Читать книгу Defenseless America - Hudson Maxim - Страница 15

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"If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject, because doctrines get inside of a man's own reason and betray him against himself."

William Graham Sumner, "War and Other Essays."

A doctrine is a creed, usually mandatory, framed by one person or set of persons, for the belief or conduct of another person or set of persons. A doctrine is not necessarily based upon principles of right, equity, justice, or even expediency.

Doctrines are directions written on the guide-boards of fanaticism. An exact truth is never proclaimed as a doctrine: there is no doctrine of mathematics.

The Monroe Doctrine, which pledged the United States to defend American republican institutions, north and south, against monarchical encroachments from the Old World, with the dependable support of England, was proclaimed in 1823, mainly in response to a Continental doctrine called the Holy Alliance, formed in 1815 by and between Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France. The Holy Alliance was in effect a system of mutual political monarchical insurance, under which the forces of the allied Powers could be used to subdue revolution against the institution of kingship.

The French Revolution, followed by the democratic empire of Napoleon, had severely shaken the old intolerant and intolerable order of things. The Holy Alliance was an expedient of the old order to insure itself against democratic institutions.

A revolution in Spain in 1820 was promptly suppressed by the Holy Alliance, and the Spanish people, who had raised their heads and begun to look around for freedom, were again bowed under the yoke of the detested Bourbons. The Holy Alliance was surely a most unholy alliance.

Russia, by a ukase in 1821, claimed the right to keep the vessels of all other Powers out of the North Pacific Ocean. That was a Russian "Monroe Doctrine" which helped to make Monroe a doctrinaire.

In 1823 Spain lost, through revolutions, all of her American possessions except Cuba and Porto Rico, and Portugal had lost Brazil. France had lost the island of Haiti.

The United States naturally sympathized with the newly-formed states built on the ruins of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. They had mostly adopted republican institutions, becoming sisters of the great northern republic.

James Monroe was not the father of the child named for him, for the actual formulator of the Monroe Doctrine was John Quincy Adams, at that time Secretary of State, who got the cue from George Canning.

England wanted unrestricted trade with the Spanish-American countries; she had no need of additional territory on the American continent, but she saw danger in its acquisition by other nations. George Canning tried four times in 1823 to get the United States to join England in her declaration of the open-door policy. Monroe favored the proposal, but finally Adams convinced the President that it would be better to avoid any entangling arrangement with England, and to stand alone.

On the second of December, 1823, in his annual message to Congress, President Monroe made the following declaration on behalf of the United States:

"The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers. … We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling, in any other manner, their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."

Such was the birth of the famous Monroe Doctrine. Its recognition by England made it effective. The Monroe Doctrine has nothing whatever to do with international law. It is simply an expression of British national policy for the United States.

Our diplomacy, being a branch of our politics, is often inconsistent with our national policy. American justification for the doctrine appears to have been mainly dependent upon the fact that we had no intentions of encroaching upon the spheres of influence of any of the nations of the Old World, but that we intended to safeguard what we conceived to be our legitimate sphere of influence.

The American Republic was very young when the Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed—a doctrine which, as one writer has said, is "the most magnificent bluff in all history, and so far the most successful."

During the American Civil War, France, with the connivance of England, conceived the plan of establishing in Mexico the empire of Maximilian. We were too busy at the time, settling some little differences of opinion within our family of states, to exact recognition of our protest. After the memorable exchange of compliments and courtesies between Grant and Lee at Appomattox, however, Uncle Sam indicated to Napoleon the Little that the Imperialists must be kicked out. Lacking the support of France, they were kicked out by the Mexicans.

While through the Monroe Doctrine the United States served notice on the nations of the Old World to keep hands off the American continent, the doctrine at the same time constituted an implied promise on our part to keep hands off any territory beyond the confines of America. So long as the policies of Great Britain did not run counter to our Monroe Doctrine, it was destined to be quite effective in preventing land-grabbing on the American continent by other European Powers. But the Monroe Doctrine possesses an innate dog-in-the-manger aspect, certain some day to bring trouble, for the great nations of the world have far outgrown the expectations of our forefathers; their commerce has become an inseparable part of the commerce of South American countries, and their interests in like measure have become identified with the interests of those countries. Just to the extent that their welfare and the welfare of the South American republics become mutual are they likely to be brought into collision with the Monroe Doctrine, and, when the collision comes, it means war, unless the United States abandons that doctrine.