The Monroe Doctrine is to some extent the major juridical basis for US policy in Latin America, and after decades of irrelevance has become important again in recent years, though it is essentially a unilateral declaration of what America intends to do, rather than a multilateral agreement about how nations on the American continent should collectively act. Announced by President Monroe in his State of the Union message to Congress in 1823, it states effectively that the USA will not allow interference in any country of the American continent by any European power, and that any such involvement will be regarded as a danger to the peace and security of the USA itself.
Originally intended to warn off the Holy Alliance powers (principally Austria, Prussia and Russia) from any attempt to help Spain regain control of its disintegrating South American empire, it was also directed against Tsarist Russia itself, which appeared to have colonial ambitions towards the Pacific coast of America. The doctrine was invoked on several occasions during the 19th century, and indeed expanded to mean that any vital interest of the USA anywhere on the continent could and would be protected. As US relations with most Latin American powers grew increasingly cordial during the 20th century the doctrine came to seem both less unilateral and more legalistic, with much of its meaning enshrined in inter-American treaties such as the Bogotaé Pact which set up the Organization of American States in 1948.
However, the increase in radical opposition to the right-wing and often corrupt governments of Latin America led, after the Second World War, to a situation in which the Soviet Union directly or otherwise came to confront the USA as they supported different sides in the civil wars. The doctrine was used to justify the 1962 American action in blockading Cuba to force Soviet withdrawal of missiles (see Cuban missile crisis), and to justify the intervention by US Marines in the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent the election of a communist government.
As the guerrilla campaigns against the traditional ruling classes, especially in Central America, grew, with increasing support from a Cuba more and more firmly in the Soviet camp, the importance of the Doctrine, and its clear nature as a declaration by the USA of what it would not tolerate, became more vital. Although there is no doubt that Cuban aid to left-wing movements in Latin America was both financed and encouraged by the Soviet Union, it remains true that the doctrine is actually being used to allow the USA to intervene in purely regional and national political and social disputes. The USA will not readily allow the establishment of any government of a communist nature anywhere in its hemisphere, whether or not this is actually the result of interference from a European power, and this is what the Monroe Doctrine has come to mean. In 1983 US forces intervened in Grenada after a coup threatened to place the island’s government even more firmly in the Cuban and Soviet camp, and aid was channelled to the Contra guerrillas fighting the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua through much of the 1980s.
Ironically the doctrine was also the first statement of American isolationism, and indeed part of the justification of the unilateral declaration of hegemony over the American continent was a promise not to intervene or have any interest in matters on the European continent. As the isolationist aspect of the doctrine has now completely disappeared with US membership of NATO, and its recent world leadership in United Nations activities, there is no good reason except realpolitik for other countries to accept their exclusion, even when invited to help a local state, from the southern half of the American continent. Effectively the Doctrine is an attempt to expand the rights of national sovereignty outside national boundaries, but in an age where national sovereignty itself is coming into question, any extension must be dubious.
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