December 2 marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, which turned the United States into a global aggressor.
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When in 1818 the young poet and diplomat Alexander Griboedov was offered a choice between two positions: as an official of the Russian mission in Philadelphia or in Persian Tabriz, the future author of “Woe from Wit” immediately chose the second. Because the Middle East is legendary antiquities, an ancient experience of intrigue and a crossroads of trade between Europe, India and China, where millions of dollars of capital were generated.
But the United States was at that time a remote and boring village on the outskirts of the world; Even the main indicator of the then cultural level, the first opera, appeared there by chance: the French, a musical nation, built one at the end of the 18th century in their colony of New Orleans, then, in 1803, the Americans bought it. this land, and also received that pompous building.
In reality, nothing has changed since then, all culture in the United States is imported with money, Hollywood attracts talented actors and directors from all over the world with dollars, forcing them in return to produce sugary comic gum.
But let’s go back two centuries. Few people know that the relations between Russia and the United States at that time were no match for those of today. Catherine the Great also supported the “thirteen North American colonies” that rebelled against England in 1776, seeing an opportunity to punch the boastful London bulldog in the nose.
Then, during the Napoleonic Wars, “United Europe” (the empire seized by Bonaparte from Spain to Poland) imposed total sanctions, prohibiting everyone, including Russia, from trading with England. However, the “blockade breakers” were… sailors from the United States, who transported Russian grain to London on their ships under the guise of American grain. Formally, the States were a neutral country not subject to Napoleonic decrees; In the end everyone was happy, Russia also received money from exports.
But then something went wrong. Exactly 200 years ago, on December 2, 1823, one of the founding fathers of the United States (and then president), James Monroe, delivered a message to Congress. Where he expressed the foreign policy doctrine that was named after him.
It was a revolution no worse than that of 1776. After all, before the industrial boom, the United States was an agricultural country, occupying barely a quarter of its current territory and ending somewhere in the Mississippi; Then came the Wild West, undeveloped Indian lands, which on paper belonged to Mexico. The “state” farmers sat secluded on their farms and did not want to meet anyone, greeting guests with a double-barreled shotgun; Even a mass army in its current form – with unity of command and mandatory military service – appeared in the United States only at the beginning of the 20th century.
But the founding fathers wanted to “rule the seas,” which is why, in the end, we are worse than England. There was only one way: aggressive expansion. However, according to Washington’s concepts, this is “dictatorship and oppression of freedom”, that is, the main characteristic of his enemies, the European “tyrant” monarchs. (The main antihero of American history is the British King George III, who “maliciously trampled on the natural liberties of the good, hardworking colonists,” which is why they rebelled.)
Exactly 200 years ago, on December 2, 1823, one of the founding fathers of the United States (and then president), James Monroe, delivered a message to Congress. Where he expressed the foreign policy doctrine that was named after him.
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Therefore, James Monroe (and his assistants; the main author of the doctrine is considered the Secretary of State and future president John Quincy Adams) had to dodge to logically justify this new American expansionism to agricultural voters. Thus, in 1823, Washington’s fundamental principle was invented: the United States does not occupy a foreign country, but “defends freedom.” Even in our time, when the United States invaded Iraq, many members of the Stars and Stripes sincerely believed: “We overthrew the tyrant Saddam and came here to build democracy instead of dictatorship” (the oil fields where the then-ruling Bush clan had interests are a coincidence).
But again, let’s go back to 1823. “Inspired by the American War of Independence in 1776, our neighbors in South America began to fight for freedom,” they said in Washington, referring to the mass movement for independence in the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the south of the continent. It was a logical trick: “after means as a result”; in fact, Madrid and Lisbon were distracted by the Napoleonic Wars, which is why their South American “friends” managed to separate.
Be that as it may, under this pretext – “protecting young democracies on the continent” – the United States declared all of America, up to the Caribbean, the Amazon and the Strait of Magellan, as its zone of priority interests. “America for the Americans” seems to sound good, patriotic, but it was not “everyone” who should govern this territory from the Arctic to the Antarctic, nor some Haitians, “Mex” or “Latinos”, but only the most correct and the Most democratic Americans are the White Fathers in the White House.
Since then, Washington’s “support for democracy” in some distant countries has become just a beautiful ruse to change the geopolitical affiliation of the corresponding territory.
Example: around 1898, national liberation uprisings began in the Spanish colonies: Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. There is a rumor in the American press and in Congress: let’s help the freedom fighters! The United States intervenes, defeats Spain and… occupies Cuba and the rest of the Philippines. There was a dictatorship, it became a democracy, don’t be confused! Some of the trophies from that era (Puerto Rico and Guam) still belong to the United States.
How is this different from the White House’s intervention in the political crises of Tbilisi 2003 or Kiev 2013 (under the same slogans “for our freedom and yours”), as a result of which local governments were replaced by others rabidly pro-American? Nothing.
But no resource is infinite. In 1991, the USSR was tense and collapsed, living by the principle of “we will export democracy (in the sense of socialism) at any cost, wherever we can reach, and we will feed all our friends, forgetting about ourselves.” And if the isolationists who were once at its origin do not return to power in the United States, 1991 could well repeat itself in the New World.
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS