Next year, in 2023, there is the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine. U.S. President James Monroe, influenced by his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, made a unilateral declaration to Congress in 1823. Many Latin American countries had gained independence from Spain or Portugal. The Russian tsar had also recently claimed sovereignty over an area stretching from Alaska to Oregon. Monroe said that the United States would not intervene in European affairs, and that any European attempt to colonise a nation in the western hemisphere would be viewed as an act of aggression against America. It was the starkest expression of American hegemony in the region to that point, but for years the Monroe Doctrine was more optimistic than realistic. Later known as the Monroe Doctrine, this policy principle would become a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for generations. In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt claimed the U.S. government’s right to intervene in Latin American countries. During the cold war, the Monroe Doctrine was used as a broader justification for protecting America’s national interests in its “backyard”. Though the importance of the Monroe Doctrine has faded since the end of the cold war, John Bolton, the United States national security adviser of President Donald Trump, claimed in a speech in 2019 that the “Monroe doctrine is alive and well”. The course will review the Monroe Doctrine against a background of United States foreign policy in the last 200 years. The students will become familiar with the territorial expansion of the United States as well as an expanded role for the United States in the Americas and in the World until present times.

Semester: SoSe 2022