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Drastic Intervention. Monroe's successors not only upheld his doctrine—they extended it beyond the scope he originally gave to it. In 1845 James K. Polk declared, as the "settled policy" of the U.S., that "no future European colony or dominion shall with our consent be planted or established upon any part of the North American continent." Far broader was the Theodore Roosevelt extension of the Monroe Doctrine. Down through the 19th century, it was official U.S. policy that the Monroe Doctrine did not bar outside nations from using armed force against Latin American states to punish wrongs or to collect debts, as long as the attackers refrained from annexing territory or changing the form of government. But when Germany undertook a blockade of Venezuelan ports in 1902 to force the current dictator to pay claims due to German citizens, U.S. public opinion got so aroused that the Germans called off the blockade.
In 1904 Roosevelt sent two warships to Santo Domingo to dramatize the U.S. interest in settling a tense debt dispute between the island and France. Then T.R. enunciated what came to be called the Roosevelt Corollary, declaring that if a Latin American country defaults on debts or otherwise misbehaves, the U.S. is justified in intervening, "however reluctantly." in order to forestall European intervention.
Under the Roosevelt Corollary, the U.S.
intervened drastically in the internal affairs of several insolvent Caribbean republics. Three countries were actually occupied and ruled by the U.S. Marines for long stretches of time: the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924, Haiti from 1915 to 1934, and Nicaragua almost continually from 1912 to 1933.
"Yankee Imperialism." The Roosevelt Corollary doubtless prevented European interventions in the Caribbean. But it also did grave damage in U.S. relations with Latin America. Denunciations of "Yankee imperialism'' became oratorical routine for every aspiring Latin American politician.
Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy undertook to undo that damage.
F.D.R. recalled the Marines from Nicaragua and Haiti, toured Latin America, sipped toasts with Latin America's chiefs of state (many of them dictators who had seized office through military coups), preached the new doctrine of Pan-American amity. At the Pan-American Conference in Montevideo in 1933. the U.S. agreed to a resolution prohibiting the nations of the hemisphere from interfe~ing in each other's "internal or external concerns." In later years, the Latins drafted and the U.S. accepted even broader bans on intervention. The current version of the ban. adopted in 1948, declares: "No state or group of states has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in the internal or external affairs of another state." Despite all these U.S. efforts to placate its southern neighbors, and despite all the economic aid the U.S. has given to Latin American nations, there is still a residue of anti-U.S.
feeling. It shrinks year by year, but it remains strong enough that in many Latin American countries politicians have to be wary of openly taking pro-U.S. stands.
Policy of Nonaction. The Montevideo conference's ban on intervention in effect repealed the Roosevelt