"In a cogent study, [Smith] explains how the U.S. molded the U.N. Charter to bar the U.N. from political involvement in the West." - Publishers Weekly When President Monroe issued his 1823 doctrine on U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere, it quickly became as sacred to Americans as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But in the years after World War II - notably in Guatemala in 1954, in Brazil in 1963, in Chile in 1973, and in El Salvador in the 1980s - our government's policy of supporting repressive regimes in Central and South America hastened the death of the very doctrine that had been invoked to protect us in the Cold War, by associating its application with torture squads, murder, and the denial of the very democratic ideals the Monroe Doctrine was intended to protect. Gaddis Smith's measured but devastating account, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, is essential reading for all those who care how the United States behaves in the world arena.

A Concise History of the (In)Famous Doctrine that Gave Rise to the American Empire President James Monroe's 1823 message to Congress declaring opposition to European colonization in the Western Hemisphere became the cornerstone of nineteenth-century American statecraft. Monroe's message proclaimed anticolonial principles, yet it rapidly became the myth and means for subsequent generations of politicians to pursue expansionist foreign policies. Time and again, debates on the key issues of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foreign relations—expansion in the 1840s, Civil War diplomacy, the imperialism of 1898, entrance into World War I, and the establishment of the League of Nations—were framed in relation to the Monroe Doctrine. Covering more than a century of history, this engaging book explores the varying conceptions of the doctrine as its meaning evolved in relation to the needs of an expanding American empire. In Jay Sexton's adroit hands, the Monroe Doctrine provides a new lens from which to view the paradox at the center of American diplomatic history: the nation's interdependent traditions of anticolonialism and imperialism.

In 1823, President James Monroe expressed his opinion to Congress that European powers should not be permitted to interfere in the affairs of the sovereign states of the Americas. However, the United States did not follow the terms of its own policy. This work is suitable for students seeking to learn about the specific details behind this policy.