The U.S. State Department has shamelessly published a video celebrating "imperialism" and "dominance" of the Western hemisphere under the banner of the Monroe Doctrine, complete with falsified history and grotesque omissions.
In 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had declared the unpopular and blatantly imperialist Monroe Doctrine dead, even while acting as if it were his daily guide to action. The difference in both Trump terms, but especially in this second one, is a move toward more blatant talk and action: openly manipulating elections, kidnapping a president and first lady, threatening devastation and imposing ever more horrific sanctions, and publishing videos like this one from the U.S. Ambassador to Panama.
Ambassador Kevin Marino Cabrera tells us that the U.S. used the Monroe Doctrine to force a French withdrawal from Mexico in 1861. That's a gross oversimplification. According to historian Jay Sexton, the Monroe Doctrine had played a minor role: "[M]ost Americans inflated their own role in ending the French intervention in Mexico. Never mind the blood and treasure expended by the Mexican resistance; never mind that the British and Spanish abandoned the intervention in Mexico; never mind the important role played by critics of Napoleon in France, who campaigned against the venture. Americans concluded that it was their Monroe Doctrine that prompted France's ignominious withdrawal from Mexico. In the coming decades, politicians would state this as truth, schoolbooks would teach it, and Americans would internalize it." More importantly, this simplistic story omits numerous cases of the U.S. government choosing not to challenge European imperialism, as well as the fact that the Monroe Doctrine had already by that point been used to justify the imperial and genocidal takeover of much of North America, including the theft of about half of Mexico.
Cabrera avoids restating in his own voice the 1898 lie about a Spanish attack on the USS Maine in Havana, and instead silently displays a newspaper headline reading "Blown Up By Spain." Cabrera hopes for sufficient ignorance to accept a very old lie, and then openly brags about taking over Cuba and Puerto Rico to become a "genuine imperial power," as if that were a point of pride, and as if the imperialistic takeover of North America from coast to coast were not genuine, either because unquestionably decreed by God, or because Native Americans don't count, or because ethnic cleansing and settler-colonialism were changing the populations of that area.
Cabrera also tells us that the Panama canal and Panama itself came to be because "Panama sought independence," not because the U.S. government sought a canal.
Cabrera claims that the Monroe Doctrine solved the Cuban Missile Crisis, reciting the lie that FDR thumped his chest and the Soviets pulled out, as if the deal that also removed U.S. missiles from Europe were still secret.
Cabrera credits President Ronald Reagans deadly crimes in Nicaragua to the Monroe Doctrine, as a point of pride, and as a teaching moment, informing us that "ideological threats required the same response as military ones."
While the Monroe Doctrine's use as a model in the creation of numerous more recent lawless "doctrines" is bad enough, and the "Reagan doctrine" is horrific, the above statement about ideological threats is more of a Trump doctrine.
Cabrera also credits the Monroe Doctrine for the kidnapping of Venezuela's president and the establishment of supposed "regional dominance."
So, the pretense that the Monroe doctrine is dead has been fully abandoned. To get it back, a future U.S. government might have to actually alter its conduct to conflict with the Monroe Doctrine. Meanwhile, deader than dead are shame, irony, and parody. The U.S. government is now a cartoon version of its worst self that would have even James Monroe feeling ill if he could see it.
David Swanson published The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace It With in 2023. Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of World BEYOND War and campaign coordinator of RootsAction.org. Swanson's other books include War Is Still A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and hosts Talk World Radio.
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