Seeing the difficult situation that Spain was in, Britain proposed a joint British-American action to stop other European countries from establishing colonies in the Americas. The Secretary of State John Quincy Adams opposed this plan because he thought that the United States should be acting independently. After taking up on John Adam's advice, President James Monroe announced a new policy in his annual message to Congress in December of 1823. This statement, known as the Monroe Doctrine, was a landmark in United States history. In Monroe's own words, the important points of the Monroe …show more content…
has done abroad to date. Its participation in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War was to prevent a powerful union from Europe and Asia. The reason behind this objective was that if another powerful union emerges in a crucial region, it will have the power and the interest to challenge U.S. over the Western Hemisphere. So long as states are demanding for power regionally, they will not have the motivation to mount a serious challenge to the U.S. The U.S. has wasted a lot of effort in Europe and Asia in what amounts to a preventive defense of the Monroe Doctrine.
However, the Obama administration is not necessarily destroying the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine. If a country like Russia or especially China were to try and station large numbers of troops in Central America, it’d likely have to go through the U.S. military first. Obama's administration, however, calculates that such a possibility remains remote and America’s true feelings on the matter can be communicated to leaders in Moscow or Beijing if the need