Scrap The Monroe Doctrine? What Is John Kerry Thinking? -- IBD Editorial

Secretary of State John Kerry just scrapped 190 years of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, casually declaring the Monroe Doctrine is over.Why didn't he just ring the dinner triangle for Russia, China, Iran and their terrorist catspaws to set up shop, too?

"President James Monroe," Kerry told the Organization of American States in Washington Monday, "declared that the United States would unilaterally, and as a matter of fact, act as the protector of the region... And throughout our nation's history, successive presidents have reinforced that doctrine and made a similar choice.

"Today, however, we have made a different choice. The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over," he declared.

So, with the flip of a rubber-chicken dinner, thus ends the oldest, steadiest and most benign pillar in all U.S. foreign policy, the 1823 "Don't Tread On Us" policy that Old World powers were not to bring their feuds and battles to the Western Hemisphere, nor to meddle in the affairs of Latin America's fledgling democracies, most of which had just gained independence from Spain and Portugal and needed to develop in peace.

It was a good policy. Latin America's great liberators, such as Simon Bolivar who freed Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, and Jose San Martin, who freed Argentina, Chile and Peru, both embraced the U.S. with "extreme gratitude."

And because of that doctrine, Latin America has been involved in very few wars other than civil wars during its short history.

It was a doctrine that reflected that the U.S.'s oldest and most important foreign interests were in its own hemisphere, something that ought to be of comfort to a region that often feels neglected by the U.S.

But instead of defending that two-century-old doctrine, Kerry has decided to scrap it — not just because he doesn't care about the region, but because he apparently believes the idea pushed by Spanish Civil War leftist exiles and by the likes of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro that the Monroe Doctrine was an evil thing, U.S. imperialism in disguise.

(Click link below to read more)
READ MORE Sphere: Related Content