Roosevelt Corollary

thumb|upright=1.2|Political cartoon depicting [[Theodore Roosevelt using the Monroe Doctrine to keep European powers out of the Dominican Republic.]]

In the history of United States foreign policy, the Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his 1904 State of the Union Address, largely as a consequence of the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903. The corollary states that the United States could intervene in the internal affairs of any Latin American country guilty of "chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society".

Background

The Roosevelt Corollary was articulated in the aftermath of the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903. In late 1902, Britain, Germany, and Italy imposed a naval blockade of several months against Venezuela after President Cipriano Castro refused to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by Europeans in a recent civil war. The dispute was referred to the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague, which concluded on 22 February 1904 that the blockading powers involved in the Venezuela crisis were entitled to preferential treatment in the payment of their claims. This left other countries which did not take military action, including the United States, with no recourse. The U.S. disagreed with the outcome in principle, and Roosevelt saw the need to take action politically. The corollary went towards ensuring that U.S. interests abroad were protected from, in future, European powers using this ruling at The Hague as justification for military action and/or occupation in Central and Latin America.

Even the long-existing concept of manifest destiny, which was commonly used during the expansion of the United States' western frontier, came into play to build the Roosevelt Corollary. Manifest destiny by the early 20th century had become an expression of American exceptionalism, whereby the U.S. had superior virtue and a duty to help 'lesser' states in their development. Therefore, the Roosevelt Corollary was largely shaped and created as a result of the ruling of the Venezuelan crisis, but there were still underlying and previously seen ideas and domestic mentalities that contributed to its form.

Content

The Roosevelt Corollary, or the ideas it contained regarding the U.S. becoming the policeman of the Western Hemisphere, were first articulated by Secretary of State Elihu Root in a speech on 20 May 1904 and expanded on in Roosevelt's annual message to Congress on 6 December 1904: Where the Monroe Doctrine had been asserted in the early 19th century when the European powers looked to recolonize in the Western Hemisphere, the Roosevelt Corollary nearly a century later looked to once again promote the U.S. in Latin America. By expanding on the Monroe Doctrine, rather than creating a whole new policy, Roosevelt was able to justify more easily the U.S. exercising "international police power" to put an end to wrongdoing in the Western Hemisphere, as a more limited version of the corollary already existed in the Monroe Doctrine, despite the shift from verbal to active intervention.

Use

Though the Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine, it could also be seen as a departure. While the Monroe Doctrine states that European countries should stay out of Latin America, the Roosevelt Corollary takes this further to say the United States had the right to exercise military force in Latin American countries to keep European countries out. Historian Walter LaFeber writes:

Dominican Republic

U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic is generally seen as the first true use of the Roosevelt Corollary. The case arose due to the San Domingo Improvement Company (SDIC), a New York company, taking over the Dominican Republic's finances in 1893. This brought the interests of the U.S. and Dominican Republic closer together, and so when in 1897, the SDIC defaulted on its payments to European bondholders, the Dominican Republic fell into economic disaster, leading to the U.S. calling for arbitration on the case. The arbitration established a payment schedule from the Dominican Republic to the SDIC, with the U.S. being able to collect the money from the Dominican Republic for the SDIC if it failed to pay, thereby expanding U.S. interests in the Dominican even further.

Other areas

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

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt further renounced interventionism and established his "Good Neighbor policy" that led to the annulment of the Platt Amendment by the Treaty of Relations with Cuba in 1934, and the negotiation of compensation for Mexico's nationalization of foreign-owned oil assets in 1938. Indeed, leaving unchallenged the emergence of dictatorships like that of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, and François Duvalier in Haiti were each considered to be "Frankenstein dictators" due to the mishandlings of the American occupations in the countries. In 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles invoked the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary at the Tenth Pan-American Conference in Caracas, denouncing the intervention of Soviet communism in Guatemala. This was used to justify Operation PBSuccess that deposed President Jacobo Árbenz and installed a military dictatorship under Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of military dictators in the country.

Historians' perspectives

Historians Cyrus Veeser and Matthias Maass present a positive view of the Roosevelt Corollary. Veeser sees it as a part of the transition into the progressive era of American politics, with Roosevelt working towards combining U.S. foreign policy goals with private economic activity abroad, as seen with the SDIC in the Dominican Republic.

There are obvious differences between the Monroe Doctrine, which focused on defense of the Americas, and the Roosevelt Corollary that asserted U.S. power and ensured they were able to advance their own goals for U.S. gain. Historian Serge Ricard of the University of Paris argues that these differences are significant and that the Roosevelt Corollary did not simply escalate the Monroe Doctrine. Rather, the Roosevelt Corollary was "an entirely new diplomatic tenet that epitomized his 'big stick' approach to foreign policy." Ricard continues that the Corollary shows the United States' righteous and paternalistic views towards Central and Latin America, which it used to justify its foreign interference and enforcement of economic principles that the U.S. deemed to be secure and right for such states.

In other words, while the Monroe Doctrine sought to bar entry to the European empires, the Roosevelt Corollary arguably indicated the United States' intention to take their place. It could also be pointed out how the corollary violates the principles of self-determination and sovereignty that are noted in the Declaration of Independence. Roosevelt was a figure who embodied many American values: he was a war hero, an individualist, and a man of the common people. Yet his decision to take action in Latin America contradicts with the ideas enshrined in international law, which became a target for criticism.

Citations

General 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. .
Meiertöns, Heiko (2010). The Doctrines of US Security Policy – An Evaluation under International Law, Cambridge University Press, .
Mitchell, Nancy. The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America (1999).
Mitchener, Kris James, and Marc Weidenmier. "Empire, public goods, and the Roosevelt Corollary", Journal of Economic History (2005) 64#5 pp. 658+
Rabe, Stephen G. "Theodore Roosevelt, the Panama Canal and the Roosevelt Corollary: Sphere of Influence Diplomacy", ch. 16 in Serge Ricard, ed., A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt (2011)
Ricard, Serge. "The Roosevelt Corollary". Presidential Studies 2006 36(1): 17–26. Fulltext: in Swetswise and Ingenta
Ricard, Serge. "Theodore Roosevelt: Imperialist or Global Strategist in the New Expansionist Age?" Diplomacy & Statecraft (2008) 19#3 pp. 639–657.
Sexton, Jay. The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (Macmillan, 2011.)