The Monroe Doctrine is Dying
By Francis P. Sempa
June 19, 2023
AP
“[T]he American continents . . . are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers . . . [W]e should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety,” declared President James Monroe on December 2, 1823. Writing in the Wall Street Journal almost two hundred years later, Walter Russell Mead--George Kennan like--warns: “From Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego, American interests are under threat as virtually every country in Latin America suffers from major and growing social, political and economic distress” and Latin America’s “ties with Russia and China are booming.” The Monroe Doctrine is dying.
Mead notes that China’s trade with Latin America has grown from $18 billion in 2002 to more than $450 billion today. Chinese state-owned companies are mining lithium in Bolivia, developing ports at both ends of the Panama Canal, have at least 11 space facilities in the region for surveillance and tracking capabilities, and are constructing intelligence facilities in Cuba. The revelation of China’s “spy base” in Cuba caused Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher to remark that “This is an attempt by the CCP to turn the Monroe Doctrine into the Mao doctrine.” Meanwhile, Mead reports, Russia “has resumed its Cold War efforts to subsidize” Cuba’s economy. Even Iran is getting into the act with a series of presidential visits to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela that followed a visit to the region by Iran’s navy. “The steady incursions of U.S. rivals into the Western Hemisphere would have touched off a political firestorm at any time since James Monroe issued his famous doctrine,” Mead writes, but the “reaction from the Biden administration is a yawn.”
Mead blames not just the Biden administration but the entire American foreign policy establishment for its “post-Cold War complacency about America’s rivals.” That post-Cold War complacency that suggested that we were at the “end of history” and that the era of great power wars was over led to the notion that the Monroe Doctrine was no longer relevant. Indeed, in 2013 then-Secretary of State John Kerry proudly proclaimed to the Organization of American States that “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.” Kerry’s statement was an invitation to European and Asian powers to extend their influence into the Western Hemisphere, which is precisely what they did.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/06/19/the_monroe_doctrine_is_dying_941524.html
