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"Wrongdoing or Impotence." A year later, T.R. enunciated his "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine Bluntly, Teddy declared: "Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States however reluctantly ... to the exercise of an international police power " Teddy's was the Big Stick. In 1903 after the U.S. had kicked the Spaniards out of Cuba and supported Panama's revolt against Colombia because of Washington's interest in an isthmian canal, Roosevelt signed treaties with Cuba and Panama providing for U.S intervention to protect the fledgling republics' independence. But T.R.'s successors also invoked the corollary. In 1909 when Nicaragua erupted in chaos under the corrupt anti-American dictatorship of Jose Santos Zelaya, President Taft sent in troops, who occupied the Central American republic almost continually until 1933.
In 1915, after the ex-French colony of Haiti had deposed, blown up, poisoned or butchered six Presidents in four years, and with France already starting to land troops, U.S Marines moved in, ruled the Negro republic for 9 years. In 1916, after similarly bloody tumult in the Dominican Republic, marines intervened, stayed until 1924. In each case, the American intervention forces created local constabularies, collected customs and serviced the country's foreign debts.
The Organization. In 1933, announcing that the U.S. wanted to be a "good neighbor," President Franklin Roosevelt vowed that "the definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention." But during World War II, Roosevelt himself had to move urgently into Latin American internal affairs with economic, diplomatic and military pressure to counter Axis influence.
The Organization of American States was formed at Bogota in 1948 as a means, strongly urged by the U.S., of helping the hemisphere help itself. Among the many provisions of its charter was Article 15, stating: "No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state."