Jim's Mailings

Monroe Doctrine

Our recent past has involved us in several wars, this after a huge conflict called WWII. Just three years ago another was launched with the United States choosing to initiate the hostilities against a major middle eastern nation. I feel it is time to review America’s world relations, and for this I am consulting a volume from my library called ‘A Diplomatic History of the United States.’ I start in the middle of the first chapter to illustrate how our foreign policy began.
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The introductory review which has been the purpose of this chapter allows us to indulge in some general reflections instructive to the reader of the diplomatic history of the United States.
The first is that North America since its discovery had become increasingly the stakes of European diplomacy in the great contests for the world balance of power. The people who lived on this continent themselves had little to say about the wars which their European sovereigns fought with each other, even though those wars automatically involved colonial subjects of kings who ruled and battled across the ocean. The lack of comprehension which the English colonists, for example, had of the causes of these dreadful conflicts in which they were engaged despite themselves, is testified by the names which they gave to them: 'King William's War '(the War of the League of Augsburg), 'Queen Anne's War' (the War of the Spanish Succession), 'King George's War' (the War of the Austrian Succession), the 'French and Indian War' (which, in contradistinction to the other wars, having started in America, was more familiar to them). They accepted their participation in these wars with undisturbed equanimity. Like the rise and fall of the tides, the movement of the heavenly bodies, or the apparent passage of time itself, it seemed ineluctable. No one questioned this dispensation of fate.
As a matter of fact, this ineligible connection of English colonists with Britain's wars was not one of the causes of the American Revolution. It remained for a newly arrived English immigrant, Thomas Paine, who was reflecting the isolationist attitude of the English Whig opposition toward continental connections, to point out to the colonists that separation from British sovereignty meant also separation from Britain's wars. The conclusion was immediately irresistible. For over a century it was substantially correct. Colonial experience in being the stakes of European diplomacy, relief at the freedom from that condition which came with American independence, and determination to continue to enjoy it and to profit by it laid the foundation for that persistent policy of the United States which was crystallized in President Washington's Farewell Address and again enunciated in the Monroe Doctrine, public documents not devoid of phraseology resembling certain passages in Thomas Paine's famous pamphlet "Common Sense"?

Following the first several presidents, an explosion of revolution in colonial states in the Americas, created a large number of independent republics, (immediately recognized by the United States) while in Europe machinations between the great powers over their losses on these continents suggested to the latter, that alliances between several of them might result in favorable outcomes, which individually, the several nations couldn’t pull off. Great Britain, however, chose to oppose the Holy Alliance, which was allied with the restored France, and their foreign minister, George Canning, proposed a five point policy for discussion with the United States envoy Richard Rush. In less than a year, President Monroe, in a message to Congress dated 2 Dec 1823 took the following actions:
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Canning, with the force of the British navy behind him, in essence already had said this to Polignac (the French counterpart). President Monroe and his advisers now put it forward as an independent American policy rooted in the thought and action of the people and government of the United States and in its diplomatic experience.
In his original draft of the momentous message Monroe was in favor of coupling some statement of sympathy for the struggle of the republican Spaniards and Greeks against arbitrary government in Europe while pronouncing against any interference of Europe in the affairs of the new states of the American continents. Prudently this was pruned out, on Adams' advice. As given to the world, through the message of President Monroe to Congress of December 2, 1823, the Monroe Doctrine declared:
(1) It did not comport with the policy of the United States to take any part in the politics or the wars of European powers in matters relating to themselves.
(2) The United States would regard as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition to itself the effort of any European power to interfere with the political system of the American continents, or to acquire any new territory on these continents.
The Monroe Doctrine was a document rather of the future than of the time of its first utterance. Europe really paid little attention to it. Canning's ultimatum to France settled any possible danger of intervention in South America, and presently the European governments one after another (Great Britain first late in 1824 - Spain last in 1836) began to recognize the independence of the new states. South America applauded the Doctrine, and the pecuniary bonds of the new states rose a few points. But the new Latin-American states were not in 1823 "saved" by the pronouncement of the Doctrine.
The significance in 1823 of the Monroe Doctrine is that it served as a capstone to a very positive structure of American foreign policy that had been built up from a half-century of independent dealing with foreign nations. It proclaimed in strong Republican tone an American system for the New World.
From "A Diplomatic History of the United States" 1964
Samuel Flagg Bemis

The great liberator of South America, Simon Bolivar, was encouraged by the attitude of the United States envisioned by the Monroe Doctrine, and proposed a Conference of Panama, which was held in 1825, and which was a disaster. By 1923, a series of six Inter-American Conferences had been held, and a loosely formed Pan American Union was recognized, stemming from a newly international successful diplomatic effort by the United States after WWI.

At San Francisco, on 26 Jun 1846. all the American Republics became charter members of the United Nations. Acting under Article 51, nineteen of the Americas (except Nicaragua and Ecuador) met later in a special Inter-American Conference, which resulted in a long-last treaty, which they called the Pact of Rio, signed at the Brazilian capital 2 Sep 1947.

We quote again from Bemis: (page 784)

Thus the treaty left it to each of the signatories to determine what measures it would adopt pending decision as to future joint measures by a two-thirds majority of the ‘signatories’ which should have ‘ratified’ the Pact (i.e., 14 out of 21). No more could one state, like Argentina, paralyze joint and solid action.
How about another equally great danger not constituting immediate armed attack by another state: such as a communist revolution, like those which had occurred in Greece and China after the Second World War, inspired and abetted by an outside power? In that case the parties agree to meet immediately in special consultation and decide what to do.
The Pact of Rio of 1947 became a prototype for the North Atlantic Alliance of 1949 (except for the voting system).
Between 1938 and 1952 bilateral executive agreements were signed with all the Latin-American republics providing for the reception of United States advisory military, naval, or air missions. All these agree¬ments except those with Argentina and Cuba remained in force in 1964.
The most recent efforts in inter-American organization for peace and solidarity in the World of Columbus that this History can record, were the treaties signed at the Ninth International Conference of American States at Bogota in 1948 under tragic circumstances (an attempted revo¬lution in the capital of Colombia that caused considerable loss of life and great damage to the city).
First was a Charter for the Organization of American States, placing Pan Americanism at last on a treaty basis, within the framework of the United Nations. Under the Charter the old Pan-American Union at Washington is the central and permanent organ and general secretariat of the Organization. Its governing Council consists of a representative from each one of the member republics, who does not need to be the diplomatic representative of that government to the United States. The Director of the Union becomes Secretary General of the Organization, elected by the Council for a ten-year term, not re-eligible or to be suc¬ceeded by a person of the same nationality. The Charter specifies the nature and purposes of the Inter-American Organization; its principles; the fundamental rights and duties of states; the duty of pacific settle¬ment of international disputes; inter-American solidarity and collective security; economic, social, and cultural standards; elaborates on the organs and departments of the Organization and the Pan American Union; and provides rules for quinquennial meetings of the Inter-American Conferences as the "supreme organ" of the Organi¬zation. Article XL of the resolution known as the Final Act of Bogota provided that, pending ratification of the Charter by two-thirds of the signatories, the old organs of the Union of American Republics (popu¬larly known as the Pan American Union) should immediately adopt the nomenclature and provisions of the Charter, and that the new organs of the Charter should be established on a provisional basis. All this promptly took place in Washington.
Keystone of the Charter was Chapter V on Collective Security, with its two articles 24 and 25, repeating the pledges of the Pact of Rio de Janeiro of 1947 to cover not only "armed attack" but also "every act of aggression" or "any other fact or situation that might endanger the peace of America."2 Incorporated in the treaty was Article 15 denying the right of intervention not only to any ‘one’ State, as previously denied in 1933 and 1936, but to any ‘group’ of States for any reason whatever.
The Eisenhower Administration must have not been on board when this treaty was agreed upon, for just a few years later, the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, resorted to intervention which had been classic American policy toward her American neighbors. They regarded the overthrow of the elected leader of Guatemala by an armed force directed by agents of the United States as a victory. Later victories in Grenada and Panama will be recorded. These were signatories of the Pact of Rio!





From Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History, 1965 p.1098
President Truman burned his fingers trying to get rid of the highly unsavory dictator (Juan Peron) in powerful Argentina. During the Argentinian presidential election of 1945, the American ambassador Spruille Braden, a Yale graduate married to a Chilean lady, attempted to discredit Peron. But his efforts only served to re-elect the dictator, who lasted another ten years. Eisenhower (President Dwight D.) and Dulles (John Foster), however, helped pull off a successful revolt in 1954 against Jacobo Arbenz, dictator of Guatemala, who had allowed communists to control his government, and imported arms from Poland to support his power. Basing his policy on a resolution of the Organization of American States that "dominion or control of the political institutions of any American state by the international communist movement must be resisted," Dulles saw to it that Guatemalan exile groups obtained arms from the United States. They mounted an invasion, ousted Arbenz and set up a conservative, constitutional government. Among the communists who fled was an Argentine physician, Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, who later reappeared in Cuba as Fidel Castro's mentor. This indirect intervention by the United States provoked a frenzy of rage and agitation among students throughout the continent and was partly responsible for the disgraceful mobbing of Vice President and Mrs. Nixon when they visited Lima and Caracas in 1958. President Eisenhower threatened to send the marine corps into Venezuela if necessary, to get the Nixons out alive; but the Venezuelan government managed to protect its guests.
Eisenhower now adopted a policy of financial help to South America, in hope of exorcising the bitter hatred which the Nixon episode revealed. It took the form of increasing Latin America's slice of the foreign aid pie, setting up an Inter-American Development Bank with a capital of $1 billion to make loans repayable in local currencies rather than dollars, and an extended tour by Eisenhower himself, in 1960, of South America. "We are not saints," he said at Santiago de Chile, "but our heart is in the right place."
But the beloved if misunderstood "Ike" was not to leave office before having a new and apparently insoluble problem dumped on his back doorstep  Fidel Castro and communist Cuba. For years the "Pearl of the Antilles" had groaned under an unusually cruel, corrupt and ruthless dictator, Fulgencio Batista. He stopped at nothing  confiscation, blackmail, torture, murder  to stay in power; and the United States, warned by what had happened in Argentina, made no effort to oust him. In 1956 an able young revolutionary fanatic named Fidel Castro landed in Oriente Province with a tiny band of bearded guerrillas, increased his following, forced Batista to flee the country on New Year's Day 1959, entered Havana in triumph, and made himself dictator. Castro then enjoyed the support of most professional and bourgeois elements in his own country and in the United States. Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times, who had visited his camp in the mountains, played him up as a democratic liberator; and when Castro visited the United States in April 1959, he received thunderous ovations at the leading universities and was offered liberal foreign aid for schools and welfare by the state department. But Fidel had other ideas. Shrewdly estimating that his share of North American financial assistance would be small, and influenced by Guevara and his communist brother Raúl, he decided that it would be more profitable for Cuba to become the first American satellite to Russia, even at the risk of breaking off her subsidized sugar trade with the United States.

I wonder if the Pact of Rio carries any weight today with our other friends in America Sud? See below

From the Plain DEALER 21 Sep 2005
Gwynne Dyer
Chavez pitches a perfect game in propaganda series
It's all part of the long-running propaganda war between Washington and Caracas, of course, but President Hugo Chavez scored a major hit last week when he announced that a Venezuelan ship was nearing the United States with 300,000 barrels of gasoline to help the stricken Gulf Coast, where most oil-refining capacity was crippled by Hurricane Katrina.
Speaking in New York, where he was attending the United Nations World Summit, Chavez added that Louisiana Gov. Louise Blanco had accepted the shipment in a telephone conversation that morning, and that this was only the first installment of a promised million-barrel additional supply (not a gift).
uns was omy me
Chavez, who has publicly blamed President George W. Bush for bungling the relief effort, said that Venezuela also was ready to supply up to eight electricity generators and eight water purification plants. The Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum Corp. has pledged $1 million in aid and set up relief shelters for victims of the hurricane.
It's the propaganda opportunity of a lifetime for the radical Venezuelan leader, who regularly accuses the Bush administration of plotting to assassinate him and/or invade Venezuela, and he is not holding back.
No doubt ordinary Venezuelans, and probably Chavez himself, feel genuine sympathy for the stricken survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Who could not? But they also give Chavez the chance to send a message to his own voters and the citizens of other Caribbean and Central American countries. It is that the wicked capitalists who run the U.S. government don't even care about America's own poor people, especially if they are black, and that the only hope is for mutual help and solidarity among the poor themselves.
This has been Chavez's message for Venezuelans since he came to power seven years ago, and his immense popularity with the Venezuelan poor (almost half of the oil-rich country's 25 million people live below the poverty line) has been confirmed in half a dozen elections and referendums. His message is as much about racial justice as economic equality, for Chavez himself, like most poor Venezuelans, is of mixed African and native Indian ancestry, while the country's old elite is overwhelmingly white.
Surging oil prices have given Chavez the means to transfer this message to the international stage. It has been called "petro-medical" diplomacy, and its foundation is a close collaboration between Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. There are profound differences of generation and political style between Chavez's populist "Boliva-rian" democracy and Castro's Communist dictatorship, but their hostility to U.S. domination of the region and their commitment to the poor are the same. And they each bring one major asset to the table.
Cuba's is its remarkable and entirely free health-care system, which has one of the highest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world. Venezuela's is oil. The two countries had already done a swap in which Venezuela supplies Cuba with cut-price oil in return for the long-term loan of about 20,000 Cuban health workers (including 14,000 doctors) whose free clinics have been transforming health care in rural areas and in the desperate, stinking barrios that surround Venezuela's major cities, but soaring oil prices over the past year opened up new possibilities.
On June 29, Venezuela and 13 Caribbean countries signed the Petrocarbe Accord under which they
wlln pay only 60 percent of the market price of Venezuelan oil, with the rest converted into a low-interest, 25-year loan, whenever the oil price exceeds $50 a barrel. Other countries in Latin America will soon be signing similar agreements. And the message is always about the solidarity of the poor against the powerful, both domestically and internationally.
All this has attracted the anger of the current U.S. administration, which accuses Chavez of seeking to "destabilize" the region and is generally believed to have backed a , failed coup attempt against Chavez in 2002. So when television evangelist Pat Robertson, a former presidential hopeful and a friend of President Bush, called for Chavez's assassination on his Christian Broadcasting Network last month, Chavez responded not with invective but with a politically adroit show of concern for those Americans who live in conditions not entirely dissimilar to the Latin American poor.
He offered to sell Venezuelan heating oil directly at 40 percent below market price to 7 million or 8 million poor Americans.
"A large number of them die of cold in the winter," he explained.
He also offered free eye surgery to Americans without health-care coverage, although the surgery would almost certainly be done by Cuban doctors. (Castro has committed to providing 6 million free cataract operations for poor people from neighboring countries over the next 10 years.) It was intended to embarrass the United States, and it did.
The current play over aid for the Katrina victims is an extension of the same strategy. The hurricane's aftermath vividly demonstrated the Third World living conditions and social isolation of many of America's black poor to a global audience, and the Bush administration could not decently block Venezuelan aid for those people when it was accepting help from so many other countries. Game, set and match to Chavez.
Well, game and set, anyway. The match will continue for the indefinite future, unless Washington manages to overthrow Chavez one of these days. But he is certainly a competent player of the game.
Dyer is a London-based independent journalist.

posted by James E. Opfell @ 8:19 PM