WEBVTT - Greg Grandin on how the Monroe Doctrine Became the Donroe Doctrine 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:14.000 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:22.040 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Authoughts podcast. 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:25.599 I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe. Isn't Joe? I love 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:29.680 doing American history episodes in part because I feel like 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:34.319 my own knowledge of American history is fairly simplistic. And 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:38.559 I do remember a huge culture shock when I went 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.760 from high school to college. And I think I told 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.680 this story before. So I went to college university in London, 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:51.000 and I had always heard the American Revolution described as 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.080 the American Revolution, right, and then as soon as. 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:56.120 I get to the UK, what did they call it? 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:57.400 What they call it? 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.640 Yeah, they call it, I think the American War of Independence, 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:06.080 which has a different tonality too, definitely, but it definitely 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:11.480 demonstrates just how subjective tensions, conflicts, and policies can actually 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:14.840 be in history, depending on who you're talking to. And 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.040 we're going to talk about not just a pretty subjective 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:22.480 American policy, but one that has been reinterpreted and amended 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:24.120 many many times. 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:25.200 In the past. Right. 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:28.800 So obviously for us this has been a venezuela week, 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:31.560 and there's all sorts of immediate questions that are sort 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.080 of most directly relevant to we've been talking about the 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.679 market elements mostly, we talked about oil, we talked about 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:41.200 the sovereign debt, et cetera. But then there's all these questions, 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.920 of course about international law and what is legitimate and 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:48.360 what is illegitimate. And I mean, I couldn't even believe 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.480 the headline when I saw it that we had arrested 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:53.760 I know, I was flabbergant. 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.480 I just the idea that. 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.080 If we'd arrested a head of state from another country 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.600 is just absolutely job smacking. And then people talk about 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:04.680 international law, and then they say, this international law even 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.600 exist and so forth, and what it feels like to 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:09.920 some extent truly uncharted territory here. 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:14.040 Yeah, uncharted territory. But people are drawing on a parallel, yes, 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:18.480 which is the Monroe doctrine. Yes, the Monroe doctrine of 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:21.480 I think it was eighteen twenty three, I want to say, 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:26.160 basically said that America would assert its dominance over the 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:31.640 entire American region. And since then it's changed a number 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:33.960 of times. But the way it's being talked about now 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:41.120 is as the Trump corollary or the Donroe doctrine, which 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:45.079 was described in the National Security Strategy Document that the 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.880 Trump administration put out back in December, and that one's 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.280 a little different. So we keep seeing these amendments to 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.239 the doctrine. By the way, I should just say, do 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:59.640 you remember back in twenty thirteen, John Kerry explicitly said 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.480 that the Monroe doctrine was over, it was dead. 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:03.480 I don't remember that. 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:05.959 And now it's back, it's arisen. 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:09.040 Some version of it is certainly back. You know. 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:13.600 It's very interesting because the US clearly has a longstanding 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:20.760 history of various operations, overt and covert, of involving itself, 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:24.480 shall we say, with the politics and domestic affairs of 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.920 our neighbors, particularly in the South and Central America and 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:33.200 so forth. I suppose any country is naturally going to 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:37.520 have some security interest in what's happening. It's proximity. I 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:40.920 don't think that itself is particularly weird. I really like 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:44.600 this term the Donro doctrine because there's two things. There's 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.720 this long standing history that the US wants to have 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.400 a role to play in everyone else's politics among our neighbors. 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.360 But then there's this other element with Donald Trump specifically, 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:56.800 where it feels like a lot of our policy and 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:00.800 principle is Essentially, he's the president and it's in his head, 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.200 and his ideas are legitimate because they're his ideas and 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:08.760 he's the president, so yes, there's precedent, there's norms and 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.440 so forth, and then there's this sort of novelty that 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:13.240 everyone's trying to read his mind. 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:15.960 And we're in this very very strange. 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:19.000 Situation which has come up on our last two episodes, 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:23.440 in which you have the president talking about oil. 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:25.800 And ex implicitly yeah, and yet people. 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:27.360 Say are like skeptical. It's very strange. 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:29.920 It's a very strange situation because you have torpiicly it's like, oh, 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:32.520 he admitted it, it's about oil, and yet everyone's like, 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:34.880 is there's something else in play beyond here. 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:37.320 It's the total inversion for. 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.920 How people have talked in the past about the legitimacy 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:44.400 or illegitimacy of how we involve ourselves internationally. 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:47.560 That was part of the original Monroe doctrine as well. 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:53.640 There was this weird tension between like pro democracy, anti colonialism, 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:58.440 keep the European powers out, yeah, and America basically kind 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:01.960 of creating its own in formal colonies. That tension has 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:04.280 always been there, and we should talk about that we 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:06.720 should talk about whether or not there might be, you know, 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:11.560 different strategies at play in Venezuela, different goals. And I'm 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:15.080 happy to say we do, in fact have the perfect guest. 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:17.800 We're going to be speaking with Greg Grandin. He is 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.839 a professor of history at Yale and the author of 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:24.719 the new book America America, a New History of the 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.200 New World. So Greg, welcome to odd Lots. Thanks so 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:28.960 much for coming on. 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:30.440 Oh thanks for having me. 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.520 How important has the Monroe Doctrine actually been in the 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.799 history of American policy and development. 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:43.040 Well, it's certainly been influential, and it's certainly been cited 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:45.800 repeatedly over the years. I mean, first, I think we 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:47.680 need to back up and say exactly what makes it 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:48.400 a doctrine? 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:52.640 Yeah, and we just never voted on, no court ratified it. 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:57.160 It didn't actually assume the status of doctrine until a 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:00.960 couple of decades after it was pronounced in eighteen twenty three, 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:04.080 when James Monroe was president at the time. And this 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:08.200 was around the time that most Spanish American nations were 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:13.560 breaking from Spain and their successful wars of independence, which 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.400 were much longer and dragged out than the US War 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:20.680 for Independence. By eighteen twenty three, it was fairly clear 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:22.680 that Spain was going to lose its empire, and the 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:26.360 United States finally decided that was going to issue a statement. 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.880 And you have to understand that the doctrine itself, or 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:33.200 Monroe's statement, it's really just a kind of you know, 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:37.039 four or five non contiguous paragraphs in the State of 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:39.480 the Union Address of six thousand words. 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:40.839 You know, you have to cut a. 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:44.279 Cherry pick through the State of the Union Address to 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:49.799 find what is the doctrine. And it's hesitant, it's cautious. 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.599 The United States wasn't really sure where it wanted to 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:57.200 land on any given issue, and there were obviously tensions 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.960 and differences of opinions within Monroe's cabinet. I mean, to 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:03.839 put it in more modern terms, you had isolationists, you 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.159 had internationalists, you had unilateralists, or you had different people 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.480 thinking of different ways on how the United. 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:12.920 States should address. 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:16.280 And deal with on the one hand, these new republics 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.080 that were coming into being in South America and in 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.520 Central America and in Mexico, and on the other hand 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:28.080 their former colonial rulers in Europe. And so it was 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:32.480 actually written by John Quincy Adams, who was Monroe's Secretary 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.560 of State, And as I said, it was insert in 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.840 different parts, and it's true, it is a bit of 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:43.600 a contradictory document. On the one hand, it announces that 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:48.240 the United States considers the independence of Latin America at 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:52.360 the time Spanish America to be irreversible, and that it 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:57.080 was recognizing a number of states that had established effective 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:02.240 sovereignty and unbroken with Spain. Did warned off Europe, not 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:06.280 just Spain, but any country Spain might recruit to help them, 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:10.400 or the Holy Roman Empire or Great Britain against trying 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:15.080 to conquer or reconquer the Americas, any part of the Americas. 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.240 So that's the kind of anti colonial part of the doctrine. 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:22.520 And again in quotation marks the doctrine. Then other paragraphs 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:28.160 said that the United States and Spanish America, being of 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:33.120 the Western hemisphere, shared certain special interests and ideals, although 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.440 it didn't specify what those interests and ideals were, but 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.920 people kind of presume they meant the difference between monarchy 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:44.000 and republicanism. But at least there was a kind of 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:48.920 gesture to a kind of shared fraternity of nations that 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:52.760 had common interests, and so that's another part of the 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.240 Monroe doctrine. And then there was the part that was 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:01.160 referenced that it didn't exactly grant the United States much 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:04.200 power in terms of leasing the hemisphere. It was a 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:10.239 vague sentence that said the United States would interpret events 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:13.640 that happened anywhere in the Western Hemisphere on how they 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.640 bear on the quote peace and happiness of the United States. 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:18.680 It was. 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.160 So so it was a document that could appeal to 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.320 a lot of different constituencies within the United States, like 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:30.760 Thomas Jefferson's expansionism, this notion that you know, the New 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:34.640 World was shared a certain unity of purpose. 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:40.840 John Quincy Adams was a famous isolationist and unilateralist, and 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:43.760 so there was this notion of the United States could 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.080 act if it wanted, if it's sort of threat. And 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:50.719 you have somebody like Henry Kilay who imagined a kind 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:54.480 of large American system, a mercantile system in which the 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:58.440 US would be a great manufacturing base in Latin America, 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:02.720 Spanish America would supply re sources in order to rival 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.880 in the United Kingdom and the Empires of Europe. But 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.920 the point being it really wasn't much of anything. Latin 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:12.079 Americans did like it. I mean, they had a lot 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:13.800 of time to read. It was a different period. There 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.160 were no iPhones, you know, people read closely and said, oh, 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:21.320 that's an interesting paragraph. And what they read and liked 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.319 mostly was they thought it was They read it as 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:27.880 a kind of anarchust brief for their own anti colonialism. 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:32.400 Spanish Americans were very much vocal in their idea that 0:10:32.440 --> 0:10:36.400 the doctrine of conquest was no longer valid, the doctrine 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:40.439 of discovery was no longer valid. There was no undiscovered 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:44.080 land in the New World waiting for Europeans to stumble 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:47.040 upon and claim as their own, and they read the 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:51.200 Monroe Doctrine as largely supporting that position, especially the part 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:55.360 that warned Europe against trying to reconquer any countries that 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:59.360 had claimed their independence. But over the years it was 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:05.120 interpreted it in a different way. Politicians and diplomats, particularly 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:11.720 in skirmishes with Europe, say Great Britain, when Great Britain 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:16.559 wanted to build a canal through Central America. That was 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:19.560 around the time that those kind of vague, scattered remarks 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:23.040 were elevated to the level of doctrine, and it became 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:27.320 the Monroe Doctrine or the Doctrine of Monroe, and from 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:33.040 that point forward it was progressively incorporated into something we 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:36.600 might call customary law. I mean, again, what makes a 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:39.800 doctrine a doctrine and who gets to enforce it? It really 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:41.720 is just a question of power. It goes to what 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:43.920 you were talking about in the introduction about what is 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:48.440 international law and how is it enforced? I mean, most 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:52.679 countries have statements of principles. The United States gets its 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:53.600 own doctrine. 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:57.240 Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it, Because, like to some extent, 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.839 when I think about American involvement, it's like. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.720 All around the world at any time. 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:06.480 We sort of feel the need to fight against communists, right, 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.800 that seems to be a very common thing, and fight 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:13.240 for democracies or any country that sort of has something 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.880 similar to our we have government or something like that. 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.360 We seem to be on principle we have to be 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.320 the ones or we feel compelled to intervene. And then 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.880 here is this geographical element that seems very different. Can 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.920 you talk a little bit about the intersection of the 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:33.600 geographical impulse to sort of exert your influence among your 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.720 neighbors and how that intersects with this other I don't 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:39.480 know what we call it, principle, a doctrine, etc. Where 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.280 there are just certain kinds of leaders that we don't like, 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.280 and when they're in power, we do what we can 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:46.840 to eliminate them. 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.840 Yes, and this ghost of the history of the United States, 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.280 its relationship to its own hemisphere and. 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:56.120 The power that it is exerted over the. 0:12:56.080 --> 0:13:00.760 Latin America and Spanish American Brazil, and then efforts at 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:05.439 times to go global, to become a more global superpower. 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.280 There's you know, there's long different iterations of this in 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:12.200 which the United States kind of tries to escape the 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:16.520 boundaries of its hemisphere and become a world power at 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.120 different moments, and then and then it falls back to 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.040 the Western hemisphere. This has happened over and over again. 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:26.800 It happened with the Great Depression. It happened in some 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:30.840 ways with you know, after Vietnam, the United States turned 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:35.040 back to Latin America. It happened after the certainly after 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:39.480 the catastrophic War on Terror. I mean, in many ways, 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.160 what's happening now with Trump is an example of this, 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:45.640 this kind of you know, Trump is his own problem 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:48.680 and a lot of the things that are wrong is 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:51.480 of his doing, but he did inherit a country that 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:55.440 was in profound crisis as a result of the catastrophic 0:13:55.480 --> 0:14:00.719 War on Terror, the financial crisis, the inability of politicians 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:04.559 to deal with corporate wealth and inequality. And so there 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.319 is a kind of turning back to Latin America. And 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:09.280 we can get to this a little bit later if 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.280 you want. But Trump's actions in Venezuela are a perfect 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:15.439 example of what happens when you know the United States, 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:19.120 you know it's bid to go global, fails, and it 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:21.680 has to return to its hemisphere. And that's why the 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:25.080 Monroe doctrine is so important. Latin America is the first 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.720 place in which the United States got a sense of 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:30.680 itself as an overseas power. You know, it was able 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:34.680 to project its power, its financial power, it's cultural power, 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:39.280 it's military power beyond its own borders. And even saying 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:41.880 that is a little bit tricky because the United States 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.560 borders were always changing. I mean the United States borders, 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:48.840 the expansive nature of the United States where it actually 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:52.640 took Texas and took Mexico. So it wasn't just that 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:55.880 it was dealing with Latin America. It was literally gobbling 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:59.000 up Latin America on its way to the Pacific, but 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:04.160 setting that as working within the hemisphere and learning how 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:10.040 to deal with other nations. Latin America is absolutely central 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:11.720 to that, and that's one of the reasons why the 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:16.440 Monroe Doctrine rises in importance, because it supposedly provides a. 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:18.560 Kind of guideline for that. 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.400 Now, over the years that Monroe Doctrine itself has expanded, 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:28.360 Presidents explicitly expanded over a boundary dispute in Venezuela and 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.400 Guyana in which the United States was supporting Venezuela and 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:35.960 Great Britain was supporting British Guyana. Grover Cleveland declared that 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:40.040 the Monroe Doctrine granted the United States absolute sovereignty over 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:44.560 the whole Western hemisphere. That's a pretty big jump from 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.000 you know, we're gonna interpret any event that happened somewhere 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:49.440 on our peace and happiness. 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:51.920 There's on a peason happiness. 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:55.120 To buy Fiat our will is law in the hemisphere. 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.920 And then in nineteen oh four, along similar lines, Theodore Rosa, 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.520 when he was president, he expanded the doctrine with his 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:08.160 own corollary to what he called international police power. To 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:13.200 suppress chronic wrongdoing in Latin America. Now, I must say 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:17.480 that most of that chronic wrongdoing was provoked by US 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:22.800 banks and US mercenaries and US oil extractors. And you know, 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:26.040 there's a long history and of like forcing loans on 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:29.360 countries that they can't pay off, and it leads to 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.040 all sorts of instability than civil war. 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:36.200 And then the US government is called in to. 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:40.359 Settle the problem that these private interests created. So Roosevelt 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:45.640 expands the Monroe doctrine into a kind of standing universal 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.680 police warrant that will allow the United States that act 0:16:48.680 --> 0:17:05.000 whenever it will and whenever it wants. 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:11.400 So didn't FDR also reinterpret it, But it didn't last 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:13.520 long another Roosevelt reinterpretation. 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:18.320 No, not really, but FDR actually reverse course one hundred 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:19.120 and eighty degrees. 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:19.600 Yeah. 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:23.879 In nineteen thirty three, he renounced the right of the 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.840 United States to intervene in his longstanding demands by Latin 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:32.720 American jurists and politicians and diplomats to give up the 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.480 right of conquest. I mean, the United States continued to 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.240 hold on to the right of conquest throughout the nineteenth century. 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:43.640 Basically justified the war with Mexico Indian removal. The right 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.639 of conquest was taught in US textbooks up until the 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:51.040 nineteen twenties. Latin America had revoked the right of conquest 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:55.080 with its independence. Because Spanish American nations came into the 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:59.199 world together already a league of nations, seven nations that 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:01.359 had to learn to live with each other on a 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:06.240 crowded continent. The United States came into being a single 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:10.439 nation on the eastern coast of a great land mass 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:12.040 that it imagined as empty. 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:13.359 Obviously it wasn't empty. 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:16.879 There was Native Americans, that was Mexican, and spanions, but 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:18.760 the United States. There was no doubt that the United 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.040 States was going to reach the Pacific, and it held 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:23.840 on and use the doctrine of conquests in order to 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.560 justify taking all of that land. Latin America was constantly 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:30.000 trying to force the United States to accept that the 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:33.600 doctrine of conquest was abrogated, was void, and it wasn't 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:35.960 until nineteen thirty three that it did. And it was 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:40.080 Roosevelt who did that, and he recognized the absolute sovereignty 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:43.240 of Latin American nations and he gave up the right 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:49.119 of intervention. And that was an enormous turnaround in US power. 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:52.159 It didn't weaken US power by any means. It actually 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:54.840 strengthened it because I focused it. It taught the United 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:59.880 States how to exercise power more efficiently, and it organ 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:01.520 Latin America. 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:04.119 It was ten years of goodwill. 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.800 That really got Latin America kind of on board for 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:10.919 the coming war against fascism. There was a lot of 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:15.960 fear among strategists within the Franklin Roosevelt administration that all 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:18.560 of Latin America could have gone the way of Spain. 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.879 I mean, a lot of the sociological variables that led 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:24.720 to the rise of fascism or. 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:30.080 Falangeism in Spain were present in Latin America. There was a. 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:35.600 Large group of servile peasants, small group of land owners, 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:43.520 patrician conservative Catholics, increasingly militant unions and peasants threatening the 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:45.560 power of the landed class. 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.520 You know, that was Spain, but was also Latin America 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:52.680 writ large. And if Latin America fell to Falangism, then 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.360 you know, the United States would be kind of cornered 0:19:55.440 --> 0:20:02.560 between Nazism, fascism, and Falangism. Roosevelt's conceding to Latin America's 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.280 demand to give up the right. Intervention basically tilted the 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.240 playing field to the left in Latin America. You know, 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:15.480 Roosevelt tolerated economic nationalists. He let revolutionaries in Mexico nationalized 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:20.359 standard oil and appropriate massive amounts of US owned property, 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.400 and they created an enormous goodwill and set the stage 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:27.480 for the United States's entrance into World War II from 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.479 a position of strengthen you and continental unity. 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:35.040 So you mentioned, okay at various times the jurists in 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:37.840 Latin America, and they push back against this notion of 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.680 American absolute sovereignty in these fights. This gets to a 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.119 question I see it debated on Twitter a lot. What 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:49.000 do you say to someone who says international law doesn't exist? 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.320 What is international law doesn't exist? And how is this 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:53.679 term useful or not? 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.760 Well, I'm an a historian, I'm not a lawyer a jurist, 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.400 so I tend to see things in turns of power relations. 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:04.960 So I think I see law as a moral venue 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.680 that is created, that creates a set of normative principles 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.840 in which people can fight over. So, you know, obviously 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:16.520 the international law doesn't exist in some void in which 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:18.200 absolute justices is. 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:18.879 Going to happen. 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:22.200 You know, the most powerful country decides the exception, and 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:25.680 you know, the United States. To the degree that countries 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:29.399 like the United States submit to a system of international law, 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:33.080 it usually was during moments of weakness, like when Roosevelt 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:35.159 did it in nineteen thirty three, at the height of 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:39.239 the Great Depression and with fascism on the rise. But 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:42.600 it does create these norms and these principles that people 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:46.640 fight and argue over, and so yes, and the liberal 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:51.720 international law order that has supposedly governed the world since 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.760 the creation of the United Nations in nineteen forty five. 0:21:56.480 --> 0:22:02.399 The hypocrisies and the variances and the exceptions are many, 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:07.439 and there's always workarounds, and the United States and the 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:11.720 Soviet Union certainly found ways to skirt, you know, any 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.880 kind of limits that were placed on them by international law. 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:17.800 But it does kind of create a venue right, a 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:22.560 moral arena in which right and wrong could be understood 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:26.159 and argued over. You know, there's very other, very little 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:31.720 recourse for poor and weak nations to defend themselves. I mean, 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:34.359 we can go back to ducidities right, the strong to 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:36.840 do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must, 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:40.119 and the conceit that there is such a thing as 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:45.080 international law that is somehow transcendent of power relations is 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:47.480 you know, it might just be a conceit, but it 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:51.680 still at least creates terms on which nations could deal 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.720 with each other. And you know, and again Latin America 0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:58.000 and the United States is absolutely a perfect example of that. 0:22:58.160 --> 0:23:03.240 For Latin America's commit meant to sovereignty and cooperative relations 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:08.520 was largely forged in relationships living under what was becoming 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:12.600 the most powerful nation and world history, as it moved 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:16.160 across the Pacific, as it took Texas, as it took Mexico, 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:19.160 as it took Cuba, as it took Puerto Rico, as 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:22.880 it took Panama. You know, so you had these jurists 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:25.639 like writing law books and coming up with these legal 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:29.679 principles and the way they get implemented though often is 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:33.640 really about power. So you know, Argentine the legal theorist, 0:23:33.720 --> 0:23:37.720 for instance, Luis Drago, for instance, at the early twentieth century, 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:43.520 when Italian and British and German war boats were showing 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:47.440 up at Venezuela trying to collect debt, debt that had 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:51.640 gone back to the colony that European banks were claiming 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:55.040 that Venezuela owed because of the Spanish crown, you know, 0:23:55.200 --> 0:23:59.280 contracted loans in seventeen seventy six, and whenever they did, 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:03.639 Drago issued a principle, the Drago doctrine, that you cannot 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:08.000 use coercion to collect debt. Now, the United States collected 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:09.360 plenty of debt through. 0:24:09.119 --> 0:24:10.320 Coercion, and we could. 0:24:10.960 --> 0:24:13.040 They can look at Donald Trump and what's going on 0:24:13.119 --> 0:24:16.479 in Venezuela right now. But the United States kind of 0:24:16.640 --> 0:24:20.000 liked the Drago doctrinn They didn't want Italian and German 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:25.800 and British warships flitting around the Caribbean bombing the coast 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:29.320