“The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” then-Secretary of State John Kerry told the Organization of American States in 2013. It was, like many foreign-policy declarations of the Obama years, gloriously optimistic and utterly wrong.
President James Monroe’s declaration in 1823 that the U.S. would not permit the establishment of hostile powers in the Western Hemisphere has become the most famous idea in American foreign policy. The so-called Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 adds that if other nations in the Western Hemisphere default on their international obligations or endanger their neighbors through misgovernance, the U.S. has a “police power” to intervene.
A 1912 painting of the birth of the Monroe Doctrine showing, left to right, John Quincy Adams, William Harris Crawford, William Wirt, President James Monroe, John Caldwell Calhoun, Daniel D. Tompkins and John McLean.
A 1912 painting of the birth of the Monroe Doctrine showing, left to right, John Quincy Adams, William Harris Crawford, William Wirt, President James Monroe, John Caldwell Calhoun, Daniel D. Tompkins and John McLean. Photo: Getty Images
Monroe’s original doctrine and Roosevelt’s extension have never been popular in Latin America, but U.S. presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Bill Clinton have taken an activist role in the region when they saw fit.
Latin America policy has set off one firestorm after another in U.S. politics, especially during the Cold War. Notable examples include the Eisenhower-backed coup in Guatemala; the Kennedy administration’s Bay of Pigs fiasco; President Lyndon Johnson’s deployment of troops to the Dominican Republic; the Nixon administration’s opposition to Chile’s Marxist government ahead of the 1973 coup; and President Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal.
Yet after the Cold War it seemed that U.S.-Latin American relations could relax. The fall of the Soviet Union reduced American concerns about Latin American leftism. Radical governments took power in countries like Ecuador, Bolivia and even Venezuela, but this didn’t prompt a vigorous American response.
Meanwhile, some Latin American nations—most notably the regional giants of Mexico and Brazil—seemed to be completing a swift transition to modern democracy and stable growth. When Mr. Kerry proclaimed the death of the Monroe Doctrine in 2013, he did so on the belief that the U.S. not only faced no great-power competition in the region, but that the leading Latin American states had achieved such stability and prosperity as to make “policing” concerns obsolete.
The situation looks less rosy now. The main problem isn’t Washington’s Cold War nightmare of a triumphant Latin left spreading communism in the Western Hemisphere. It’s precisely the opposite: The implosion of Venezuela’s leftist government is driving a regional crisis. As waves of refugees flee the socialist utopia, bad actors ranging from Vladimir Putin to Hezbollah are nosing around in the ruins of the Bolivarian republic. This weekend’s alleged assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is a harbinger of more violence to come.
In better times, Venezuela’s oil wealth allowed it to lavish aid on its neighbors. Now that aid is drying up. Choices are narrowing for countries like Nicaragua, where near-civil-war conditions exist, and Cuba. Farther north in Guatemala, where some of the world’s highest homicide rates coincide with severe food shortages, asylum seekers stream toward the U.S. Washington can’t ignore so much instability so close to home.
