The nonintervention principle at the heart of the Monroe Doctrine bolstered the independence of fledgling Latin American republics and ensured trade would continue among them, the U.S. and European nations.
Between 1810 and 1822, there were 15 Latin American countries that declared independence from Spain. The U.S. had already been the first to recognize the nations of Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, among others, and now Monroe’s speech drew a line signaling that the U.S. saw the Western Hemisphere as a separate political sphere where European powers were no longer welcome. In another boost to their sovereignty, President Monroe began sending diplomats to these new republics in early 1824.
Later that year, South America’s Simón Bolívar began rallying the Americas to gather for the Congress of Panama, where they could discuss formally expanding on Monroe’s address. “The object of the South American states in convening this body at Panama was primarily to form an offensive and defensive alliance of all American nations in the war then being waged against Spain by her quondam colonies,” explained a 1907 Michigan Law Review article.
The diplomatic conference also aimed to discuss “the manner in which all colonization of European powers on the American continent shall be resisted.” President John Quincy Adams, who had helped shape the Monroe Doctrine as secretary of state, tried to get buy-in from Congress, but the legislature was conflicted. The 1826 Congress of Panama proceeded without direct American involvement and did not result in a cross-continental pact.
The trade protection that resulted from Monroe’s policy was thanks to Britain’s world-class navy acting as an informal enforcer. “We have this confluence of interests between the United States and Great Britain,” explains Allan Stam, a political scientist and professor of public policy and politics at the University of Virginia. At the time, Britain had territorial control over Canada and several Caribbean regions, booming trade in Latin America and no interest in seeing Spain rebuild its empire. “So what looks like Great Britain enforcing [the Monroe Doctrine] for the United States is really Great Britain enforcing its interests,” Stam adds.
How has the Monroe Doctrine evolved?
“In the big picture,” Stam says, “the Monroe Doctrine is like a Rorschach for presidencies.” Various administrations have interpreted it differently.
President James K. Polk stretched Monroe’s message in the 1840s, using it to support U.S. expansion, or Manifest Destiny, across the North American continent. Latin American nations saw these land acquisitions “as high-handed applications of the Monroe Doctrine in the interests of the ambitions of the United States,” according to a 1926 article in the journal Social Science. Whereas many Latin Americans had previously welcomed Monroe’s policy, such actions began to stir criticism of it.
The outcome of the Spanish‑American War in 1898 marked another turning point. With new overseas territories and a modern navy, the U.S. had the power to act on Monroe’s original idea as never before. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt issued the Roosevelt Corollary, claiming the U.S. had the right to act as the hemisphere’s “international police power.” Under the corollary, later U.S. presidents sent troops to the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico and Haiti—moves Stam describes as the United States becoming “de facto imperialists.”
During the Cold War, the doctrine became tied to containing communism, as in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. President John F. Kennedy argued that Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba violated the doctrine’s core principle that outside powers should not establish a military foothold in the Western Hemisphere.
How have recent administrations used the Monroe Doctrine?
In 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry publicly distanced the U.S. from the policy. “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” he said. “The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It’s about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.”
However, in 2026, President Donald Trump invoked the Monroe Doctrine—calling it the “Donroe Doctrine”—to justify a mission to arrest and extradite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on drug trafficking charges.
