The Clark Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine or Clark Memorandum, written on December 17, 1928 by Calvin Coolidge's

undersecretary of state Undersecretary (or under secretary) is a title for a person who works for and has a lower rank than a secretary (person in charge). It is used in the executive branch of government, with different meanings in different political systems, and is a ...

J. Reuben Clark, concerned the United States' use of military force to intervene in

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

n nations. This memorandum was a secret until it was officially released in 1930 by the

Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...

administration. The Clark memorandum rejected the view that the

Roosevelt Corollary In the history of United States foreign policy, the Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903. ...

was based on the

Monroe Doctrine The Monroe Doctrine was a United States foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act ...

. However, it was not a complete repudiation of the Roosevelt Corollary but was rather a statement that any intervention by the U.S. was not sanctioned by the Monroe Doctrine but rather was the right of America as a state. This separated the Roosevelt Corollary from the Monroe Doctrine by noting that the Monroe Doctrine only applied to situations involving European countries. One main point in the Clark Memorandum was to note that the Monroe Doctrine was based on conflicts of interest only between the United States and European nations, rather than between the United States and Latin American nations. Historian Gene Sessions says the memorandum said the Monroe Doctrine did not explicitly renounce rights of intervention in Latin America (as often stated). It had little if any influence on the development evolution of US Latin American policy.

Conditions and details

During the late 1920s, a number of American foreign policy leaders started to argue for a softer tone in US relations with Latin American nations, which had been chafing under decades of intervention by the United States. Under secretary of State, and later Ambassador to Mexico, J. Reuben Clark (1871–1961) held these conciliatory views and completed work on the 236-page Memorandum late in the Coolidge administration. Clark argued the following: *Every nation, including the United States, has the right of "self-preservation". *The principle of self-preservation underlies the Monroe Doctrine. *The United States alone makes the decision about when to intervene on behalf of Latin American nations. *The Monroe Doctrine was not concerned with the relationship between the United States and other nations in the Americas, except when European interference in those nations threatened the security of the United States. *The Doctrine relates to the relationship of the United States and Latin America on one side versus Europe on the other side, not of the United States on one side versus Latin America on the other side. *The primary purpose of the Doctrine was to protect Latin American nations from intervention by European powers, not to victimize or oppress Latin American nations. *The Roosevelt Corollary was not part of the Monroe Doctrine. *The application of the Monroe Doctrine by the United States was beneficial to Latin American states. While sometimes regarded as an outright repudiation of the Roosevelt Corollary, Clark was simply advancing his belief that the corollary was separate from the Monroe Doctrine and that American intervention in Latin America, when necessary, was sanctioned by U.S. rights as a sovereign nation, not by the Monroe Doctrine. Clark's views were not made public until March 1930 during the Hoover administration, when Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson was guiding American diplomacy toward the beginning of a

Good Neighbor Policy The Good Neighbor policy ( ) was the foreign policy of the administration of United States President Franklin Roosevelt towards Latin America. Although the policy was implemented by the Roosevelt administration, President Woodrow Wilson had prev ...

with its Latin American neighbors.Clark Memorandum
/ref> The memorandum also used the term " national security" in its first known usage.

Conditions and details

References

Further reading