A group of distinguished persons from the North American continent gathered recently in the U.S. State Department Diplomatic Rooms to proclaim the lasting vitality and relevance of the Monroe Doctrine. It was an event of political, historical and social importance.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Herbert A. Blaize told how grateful his country is that Ronald Reagan used the Monroe Doctrine to liberate Grenada in 1983. Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica reinforced this gratitude; she was the one whose 3:00 a.m. telephone call, appealing for help for Grenada, was taken by President Reagan, who then moved immediately into action (without consulting Dan Rather or Sam Donaldson).
Secretary of State George Shultz told of the threat to the Monroe Doctrine posed by the Communist regime in Nicaragua, and he urged us to hold fast to the policy that bears Monroe’s name. Then he unveiled to the public a magnificent Rembrandt Peale portrait of James Monroe, which has been privately held until now by Monroe’s descendants.
“Monroe Doctrine” awards were presented to opinion makers whose words and actions support the continuing validity of the Monroe Doctrine. On hand to receive these awards were John R. Silber, Boston University president, for his article on “Central America and the War Powers Act” in the New Republic; Time Magazine for its cover story on the Monroe Doctrine on September 21, 1962; Armando Valladares, the Cuban who spent 22 years in Castro’s prisons, for his book Against All Hope; and the Chattanooga News Free Press for its editorial “Where Shall We Stop the Reds.”
The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed in President Monroe’s message to Congress in December 1823. It was a response to an attempt by Imperial Russia under Czar Alexander I to colonize our Pacific coast, from Alaska to San Francisco.
The essential part of the Monroe Doctrine is contained in these words: “The political system of the allied powers is essentially different from that of America. We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” The allied powers were defined as Russia and other European governments.
President Monroe’s courageous statement, made at a time when America had no standing army and only five sailing ships in our navy, was enthusiastically supported by Congress and the American people. His Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, advised: “There can, perhaps, be no better time for saying, frankly and explicitly, to the Russian government that the future peace of the world cannot be promoted by Russian settlements on any part of the American continent.”
The Monroe Doctrine was never limited to preventing territorial aggression. The key word is “system” — it prohibits extending the “system” of Russia or other European powers to the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine thus declared the fundamental difference between our republic and old world empires or dictatorships.
Before Soviet boss Nikita Khrushchev moved his offensive nuclear missiles into Cuba in 1962, he taunted us: “Now the remains of this Monroe Doctrine should best be buried, as every dead body is, so that it does not poison the air by its decay.” News of its death was premature, as Mark Twain would have said.
The support the American people gave to President John F. Kennedy for ANY means to remove those missiles is evidence that the Monroe Doctrine is not only part of our national heritage, it is part of our national honor. That’s the same reason why the American people supported President Reagan’s dramatic rescue of Grenada so overwhelmingly.
The mainspring for this unusual State Department event was the Honorable Helen Marie Taylor, current president of the 60-year-old James Monroe Memorial Foundation, and past U.S. delegate to the United Nations and also to UNESCO. She had the vision and the determination, the appreciation of history and the sense of drama, to bring together an unusual group of leaders in government, media, and scholarship to dramatize the current timeliness of the Monroe Doctrine.
James Monroe established a cornerstone of American foreign policy, and he planted it so firmly in our national consciousness that it still evokes an enthusiastic response from modern audiences. The posh audience at this recent State Department dinner applauded vigorously when reminded that a good model for support of the Contras in their fight to win back freedom in Nicaragua occurred in 1954 when President Dwight Eisenhower authorized American support of an anti-Communist force to overthrow a Communist regime in Guatemala.
