Roosevelt Corollary

A political cartoonist's commentary on Roosevelt's "big stick" policy.

The Roosevelt Corollary was an extension of the Monroe Doctrine by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Roosevelt's extension of the Monroe Doctrine asserted a right of the United States to intervene to "stabilize" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts. The alternative, according to the U.S. assumptions, was intervention by European powers, especially Great Britain and France, which have loaned money to countries that were unable to repay. As with any high-risk investment, these loans were made fully aware of the financial difficulties these countries were going through, and were part of a broader campaign to gain economic control of nations with instable economies. The catalyst of the new policy was Britain's aggressiveness in the Venezuela Crisis of 1902-1903.

Overview

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.

Shift to the "Good Neighbor" policy 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).

In 1928, under President Calvin Coolidge, the Clark Memorandum stated that the U.S. did not have the right to intervene unless there was a threat by European powers, reversing the Roosevelt Corollary. 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.

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[s] 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 farther, 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, 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 as WWII 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
• Good Neighbor policy
• 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,Ill.: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