Lux Lucet

1896 political cartoon depicting the Monroe Doctrine.

“In this administration, we’re not afraid to use the phrase ‘Monroe Doctrine.’ This [Venezuela] is a country in our hemisphere; it’s been the objective of presidents going back to Ronald Reagan to have a completely democratic hemisphere.”

    – White House national security adviser John Bolton

In at appearance earlier this month on CNN, national security adviser John Bolton expressed to host Jake Tapper the policy justification behind the Trump administration’s open attempt to overthrow Nicholas Maduro, the elected president of Venezuela, whom Bolton had earlier referred to in a Tweet as a “dictator.” Bolton based the argument for his and the administration’s stance on Maduro on the Monroe Doctrine, a historic foreign policy tenet of the United States dating back to the 1820’s.

Many Americans have a vague sense of the Monroe Doctrine, that it has something to do with the US keeping overseas powers out of the Western Hemisphere. There’s truth to this, of course. But is that all the Monroe Doctrine is about? Many think so. Interestingly, Bolton did not assert this aspect of the Monroe Doctrine, instead arguing that the Monroe Doctrine was about US presidents, going back to Ronald Reagan, ensuring that all nations in the Western Hemisphere have democratic governments.

On Friday, Bolton issued a statement concerning Russian military personnel in Venezuela that sounded more like a traditional understanding of the Monroe Doctrine. As Reuters reports, Bolton warned Russia about its military presence in Venezuela, saying the US would consider as a “direct threat” any attempt by Russia to establish or expand its military activities in that country.

No doubt, Russia’s military presence in Venezuela ups the ante in an already tense situation. Further, a European power’s entry into oil-rich, and therefore strategic, Venezuela certainly seems to be a challenge to Washington’s ability to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.

With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at the Monroe Doctrine to see if its current use by the Administration is in keeping with its actual terms.

The Monroe Doctrine, What is it?

Although the Monroe Doctrine was set forth by President James Monroe in 1823 in his annual message to Congress and takes its name from him, the statement was written largely by then Secretary of State, and later president, John Quincy Adams.

Encyclopedia Britannica summarizes the chief points of the Monroe Doctrine as follows:

1. The United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of or the wars between European powers;
   
2. the United States recognized and would not interfere with existing colonies and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere;
   
3. the Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization; and
   
4. any attempt by a European power to oppress or control any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States.
   

For many Americans, this author included, the most surprising thing about the original Monroe Doctrine is the first principle, the idea that the United States promised not to interfere in the affairs of European powers or the existing European colonies in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, the Monroe Doctrine set forth the idea that any attempt by a European power to control the newly independent nations of the Americas would be viewed as an act of aggression against the US, but there was also recognition that the US was to stay out of the affairs of Europe.

Put another way, the Monroe Doctrine held the US to the same standard as it did the powers of Europe. Put still another way, the Monroe Doctrine can be viewed as a diplomatic application of the principle of the Golden Rule, do you would be done by.

Millard Fillmore, 13th president of the United States.

The Golden Rule in Foreign Policy

During the 2012 Republican Presidential Primaries, a candidate debate was held in South Carolina. During that debate, then candidate Ron Paul answered a question about foreign policy by stating that maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy, and that we [the US] ought not to do to other nations what we would not want them to do to us.

What was the reaction of the heart-of-the-Bible-belt South Carolina Republican audience to this application of Christian doctrine to foreign policy? Did they stand up and cheer? No. Paul was soundly booed, as can be heard in this YouTube video.

While Paul’s invocation of the Golden Rule in a Presidential debate may have surprised many Americans, he was not the first American politician to make this connection.

Then President Millard Fillmore said much the same thing as Paul did in his 1850 State of the Union address to Congress. Said Fillmore, “The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us, and justice and conscience should form the rule of conduct between governments, instead of mere power, self interest, or the desire of aggrandizement.”

Worth noting is that the source of the Fillmore quote above is from an article in Foreign Policy deriding by Ron Paul and Millard Fillmore. Foreign Policy is a publication of the very prestigious and very globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). As globalists, it is not surprising that the CFR would take a dim view of a Golden Rule based foreign policy. If one wants to build a world government, he can’t be bothered with adhering to minor details such as the commands of Christ.

And yet in the more Christian 19th century, the Golden Rule was not an item of scorn among those in the American foreign policy establishment, as can be seen both in the terms of the Monroe Doctrine and in Fillmore’s excellent statement.

The Roosevelt Corollary

In his 1990 essay The Messianic Character of American Foreign Policy, John Robbins noted that the Spanish-American War of 1898 represented the first expression of America’s “messianic vision in foreign policy.” So just what constitutes this messianic vision? Robbins identified a number of characteristics:

1. Lack of deliberation before taking action
   
2. A sense of divine destiny
   
3. Seeking guidance in prayer, not the Bible
   
4. Conviction that one’s hunches have divine sanction
   
5. National pride
   
6. The protection of commercial, not national, interests
   
7. The inferiority of other peoples
   
8. The conviction that destiny, duty or fate mandates our interventions abroad
   

After President McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, his Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took over and continued McKinley’s foreign policy. As part of America’s newly aggressive foreign policy, Roosevelt modified the then eighty-one year old Monroe doctrine in 1904 with his “Big Stick” policy. This addition to the Monroe Doctrine is known as the Roosevelt Corollary and represents the contemporary understanding of this principle.

According to this article on the U.S. Department of State website, “The Roosevelt Corollary of December 1904 stated that the United States would intervene as a last resort to ensure that other nations in the Western Hemisphere fulfilled their obligations to international creditors, and did not violate the rights of the United States or invite ‘foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.’ ”

So what was the occasion for this new, more interventionist modification of the Monroe Doctrine? Interestingly, it was Roosevelt’s concern “that a crisis between Venezuela and its creditors could spark an invasion of that nation by European powers.”

In Roosevelt’s own words, the Roosevelt Corollary reads,

Chronic wrongdoing…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, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power (emphasis mine).

If you’ve wondered where the idea that the United States is the world’s policeman comes from, one could certainly point to this statement from Roosevelt as a source.

White House national security adviser John Bolton.

It’s About The Oil

Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler, twice a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, in retirement became a vocal anti-interventionist. In a 1933 speech, Butler described war as a racket which only a few insiders understood the true causes of. As John Robbins noted above, one of the changes that took place in American foreign policy during the McKinley administration was the orientation to protecting commercial, rather than national, interests.

Butler himself was a witness to this corporatist foreign policy and helped implement it. He described his service in the U.S. Marines thus,

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism….

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Echoing Roosevelt and other interventionists of the period, John Bolton – it’s remarkable how much John Bolton effects an appearance like that of Teddy Roosevelt, what with his mustache and glasses – went on Fox New in January 2019 and, in so many words, openly admitted that US intervention in Venezuela is largely about the country’s oil reserves, said to be the largest proven reserves in the world. Said Bolton,

We’re in conversation with major American companies now. I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here…It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.

John Bolton, and his accomplices in overthrowing the government of Venezuela Mike Pence and convicted felon Elliott Abrams, are doing nothing new. They’re simply running the same playbook that Washington has run for the past 120 years.

They Won’t Stop With Just Venezuela

In case you were wondering, Bolton and company have no intention of stopping their program of regime change with just Venezuela. In a November 2018, Bolton gave his Troika of Tyranny speech, in which he announced his plans for overthrowing the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua as well.

The Washington Post quotes Bolton saying, “This Troika of Tyranny, this triangle of terror stretching from Havana to Caracas to Managua, is the cause of immense human suffering…The United States looks forward to watching each corner of the triangle fall….The Troika will crumble.”

Apparently ignorant of what the word “temporary” means, Hondurans march to remain in the United States on Temporary Protected Status, which was granted to them in 1999 as a result of Hurricane Mitch.  Credit: Shawn Thew/EPA via CNS.

Implications for Immigration

It’s sometimes forgotten that the immigration crisis n Europe is largely the result of US imperial wars of choice in Syria and Libya. Millions of Syrians fleeing that country’s civil war, with the rebels largely being supported by the US, flooded Europe. Likewise, NATO’s – NATO is really another name for the US – 2011 destruction of Muammar Gaddafi’s government opened the door to mass migration from Africa into Europe as well.

In light of what’s happened to Europe and what is already happening with the flood of Central American migrants into the US, it’s worth asking what effect on migration more imperial wars of choice against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and perhaps other nations will have. Will American attempts ate regime change result in a flood of refugees from the affected nations into the US? The possibility cannot be ignored. Were that to happen, it would be impossible for the US to turn these people away, seeing that it was US aggression that created the situation in the first place.

That the current situation in Venezuela and possibly other countries could result in a flood of refugees into the US, consider this article from the Miami Herald, the headline of which reads “Special envoy Elliott Abrams says TPS for Venezuelans is ‘under review.’ ” TPS is short for Temporary Protected Status, which is a designation given by the Secretary of Homeland Security to a foreign country “due to conditions in that country that temporarily prevent the country’s nations from returning safely.” In short, it’s a refugee program of sorts.

But the “temporary” aspect of the program is largely in name only. This can be seen from the fact that there are still 57,000 Hondurans in the United States as a result of the damage inflicted on that country by Hurricane Mitch in, wait for it, 1998. If the US federal government can’t see fit to remove these people over twenty years after a hurricane, is there any reason to expect that they will remove those individuals given TPS as a result of US wars of choice?

A Choice To Make

Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election by running on a platform of America First, meaning, among other things, getting control of immigration and ending foreign wars.

For all that, little has been done to date to stanch the flow of illegal migrants into the US, while at the same time the Administration, using Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, is pursuing a foreign policy of aggression in Central and South American that very likely will result in a major influx of refugees from that region to the US.

In the opinion of this author, it’s hard not to see the Administration’s current policy toward Venezuela as a betrayal of the very principles that won Trump the White House.

America has a choice to make, We can fight foreign wars of aggression to further the corporate interests, or we can pursue a policy of treating others as we would like to be treated and stay out of the internal affairs of foreign nations.

Nothing in this article should be construed as support for Nicholas Maduro, who’s socialist policies are inconsistent with what the Bible teaches about economics and politics.

That said, Maduro is Venezuela’s problem, not John Bolton’s, not the American people’s. And whether Maduro continues as president or is removed, that is a matter for the Venezuelan people to decide.