Modernizing Monroe
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
One declaration during the Republican debate on foreign policy that caught our ear was Governor Perry’s call for a 21st Century version of the Monroe Doctrine. He’d been asked about the Mexican border. “I think it’s time for a 21st century Monroe Doctrine,” he replied. It was a reference to the policy put in place in 1823 by the fifth president, Jas. Monroe, who declared that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers” and ”we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”
“We’re seeing countries start to come in and infiltrate,” Mr. Perry warned. “We know that Hamas and Hezbollah are working in Mexico , as well as Iran , with their ploy to come into the United States. We know that Hugo Chavez and the Iranian government has one of the largest — I think their largest — embassy in the world is in Venezuela.” It happens that this issue is one that these columns have been watching. We wrote about it when the flagship of the Russ nuclear fleet, Peter the Great, set off for joint exercises with the regime at Venezuela. We also wrote when Hugo Chavez was rattling his saber at Colombia. “Mr. Monroe, Call Your Office,” we wrote when, in 2007, President Ahmadinejad fetched up on the guest list for the inauguration of the aging Sandinista, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.
It would be a mistake to make too much of the Americas issue in the context of our foreign policy problems. But it would also be a mistake to make too little of it. So it was savvy of Mr. Perry to mark the issue in terms of the principles laid down nearly two centuries ago by the last of the American Founding Fathers to serve in the White House. We wouldn’t want to suggest that American can never break with a past policy. But we rather like the idea of anchoring our policies in principles that can span the decades. We have no doubt that we are in the midst of a twilight struggle that is global and every bit as existential as was the Cold War, in which the tide began to turn when there acceded a president who, in Ronald Reagan, was prepared to go enter the lists in our own hemisphere using the doctrine Mr. Perry reached for last night.
