Monroe Doctrine VS. Bush Doctrine

The "Bush doctrine" is used to describe just about anything about the American reaction to 9/11.

So you'll have opinions that run the gamut. Some will say it means being "decisive" and some will say it's about "lying".

Since there never really was a stated "doctrine" it is really all these things.

The closest I'd personally come to define any real doctrine is the following.

1) Polarization in terms of "with us or against us".
2) Unabashed militaristic superiority.

To me the realest element of it are the proposals for the "new American centrury". This is a charter of sorts written up by many current administration officials.

It's a hawkish dream of asserting American superiority and making people not even think of challenging it.

By not challenging it, I don't mean not attacking us. What they want to do is make other nations think it's not even worth competing with us on the geopolitical stage.

One way to put it is:

"We won the cold war, now let's make a monopoly while we are ahead."

Onyxelle, the Monroe doctrine has had a checkered history. At the time Monroe promulgated it, it was in response to negotiations which had been taking place between the United States, the Imperial Russian government, and Great Britain, about the areas each claimed to control on the northwest coast of the North American continent. In his annual message to congress in December, 1823 (the "state of the union" message used to be a rather drab affair, a simple report from the executive branch to the legislative, which is required by the constitution, although not very specifically), Monroe wrote: "In the discussions to which this interest has given rise and in the arrangements by which they may terminate the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that 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 any European powers . . . "

You might well imagine that European nations, who still largely regarded the United States as an upstart nation, were unimpressed. Or, rather, they made a point of publicly asserting that they were unimpressed. A case of "the lady doth protest too much," however. Time and again, discussions of the Monroe doctrine were initiated by European powers, who wished to show that they were not bound by any such declaration. But they obviously considered it a significant principle of United States foreign policy, or they would not have been so concerned with it. The French expedition to Mexico in 1862 was made in concert with Britain and Spain, and the ostensible object was to recover the debts of their citizens. There is a lot of detail of intrigue and phoney claims by the French, which is not pertinent. A significant point is pertinent, however. Palmerston was the Prime Minister in London, and there never was a British PM who hated the United States more, nor took more opportunities to publicly say as much. On the occassion of the planning of the expedition to Vera Cruz, Palmerston loudly rattled the British sabre to the effect: "Monroe Doctrine be damned!" However, John Russell was foreign minister, and in those days in which modern political parties such as we know did not exist, it was not thought that Russell necessarily needed to consult Palmerston, nor follow his lead. When it became evident that the French were going to make a military drive on Mexico City, the British pulled out, Palmerston's bluster notwithstanding. Louis Bonapart, the soi-disant Napoleon III, also shot off his mouth about the United States and "the greatest army in the world" (i.e., the French army, and it is worth noting that most people in Europe agreed with that assessment at the time), and how badly the Americans would fare if they attempted to interfer in Mexico. Saddly, Lincoln's administration fawned over the French, and did everything to assure that they would not be offended, including denying aid to Juarez' government, even by private citizens acting on their own accord. But by 1865, the French were tied down in a bloody war of insurgency--they had failed to eliminate Juarez or drive him from the country. The Austrian Archduke, Ferdinand Maximilian, who was then the "Emperor" of Mexico, managed to alienate most of the minority support he had originally gotten. After the assassination of Lincoln, Grant used the freedom of action he then enjoyed, and sent about 30,000 Federal troops to the Rio Grande river. For all of his big talk, Napoleon III evactuated his army, and many of the Belgian and Austrian voluteers got out of Dodge pdq as well. Maximilian attempted a military campaign, was trapped, taken prisoner, and eventually executed.

There was another potential dust-up between the United States and Britain over a border dispute in Venezuela in 1905, and Salisbury made the usual "Monroe Doctrine be damned" noises which British PM's seemed to like to make before the First World War demonstrated to the British and French upon just which side their bread was buttered vis-a-vis their relations with the United States.

Essentially, the Monroe Doctrine has always worked, but more likely because of the commercial advantages which the British and French enjoyed in Central and South America than any real threat which the United States posed. Other European powers which might have been a position to defy the United States were too weak to risk a confrontation. After the beginning of the American Civil War, for all the bluster of the various governments, military men in Europe recognized that no single European power had the resources to challenge the United States in the new world.

As for any "Bush Doctrine," i wasn't really aware that there were any such animal.

wow. thanks Setanta - you're an absolute wealth of information!!!!. By Bush doctrine, I only mean the root of why he does the things he does, with respect to foreign policy.

Because somebody takes him aside, and "splains things" to him, Onyx.