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The Roosevelt Corollary is a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that was articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address in 1904. The corollary states that the United States will intervene in conflicts between European Nations and Latin American countries to enforce legitimate claims of the European powers, rather than having the Europeans press their claims directly.

Content of Corollary

Roosevelt's December 1904 annual message to Congress declared

All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and 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 such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

While the Monroe Doctrine had warned European powers to keep their hands off countries in the Americas, President Roosevelt was now saying that "since the United States would not permit the European powers to lay their hands on, he had an obligation to do so himself. In short, he would intervene to keep them from intervening."

Use of the Corollary

The Roosevelt Corollary was supposed to be an addition to the Monroe Doctrine, however, it could be seen as a departure. While the Monroe Doctrine said European countries should stay out of Latin America, the Roosevelt Corollary took this further to say that the United States had the right to exercise military force in Latin American countries in order to keep European countries out. Historian Walter LaFeber wrote

essentially turns the Monroe Doctrine on its head and says the Europeans should stay out, but the United States has the right, under the doctrine, to go in in order to exercise police power to keep the Europeans out. It's a very neat twist on the Monroe Doctrine, and, of course, it becomes very, very important because over the next 15 to 20 years, the United States will move into Latin America about a dozen times with military force, to the point where the United States Marines become known in the area as "State Department troops" because they are always moving in to protect State Department interests and State Department policy in the Caribbean. So what Roosevelt does here, by redefining the Monroe Doctrine, turns out to be very historic, and it leads the United States into a period of confrontation with peoples in the Caribbean and Central America, that was a really important part of American imperialism.

U.S. Presidents cited the Roosevelt Corollary as justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba (1906–1909), Nicaragua (1909–1910, 1912–1925 and 1926–1933), Haiti (1915–1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916–1924).

Shift to the "Good Neighbor" policy

In 1928, under President Calvin Coolidge, the Clark Memorandum stated that the U.S. did not have the right to intervene when there was a threat by European powers, reversing the Roosevelt Corollary. Herbert Hoover also helped move the U.S. away from the imperialist tendencies of the Roosevelt Corollary by going on good-will tours, withdrawing troops from Nicaragua and Haiti, and generally abstaining from intervening in the internal affairs of neighboring countries. In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt further renounced interventionism and established his "Good Neighbor Policy", leaving unchallenged the emergence of dictatorships like that of Batista in Cuba or Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Three highly oppressive dictators-Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, and Haitian dictator François Duvalier- were each considered to be "frankenstein dictators" due to the mishandlings of the American occupations in the countries.

Criticism

The argument made by Mitchener and Weidenmier (2006) in support of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine has been criticized on the grounds that it "represent the one-sided approach that some scholars bring to the study of imperialistic and hegemonic interventions and also highlight how arguments for the general utility of imperialism are increasingly made and accepted." Christopher Coyne and Stephen Davies, in their article "Nineteen Public Bads of Empire, Nation Building, and the Like", argue that a foreign policy modeled on the Roosevelt Corollary leads to negative consequences both in national security terms and in terms of its effect on domestic politics.

Critics, such as Noam Chomsky, have argued that the Roosevelt Corollary was merely a more explicit imperialist threat, building on the Monroe Doctrine, and indicating that the U.S. would intervene not only in defense of South American states in the face of European imperialism, but would also use its muscle to obtain concessions and privileges for American corporations.

Serge Ricard of the University of Paris goes even further, stating that the Roosevelt Corollary was not merely an addendum to the earlier Monroe Doctrine, through which the U.S. pledged to protect the Americas from European imperialist interventions. Rather, the Roosevelt Corollary was "an entirely new diplomatic tenet which epitomized his 'big stick' approach to foreign policy". In other words, while the Monroe Doctrine sought to bar entry to the European empires, the Roosevelt Corollary announced America's intention to take their place.

A recently published book, The Imperial Cruise: The Secret History of Empire and War, documents that in 1905 Roosevelt imagined that his "international police powers" extended to North Asia. Unable to use American force in North Asia, Roosevelt believed that Japanese expansionism into the area would further U.S. interests. In July 1905 Roosevelt secretly agreed a "Japanese Monroe Doctrine for Asia."" that allowed the takeover of Korea by Japan. With this secret and unconstitutional maneuver, Roosevelt inadvertently ignited the problem (Japanese expansionism in Asia) that Franklin Delano Roosevelt would later confront during World War II in Asia. The New York Times wrote, "The Imperial Cruise is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt's presidency."

See also

• History of the United States (1865-1918)
• Overseas expansion of the United States
• The New Imperialism series
  • Origins of New Imperialism
• Dollar Diplomacy
• Big Stick ideology
• Drago Doctrine

Bibliography

• Coyne, C.J., Davies, S. (2007). "Empire: Public Goods and Bads". Econ Journal Watch, 4(1), 3-45.
• Glickman, Robert Jay. Norteamérica vis-à-vis Hispanoamérica: ¿opposición o asociación? Toronto: Canadian Academy of the Arts, 2005. ISBN 0-921907-09-5.
• Meiertöns, Heiko (2010) The Doctrines of US Security Policy - An Evaluation under International Law, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-76648-7.
• Mellander, Gustavo A. (1971) The United States in Panamanian Politics: The Intriguing Formative Years. Daville, Illinois: Interstate Publishers. OCLC 138568.
• Mellander, Gustavo A. ; Nelly Maldonado Mellander (1999). Charles Edward Magoon: The Panama Years. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial Plaza Mayor. ISBN 1-56328-155-4. OCLC 42970390.
• Nancy Mitchell. The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America (1999),
• Ricard, Serge. "The Roosevelt Corollary." Presidential Studies 2006 36(1): 17-26. ISSN: 0360-4918 Fulltext: in Swetswise and Ingenta

References

1. Bailey, Thomas Andrew. "Roosevelt Launches a Corollary." The American Spirit: Since 1865. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 198. Print.
2. Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President. Prod. David Grubin. By David Grubin and Geoffrey C. Ward. Perf. Walter LaFeber. David Grubin Productions, Inc., 1996. Transcript
3. Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: a Concise History of the American People. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 596. Print.
4. ^ Bailey, Thomas Andrew. "A Latin American Protests (1943)." The American Spirit: Since 1865. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 199. Print.
5. Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: a Concise History of the American People. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 706. Print.
6. ^ American foreign relations: a history. Since 1895, Volume 2, 7th Edition, Wadsworth, pg. 162-168, 2010
7. Kris James Mitchener & Marc D. Weidenmier, 2005. "Supersanctions and Sovereign Debt Repayment", NBER Working Papers 11472, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
8. Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004
9. Ricard, Serge. "The Roosevelt Corollary". Presidential Studies Quarterly 36 (2006) 17-26
10. ^ The Imperial Cruise: The Secret History of Empire and War. Little, Brown, & Co., 2009. ISBN 0-316-00895-8
11. North Asia—includes Northern China, Siberian Russia, Korea and Japan. In Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, London and Washington were players in North Asia. North Asia—includes Northern China, Siberian Russia, Korea and Japan. In Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, London and Washington were players in North Asia.
12. Japanese Monroe Doctrine for Asia http://en.wikipedia.org/Japanese_Monroe_Doctrine_for_Asia
13. The Constitution requires presidents to submit treaties to the Senate for approval. Through his Secretary of War William Howard Taft, Roosevelt agreed a secret treaty with Japanese Prime Minister Katsura in 1905.
14. "The Queasy Side of Theodore Roosevelt's Diplomatic Voyage", by Janet Maslin, Nov. 18, 2009.

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