A few years shy of two centuries ago,a slave-holding president named Monroe
declared that no other power shall interfere
in the affairs of states of this Hemisphere.
His doctrine was not then deemed imperious
as his powers to enforce it were hardly serious:
The Royal Navy held primacy over the seas,
invaded the Falklands, did what they pleased.
It seems Monroe’s words were meant to constrain
not so much Britain but, rather, France and Spain
in their quest to retain their colonies. How ironic,
then, that the U.S. itself would grow Napoleonic.
Chileans and Argentines were rightly suspicious
of this “line in the sea” that was mostly fictitious.
And Dominicans felt the force of its text when
President Grant sought to use it to annex them.
The doctrine’s true gist would become well known
as Uncle Sam’s fist would land blow after blow on
unfriendly navies across faraway waters —
“Only in our sphere shall we not abide slaughter.”
Today, Monroe’s doctine of no interdiction
in American interests is in contradistinction
in American interests is in contradistinction
to how the U.S. conducts its own foreign policy,
adventurous wherever it damn well wants to be.
Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia,
Panama, Cuba, Chile and Grenada,
Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil,
involved in them all,
ignoring them still.
Doctrine indeed.
As inspired by Roy Fuller, English writer and poet, who lived from 1912 to 1991.
I wonder what Pres Monroe was really trying to signal with the Monroe Doctrine? Was it just “cheap talk,” as an economist might say?