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. The corollary states that the United States could intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries if they committed flagrant and chronic wrongdoings.

Roosevelt tied his policy to the Monroe Doctrine, and it was also consistent with his foreign policy included in his Big Stick Diplomacy. Roosevelt stated that in keeping with the Monroe Doctrine, the United States was justified in exercising "international police power" to put an end to chronic unrest or wrongdoing in the Western Hemisphere. President Herbert Hoover in 1930 endorsed the Clark Memorandum that repudiated the Roosevelt Corollary in favor of what was later called the Good Neighbor policy.

Background

The Roosevelt Corollary was articulated in the aftermath of the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903. In late 1902, Britain, Germany, and Italy imposed a naval blockade of several months against Venezuela after President Cipriano Castro refused to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European people in a recent Venezuelan civil war.Maass, Matthias (2009), ''Catalyst for the Roosevelt Corollary: Arbitrating the 1902–1903 Venezuela Crisis and Its Impact on the Development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine'', ''Diplomacy & Statecraft'', Volume 20, Issue 3, p383-402 The dispute was referred to an international court for arbitration, which concluded on 22 February 1904 that the blockading powers involved in the Venezuela crisis were entitled to preferential treatment in the payment of their claims. This left a number of other countries which did not take military action, including the United States, with no recourse. The U.S. disagreed with the outcome in principle, and feared it would encourage future European intervention to gain such advantage. To preclude European intervention, in December the Roosevelt Corollary asserted a right of the United States to intervene in order to "stabilize" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts..

Content of Corollary

Roosevelt's annual message on 6 December 1904, to Congress declared:

While the Monroe Doctrine had warned European powers to keep their hands off countries in the Americas, President Roosevelt was now saying that "since the United States would not permit the European powers to lay their hands on, he had an obligation to do so himself."

Use

Though the Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine, it could also be seen as a departure. While the Monroe Doctrine said European countries should stay out of Latin America, the Roosevelt Corollary took this further to say the United States had the right to exercise military force in Latin American countries to keep European countries out. Historian Walter LaFeber wrote:

Roosevelt first used the Corollary to act in the Dominican Republic in 1904, which at the time was severely indebted and becoming a failed state. The United States dispatched two warships and demanded the customs house be turned over to U.S. negotiators, who then used a percentage of the proceeds to pay foreign creditors. This model—in which United States advisors worked to stabilize Latin American nations through temporary protectorates, staving off European action—became known as " dollar diplomacy". The Dominican experiment, like most other "dollar diplomacy" arrangements, proved temporary and untenable, and the United States launched a larger military intervention in 1916 that lasted to 1924.

U.S. Presidents also cited the Roosevelt Corollary as justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba (1906–1909), Nicaragua (1909–1910, 1912–1925 and 1926–1933),Bailey, Thomas Andrew. "A Latin American Protests (1943)." ''The American Spirit: Since 1865''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 199. Print. Haiti (1915–1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916–1924).

Shift to the "Good Neighbor" policy

In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge issued the Clark Memorandum, often seen as a partial repudiation of the Roosevelt Corollary, which stated that the US did not have the right to intervene when there was a threat by European powers. Herbert Hoover also helped to move the US away from the imperialist tendencies of the Roosevelt Corollary by going on good-will tours, withdrawing troops from Nicaragua and Haiti, and abstaining from intervening in the internal affairs of neighboring countries.

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt further renounced interventionism and established his " Good Neighbor policy" that led to the annulment of the Platt Amendment

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