Why the Monroe Doctrine, meant for Europe, still echoes in Venezuela — and once in India

When Jay Saxton, Professor of History at the University of Missouri, worked on the Monroe Doctrine over a decade ago, it was, he recalls, “a dead letter.” However, the recent invocation of the doctrine by President Donald Trump following his capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has given Saxton his “five minutes of fame,” he says, laughing, during an interview with indianexpress.com.

The two-century-old doctrine has its origins in the autumn of 1823, when President James Monroe convened his cabinet to deliberate on how to respond to what was perceived as a national security crisis. In his book The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (2011), Saxton notes: “The Monroe administration feared that European powers were seeking to recolonize the newly independent states of Spanish America, an act that might endanger the United States itself. The cabinet’s deliberations resulted in Monroe’s December 2 message to Congress, the textual basis of what later became the ‘Monroe Doctrine.’”

In that message, the President declared that the Western Hemisphere was no longer open to European colonisation or intervention, actions the United States would deem a threat to its security. The doctrine has since assumed a central place in the American foreign policy psyche. Its meaning, purpose, and application, however, have been reshaped repeatedly by successive political regimes.

Alex Bryne, lecturer in History at De Montfort University, says his initial response to the Trump administration’s recent invocation of the doctrine was one of confusion. “As a scholar of the Monroe Doctrine, the President’s invocation of the doctrine does not seem to be particularly relevant to the US invasion of Venezuela. There is no external, non-American threat that the United States is seeking to combat in Venezuela. It was a Venezuelan leader who was deemed to be a threat, so the US disregarded Venezuela’s sovereignty on the basis of national interest alone…” he tells indianexpress.com in an email interview.

The confusion is shared by academics and experts across the globe. What is the Monroe Doctrine? What was the geopolitical context at the time of its drafting, how has its meaning evolved, and what are its absurdities?