U.S. Drags Monroe Doctrine Out of Storage

Washington reacted to the September flights of two Russian bombers Tu-160 to Venezuela, as well as the planned maneuvers of our warships, led by the nuclear missile cruiser “Peter the Great” off the coast of South America. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised “Russia will have [a problem] in this [Western] hemisphere,” while congressmen could not come up with anything better than recalling the Monroe Doctrine.

“A few aging, anarchic, Blackjack bombers flying along the Venezuelan coast is not going to change the balance of power in the Western Hemisphere,” stated Condoleezza Rice confidently in a TV interview. Meanwhile, she cautioned Moscow against the repetition of similar expeditions. And, of course, she did not fail to give Russia advice on how to behave itself in a region where “America has plenty of military power”.

“I think they need to be careful about their relations with other Latin Americans. Because are they really going to arm Hugo Chavez?” said Rice with resentment, and even attempted to imagine what she would do in place of Russian authorities. “But if I were Russia, I would look at what this might mean for other Latin American states with whom they’d like to have good relations: Brazil, Chile, Colombia,” Secretary of State said, playing the part.

In turn, American legislators introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution condemning Russia’s actions. Though honestly, it has very little chances of being accepted by the current convocation of Congress. But the arguments themselves are remarkable. The document deems “…Russian military deployments in the Western Hemisphere as reckless, provocative, and in violation of the Monroe Doctrine.”

Let’s recall: Monroe Doctrine refers to the ideas, set out by the fifth President of the U.S., James Monroe, in a message to Congress in 1823. The doctrine designated both Americas as zones that were off limits to the colonial and political claims of European nations, including the Russian Empire.

Congressmen’s logic is strange. What do we care about their doctrine, adopted almost two hundred years ago? What is it, a standard of international law? Then, as it turns out, we too could accept some doctrine of Petrov or Sidorov – and close off the post-Soviet space from “political claims” of the Western Hemisphere. For example, the United States of America.