In the nineteenth century the American colonizing propulsive force ran parallel to the concomitant decadence of the Spanish Empire, and to the national movements that were emerging throughout Latin America.
The 2 December 1823 President James Monroe addressed a speech to Congress (written by his secretary of state John Quincy Adams) in which the guidelines of Washington's foreign policy were postulated, at least until the First World War.
With an effect formula (America to Americans) we wanted to re-propose a principle of equilibrium that in the recent past had led the diplomacy of the European Powers to the Congress of Vienna.
The plan we wanted to achieve was that of a partition of the world on a continental basis, which on the American side meant the expression of an open isolationist will with respect to the affairs of the Old Continent and at the same time the implicit affirmation of a sort of hegemonic right due to the United States over the entire American continent.
La Doctrine Monroe he voiced a deep component of US popular culture and public spirit, which could be simplified in the consciousness of its own undeniable diversity with respect to Europe, its millennial traditions and its political institutions. A current of thought destined to recur even in the contemporary age. In particular, Monroe's speech was very clear in establishing a connection between the threat to national security and the establishment of a political regime different from the US one on the American continent.
President Monroe's stance meant the clear will to take the lead in the Latin American independence movement, declaring to the whole world that America belonged to the Americans and that Europeans had to put an end to their colonial ambitions. In synthesis the Monroe Doctrine reaffirmed the politics of neutrality of the United States however, at the same time, it dictated a directrix of further expansion of its power.
The strategic principles of the Monroe Doctrine have continued, without pauses, to shape American foreign policy. American interventions in the two world wars, as in the Cold War, were not a series of revolutionary detachments from President Monroe's government policy: they were examples of the same way of thinking that led James Monroe to postulate his doctrine..
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