policy ever since. The key passage of the Roosevelt Corollary reads:

We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence cannot be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.

118 years later, Roosevelt’s statement and the principle it defends still retain their importance.

In 2023, in a new era of great power competition, a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary is long overdue. America must live up to the words and promises of these great statesmen and ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains free from the influence of foreign autocrats. Our region’s nations are unique in their democratic birth and republican spirit; we need to retain that legacy if we wish to bring that spirit forward into the twenty-first century. American leaders should say, point blank, that the Western Hemisphere is not safe for totalitarian foreign powers that wish to destroy or undermine the historic freedom of our region. We cannot countenance the rising presence of authoritarian foes in our own backyard.

Competing against Russia, China, and Iran is extremely important, as is containing their revanchist imperial aims. We cannot present a credible deterrent in Eastern Europe, the Pacific, or the Middle East if we allow our rivals to do whatever they please in our own neck of the woods. If anything, a poor response here makes our longer-range deterrent seem far less credible. And that would be a disaster for the whole world, not just the Western Hemisphere. That security through deterrence starts closer to home; it is beyond time we recognized that reality and acted on it.

Mike Coté is a writer and historian focusing on Great Power rivalry and geopolitics. He blogs at rationalpolicy.com, hosts the Rational Policy podcast, and can be found on Twitter @ratlpolicy.

Image: Flickr/U.S. Navy.