Why the Monroe Doctrine is irrelevant in today's world

When it comes to the Monroe Doctrine, I strongly feel that there is no real need for it to be around today, due to a host of reasons. Especially with what American presidents have since done to it, using it as the de facto basis of foreign policy, even adding on to the doctrine to better assert our message in the world. 

The first reason for why there doesn’t need to be a Monroe Doctrine, is that America today doesn’t need to worry about any world country establishing their empire in the Americas, due to the fact that the New world has pretty much been settled. Secondly, due to the fact that the world now has the United Nations, NATO, and many other allied powers that can help struggling countries, our country truly doesn’t need to act as the official police power/guardian angel/financier that wishes to be a part of all the struggles and conflict that happens in the world.

Looking more closely at what the Monroe Doctrine says, several of the principles that it states seems to have been ignored, especially when it comes to one of the points; that “the United States would refrain from participation in European wars and would not disturb existing colonies in the Western Hemisphere,” (USAHistory). Our country seems to have ignored that proclamation, since in the past 200 years, America has since helped in several wars throughout the world, including the two world wars in Europe, and have intervened in Latin Amerca many times over, due in part to President Theodore Roosevelt’s modified enhancement of the Monroe Doctrine, saying that the country, “would be responsible for all of Latin America,” (LatinAmericaHistory). This has resulted in sending American troops to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, since they were unable to pay off their debts and it thus resulted in our occupancy of those countries between 1906 and 1934. American troops were even sent to Haiti as recently as 2004 with the purpose of stabilizing the country after their contested election, (LatinAmericaHistory) and also helping in the relief efforts for the 2010 Haitian earthquake.

In today’s world, there is no real need for the Monroe Doctrine, because it has largely been ignored in some respects and also due in part to how much of a faster response can be made to help ailing countries, as well as the number of countries that can afford to help those ailing countries. Our country doesn’t need to act as a first responder to the entire world at large.

Sources:

Foreign Intervention in Latin America. http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/modernlatinamerica/p/intervention.htm

World Affairs, 1823. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h255.html