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The Spectacle Blog
My distinguished colleague Jeff Lord was kind enough to answer my question of when the Monroe Doctrine was used to justify regime change, preventive war, and direct intervention in the internal affairs of the region’s countries. You may notice that his examples of interventions that more or less fit this description come after the founding generation.
Citing mostly 20th century interventions to establish what the Founding Fathers thought about foreign policy is like trying to enlist the Founders’ support for large federal welfare programs by invoking the Constitution’s General Welfare clause and then citing the actual policies of FDR and LBJ. But not all these interventions are identical. Does anybody really believe that all uses of military force are created equal or that the United States has zero interests outside its borders? Even Ron Paul voted to send U.S. troops after bin Laden in Afghanistan. Nor have I heard anyone claim that interventions in Latin America can’t have “blowback,” or, to use a less loaded term favored by first-generation neoconservatives when discussing domestic policy, unintended consequences.
There would be many fewer wars, of course, if political leaders would call upon the diplomatic skills of our friend Roger Kaplan, who took up some of these questions earlier.
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More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/12/13/the-monroe-doctrine-aint-the-b
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jp| 12.13.11 @ 4:54PM
You need to read dangerous nation by Robert kagans and a lot more American history. Pauls views have never been anywhere close to the founders.
C Bowen | 12.13.11 @ 5:06PM
Robert Kagan of Skull N Bones?
LOL-- too funny.
JP| 12.13.11 @ 7:04PM
Do yourself a favor: Read Jefferson's "Empire of Liberty" speech
C Bowen | 12.13.11 @ 7:55PM
I am not one of the folks, hippie, that falls for the Cult of the Forefathers.
It's easy to check a congressional record for argument, or check the local politics to clearly see the people believed the rhetoric of the Farewell Address and the propaganda in support of the Constitution.
Time and time again, the tradition of not intervening in this or that, appeals to the forefathers and the Constitution--what does this tell us?
When you are willing to be more honest about what interests are being served -- or go ahead and fly your freak liberal flag that we are an ideological nation in search of the great global democratic revolution, that we are the sons (and now daughters thanks to your hippie friends) of the French Revolution, not a unique experience that Burke, that strange Irish conservative, tried to carve out for our intellectuals.
Anyway using a Brookings Institute and Skull and Bones chicken hawk as a serious historian prop only proves the point.
C Bowen | 12.13.11 @ 5:05PM
The heart of the problem with debating 'these people' it is simply stupid to compare a debt financed invasion of a secular nation with a military that featured girls on the front lines as part of its propaganda, that resulted in a Muslim nation, in the orbit of the neighbor-rival, with nationalist propaganda being recycled from a left wing administration and agents of Iran as a conservative policy.
Whatever one's historical take, it just not simply credible to be in the same room with such a person.
Talk about baseball or celebrity deaths instead, I suggest.
Virtually none, save Polk's illegal war which began with an inside job, can be justified on conservative grounds (Polk's reasoning for war was geo-strategically sound if you like lebensraum), and a check of the congressional record does reveals that the dissenters to each and every 'intervention' appealed to the Founders (albeit as a prop) the Constitution.
The Right has simply been so dumbed down compared to say even a '60s Era rightist that understood the concept of a Deep State, we waste time debating poll tested points, rather than describing the actual interests involved. To this day, the California conservatives take the betrayal of the Panama Canal to serve Rockefeller/banking interests as a serious issue (they endorsed Ron Paul BTW) even though in its day, the involvement of the US in the Panama Canal, was the result of another financial scandal--this is easily accessible history that we are suppose to go on pretending doesn't exist.
If we ask 'them', what interests supported and benefited from the Iraq war--they will simply evade and slander as they have been taught to do, often serving the very interests they fear to mention.
No serious discussion can be had with them; they deserve only our derision.
Carry on, Mr. Antle.
JP| 12.13.11 @ 7:03PM
“As early as 1832, the United States sent a fleet to the Falkland Islands to reduce an Argentine garrison that had harassed American shipping. The Mexican War was, of course, the greatest example of American intervention [in Latin America], but by the Civil War, American forces had seen action in Haiti (1799, 1800, 1817-21), Tripoli (1815), the Marquesas Islands (1913-14), Spanish Florida (1806-10, 1812, 1813, 1814, 1816-18, 1817), what is now the Dominican Republic (1800), Curacao (1800), the Galapagos Islands (1813), Cuba (1822), Puerto Rico (1824), Argentine (1833, 1852, 1853), and Peru (1835-36). Between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, marines were sent to Cuba, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Haiti.”
- Walter Russell Mead, "Special Providence"
Kevin Gutzman| 12.14.11 @ 12:39PM
Assuming, arguendo, that your record is accurate, so what? No one other than Mr. Lord ever said that all of these interventions were in furtherance of the Monroe Doctrine.
Ivan| 12.13.11 @ 7:45PM
"As early as 1832, the United States sent a fleet to the Falkland Islands to reduce an Argentine garrison that had harassed American shipping."
Are you aware that there is a difference between sending an army to settle the score with a foreign country which harasses your commercial ships, and invading other countries to "impose democracy and human rights"?
Kevin Gutzman| 12.14.11 @ 12:40PM
That difference is precisely the difference between Thomas Jefferson's views on foreign policy and Jeff Lord's.
Dan Phillips| 12.13.11 @ 10:13PM
JP, I don't doubt that people in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries held opinions that were common to people in the late 18th and early 19th Century. Meaning they might have help imperialist pretensions. Some may have wanted to be more like the mother country England and the other European powers. It would be surprising, given the time in which they lived, if many didn't. But wanting to be an Empire in 18xx is not analogous to modern style interventionism with it pretense of the US as benign global hegemon.
You should listen to your boy Kagan. He points out instances of American acting abroad to try to establish a precedent for modern neoconservatism, but he readily admits that neoconservative foreign policy is not conservative. In fact, he identifies the conservative (or republican) impulse as the chief opponent to this. I'll try to find the quote.
Will you at least concede that Kagan's is correct in his assessment that neoconservatism is not conservative?