By Nnanda Kizito Sseruwagi
The Monroe Doctrine is the fulcrum around which America’s grand strategy on foreign policy has revolved since the 19th Century. Originating from President James Monroe’s speech to Congress in 1823, it was a solemn statement by the United States warning European nations to desist from interfering in the affairs of countries in the Americas (the totality of North and South America and most of the Western Hemisphere). Based on this doctrine, America would interpret any intervention by a “major country” (excuse my French – because all sovereign countries are presumed equal…) in its spheres of influence (what it called its “strategic backyard”) as a threat to U.S. security.
A flashpoint in America’s implementation of the Monroe Doctrine happened in 1962 during the world’s first nuclear crisis. Fidel Castro had led a guerilla struggle in Cuba which deposed Sgt. Fulgencio Batista. To save Cuba from bankruptcy upon his usurpation, Fidel approached the communist countries and began nationalizing American-owned industries since the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would not lend to him. The American president then, Eisenhower, was unsettled by the thought of a communist state emerging a few miles from the coast of Florida. When John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, he undertook Eisenhower’s scheme to invade Cuba and authorized a failed attack at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy ordered constant surveillance over Cuba and his spy planes registered aerial photographs showing that Castro was armed with Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (I.R.B.M.s). When Kennedy confronted the Soviet Union over this, Nikita Khrushchev protested: “Your rockets are in Turkey. You are worried by Cuba. You say that it worries you because it is 90 miles from the American coast. But Turkey is next to us!” Whereas arrangements were made by the U.S.’s Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to de-escalate the crisis, and in exchange for the Soviet Union’s withdrawal of missiles from Cuba, the U.S. reciprocated with a non-invasion pledge and the withdrawal of the Jupiter missiles from Turkey, America’s presence in Russia’s neighbourhood did not cease.
It is 62 years today since the 1962 Cuban Nuclear Missile Crisis and America is fuelling a proxy war between Russia and Ukraine. Like America’s position on the Monroe Doctrine, Russia too claims it needs some breathing space from the expansion of NATO eastwards, and would rather keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence. A saying goes that what is good for the goose is good for the gander…
However, the world has changed. China has emerged. Its government has publicly denied having a Monroe Doctrine. Indeed, not a single war has been fought by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1979. The country’s leaders have theorised about harmonious co-existence as the future that China wants. Besides doing business and extending development finance to developing parts of the world as well as building infrastructure projects globally under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has not exhibited an appetite for military alliances with any country in the world. Indeed, today, the PRC’s foreign policy banner is building a community of shared future for mankind.
Let us turn back to the United States and the Monroe Doctrine. American political scientist and International Relations scholar, John Mearsheimer, developed a theory called “offensive realism”. This theory explains that great powers are essentially desirous, rationally, of establishing hegemony in their hemispheres in the anarchy of the international system. He calls the international system anarchical because of the absence of any higher hierarchy above the nation-state.
It is understandable, based on the theory of offensive realism, for China, Russia or any other major world power to feel entitled to their own Monroe Doctrine. Currently, the U.S. has surrounded bases all across the Pacific in a provocative encirclement of China, which threatens a disastrous war between the two states. This is not the posture we need for sustainable peace in the world. It might make America feel safe, but nobody is safe if other countries feel threatened.
China has called for a multipolar world where no single center of power bullies the rest of the world. I think that such multipolarity is a far more secure balance of power for a peaceful world. Mearsheimer’s offensive realism would be a false theory if China’s stance was genuinely experimented on by other countries, especially the United States. However, if the U.S. posture in the Pacific is not unclenched, I fear John might be right in the long run.
Nnanda is a senior research fellow at the Development Watch Centre.