240122 SE VM5 / VM1 - 200 Years Monroe Doctrine. A history of US Foreign Policy (2022S)

Next year, in 2023, there is the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine. U.S. President James Monroe, influenced by his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, made a unilateral declaration to Congress in 1823. Many Latin American countries had gained independence from Spain or Portugal. The Russian tsar had also recently claimed sovereignty over an area stretching from Alaska to Oregon. Monroe said that that any European attempt to colonise a nation in the western hemisphere would be viewed as an act of aggression against America. It was the starkest expression of American hegemony in the region to that point, but for years this claim was more optimistic than realistic. Later known as the Monroe Doctrine, this policy principle would become a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for generations. In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt claimed the U.S. government’s right to intervene in Latin American countries. During the cold war, the Monroe Doctrine was used as a broader justification for protecting America’s national interests in its 'backyard'. Though the importance of the Monroe Doctrine has faded since the end of the cold war, John Bolton, the United States national security adviser of President Donald Trump, declared in 2019 that the 'Monroe doctrine is alive and well'. The course will review the Monroe Doctrine against a background of United States foreign policy in the last 200 years. The students will become familiar with the territorial expansion of the United States in the Americas and in the World until present times.

Empire building in the Western Hemisphere
1. The settlers and their empire; American Exceptionalism in theory and practice
2. The Monroe Doctrine 1823: The text and the background
3. Manifest Destiny a special kind of imperialism

The Path to Hegemony
4. Anglo-American Relations: With Monroe to Power Transition?
5. The Roosevelt Corollary: The Caribbean as American Lake
6. The Western Hemisphere: Between Informal Empire and Fortress America

The Monroe Doctrine in the Cold War era
7. FDR, World War II and global hegemony
8. From Truman to Reagan: The Monroe Doctrine in the Cold War
9. Latin America: The Monroe Doctrine as counter-revolution

The unipolar moment and after - Is Monroe now over?
10. The US from unipolar moment to decline - Is there a grand strategy?
11. The West and the Rest Towards a multipolar world
12. Dead or Alive? The Monroe Doctrine today