Roosevelt-Corollary

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American President Theodore Roosevelt

The Roosevelt Corollary ( German  the Roosevelt addition ) was announced on December 6, 1904 by US President Theodore Roosevelt in his annual message to Congress as a supplement to the Monroe Doctrine .

With the Corollary, Roosevelt changed the previous interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine decisively. While the latter had merely rejected the right of the European powers to intervene on the American continent, Roosevelt also postulated an explicit arbitration function for the USA , combined with a right to intervene in internal American conflicts. Even if the USA had repeatedly intervened in conflicts in other American states before 1904, this was not clearly compatible with the original content of the Monroe Doctrine, according to which the American states clarify their affairs on their own, without Europe. As a result, earlier US interventions had always met with vehement resistance in their own country. President Roosevelt broke with a long tradition of isolationism in American foreign policy. He encountered harsh criticism in his own country: He was accused of acting against the requirements of the constitution of the United States of America, of breaking international law and of pursuing a militaristic and imperialist foreign policy.

The "Roosevelt Addition" to the Monroe Doctrine in excerpts:

“If a nation shows that it knows how to act sensibly and with vigor and decency on social and political issues, that it maintains order and pays its debts, then it need not fear interference from the United States. Constant injustice or inability to do so, which amounts to the loosening of the bonds of civilized society, may ultimately call for intervention by any civilized nation in America, as elsewhere, and in the western hemisphere, America's adherence to the Monroe Doctrine may in flagrant cases force such injustice or inability to exercise international police force, albeit against their will. "

The Roosevelt Corollary is therefore also an example of the high phase of modern imperialism , in which the USA, after initial reluctance, participated in the endeavors of the European colonial powers to “divide the world”. As a result, the USA intervened in various Central American states with military interventions and, in some cases, stationed troops for many years, for example in Haiti , Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic .

After relations with South and Central America had improved significantly under President Herbert Hoover and the last US armed forces had been recalled from Nicaragua and Haiti, his successor Franklin D. Roosevelt finally revoked the Corollary in accordance with the Good Neighbor Policy of his Previously to tread other paths of internal American cooperation (but also control).

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. History Seminar Univ. Bern (ed.): Sources for modern history. Bern 1957, p. 76 f.