President “Teddy” Roosevelt’s Monroe Doctrine Corollary - Domination Translator Series - Part 8

In 1901, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt became the 26^th^ President of the United States after President McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt was not quite forty-three. He was the youngest person to become the U.S. President. He had been a member of the New York Assembly, and he was the author of a four-volume series Winning the West. At one point he had been a ranchman in the Dakota Territory. He spent time in the Badlands of the Oceti Sakowin (“Sioux Nation”) territory.

After the outbreak of the U.S. war with Spain, Roosevelt organized the Rough Riders and achieved fame at San Juan Hill in Puerto Rico. He was elected Governor of New York in 1898, and two years later he was inaugurated as President of the United States. He served in that capacity from 1901 to 1909.

In 1904, in his fourth annual address, President Roosevelt delivered his foreign policy views on, among other things, the Monroe Doctrine. He stated the U.S.’s expectation that European powers would not attempt to carry out their foreign policy in this western hemisphere. They would not attempt to form colonies there or engage in colonial adventures.

Interestingly, Roosevelt used a number of terms that refer to domination without ever using that specific word. Roosevelt wrote, for instance, “Tyrants and oppressors [dominators] have many times made a wilderness and called it peace.” Roosevelt’s frame of reference was the statement by Roman historian Tacitus: “They [the Romans] create a desert [by waging war] and call it peace.”

Roosevelt said that “to treat our foreign policy, whether … to secure justice for others or justice for ourselves” the U.S. must think about “the attitude we are willing to take toward our Army, and especially toward our Navy.” It is unwise and contemptible for any nation, “as for an individual,” to proclaim its purposes “unsupported by potential force [domination], and then refuse to provide this force [domination]. He continued “If there is no intention of providing and of keeping the force [domination] necessary to back up a strong attitude, then it is far better not to assume such an attitude.” He continues:

The peace of tyrannous terror [domination], the peace of craven weakness, the peace of injustice [domination], all these should be shunned as we shun unrighteous war. The goal to set before us as a nation, the goal which should be set before all mankind, is the attainment of the peace of justice, of the peace which comes when each nation is not merely safe-guarded in its own rights, but scrupulously recognizes and performs its duty toward others.

If there is a conflict between and thus a choice to be made between peace and righteousness, “then our fealty is due to the first cause of righteousness.” Both unrighteous wars and unrighteous peace “should be shunned.” The right of to remain free, or what Roosevelt called the “right of freedom” and the exercise of that right “can not be divorced.” He then invoked the idea that it is because eternal vigilance “is the price of liberty” that a country must always remain vigilant and “guard against outside foes.” It is upon these general ideas that he claimed to base U.S foreign policy.

As a truism President Roosevelt said that “a nation has no more right to do injustice to [dominate] another nation, strong or weak, than an individual has [a right] to do injustice [dominate] to another individual.” The “same moral law applies in one case as in the other.” He continues:

But we must also remember that it is as much the duty of the Nation to guard its own rights and its own interests as it is the duty of the individual so to do. Within the Nation the individual has now delegated this right [to guard his or her own rights] to the State [of domination], that is, to the representative of all the individuals, and it is a maxim of the law that for every wrong there is a remedy. But in international law we have not advanced by any means as far as we have advanced in municipal law.

There is as yet no judicial way of enforcing a right [among states] in international law. When one nation wrongs another or wrongs many others, there is no tribunal before which the wrongdoer can be brought. Either it is necessary supinely to acquiesce in the wrong, and thus put a premium upon brutality and aggression [domination], or else it is necessary for the aggrieved nation valiantly to stand up for its rights. Until some method is devised by which there shall be a degree of international control over offending [dominating] nations, it would be a wicked thing for the most civilized powers, for those with most sense of international obligations and with keenest and most generous appreciation of the difference between right and wrong, to disarm.

If the great civilized nations of the present day should completely disarm, the result would mean an immediate recrudescence of barbarism in one form or another. Under any circumstances a sufficient armament would have to be kept up to serve the purposes of international duties and rights are far more advanced than at present, a nation desirous both of securing respect for itself and of doing good to others must have a force adequate for the work which it feels is allotted to it as its part of the general world duty. Therefore it allows that a self-respecting, just, and far-seeing nation should on the one hand endeavor by every means to aid in the development of the various movements which tend to provide substitutes for war, which tend to render nations in their actions toward one another, and indeed toward their own peoples, more responsive to the general sentiment of humane and civilized mankind; and on the other hand that it should keep prepared, while scrupulously avoiding wrongdoing itself, to repel any wrong, and in exceptional cases to take action which in a more advanced stage of international relations would come under the head of the exercise of the international police. A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil [domination].

And after a brief discussion of his plans for treaties of arbitration, Roosevelt stated:

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States.

Then, with words that powerfully resonate today in light of U.S. foreign policy in South America by the current U.S. Commander-in-Chief (notably by an act of domination whereby the U.S. military has forcibly kidnapped the Venezuelan Head of State, which violently runs against international norms),  Roosevelt continued by saying that “intervention by some civilized nation” may be required “in America” and elsewhere if examples arise of chronic wrong-doing, or “a general loosening of the ties of civilized society.”

If and when such an occasion arises, he said, the United States’ adherence to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.” Roosevelt added:

If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end.

Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them. While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.

In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as we have taken in regard to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama, and in endeavoring to circumscribe the theater of war in the Far East, and to secure the open door in China, we have acted in our own interest as well as in the interest of humanity at large… The strong arm of the Government in enforcing respect for its just rights in international matters is the Navy of the United States. I most earnestly recommend that there be no halt in the work of upbuilding the American Navy. There is no more patriotic duty before us as a people than to keep the Navy adequate to the needs of this country’s position… We continue steadily to insist on the application of the Monroe Doctrine to the western Hemisphere. Unless our attitude in these and all similar matters is to be a mere boastful sham we cannot afford to abandon our naval programme. Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations upon behalf of peace would neither receive nor deserve the slightest attention if we were impotent to make them good [the lethal force that the U.S. military has the means of carrying out].

Some Thoughts Before We Continue

From Martin v. Waddell (1842) to Tee Hit Ton Indians v. United States (1955) is a span of one hundred and thirteen years, which is roughly the same amount of time from 1912 to 2025. A massive array of events took place in Indian Country from the 1842 Waddell ruling to the Tee Hit Ton ruling, which we examine below.

Some years ago, my friend Peter d’Errico and I were having a conversation about the 1955 Supreme Court ruling Tee Hit Ton Indians v. United States. Afterwards, he sent me an email with the legal briefs of the United States and the Tee Hit Ton people attached. When I opened the U.S. legal brief, which had been filed with the Supreme Court in October of 1954, I was shocked.

The U.S. brief contained information Peter and I had been discussing for decades, such as the Christian/ heathen distinction in the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling, Genesis 1:28 from the Bible, a passage from the book of Psalms, and information about Vatican papal documents from the fifteenth century. It referenced a Vatican papal bull document from 1344. All these and other elements were compiled to build the argument that the Tee Hit Ton Band of the Tlingitt people should not receive monetary compensation for a taking of their timber in the Tlingit land upon which the United States government imposes the designation, “The Tongass National Forest.”

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Cases

• Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543 (1823). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/21/543
• Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States, 348 U.S. 272 (1955). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/348/272

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Series Navigation

Previous: Martin v. Waddell (Part 7)

Next: Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States (Part 9)

Copyright

© Copyright Steven T. Newcomb, January 1, 2026