El Salvador crisis

With all the troubles that are gathering for the United States in the Caribbean, I'm surprised there's been no mention of the 160th anniversary of an American doctrine that, ever since it was enunciated, has been the controlling doctrine of American foreign policy in this hemisphere.

It doesn't have the force of law. It doesn't need to. It would be as absurd as a British law that laid it down that neither Napoleon, nor Hitler, nor any other foreign leader had the right to invade Britain. This American doctrine is known as the Monroe Doctrine and was the brainchild of the fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, a Virginian who has several other exploits and enlightened convictions to his credit. He fought and was wounded in the War for Independence, he studied law under Thomas Jefferson and no doubt from him acquired his opposition to a constitution which did not include a written Bill of Rights.

Monroe entered the first American Senate and a year after he'd sat there, he saw such a bill come into force, namely, the ten original amendments to the constitution which are known as the Bill of Rights and which proclaim such things as freedom of the press and religion, limits on search and seizure, the right to a speedy trial, the forbidding of cruel and unusual punishment and so on.

Monroe was, at various times, a governor of Virginia and the United States' Minister to France. At the age of 58, he was elected president and again, four years later, with an electoral majority which has never been equalled. He lacked only one vote to make his re-election unanimous. And I suppose it's due to him, as much as to anybody, that for nearly the next hundred years, the United States did not have to bother too much about a foreign policy and could concentrate on developing and expanding the new nation.

Monroe had come in the first time shortly after Britain had been defeated a second time in a war with the United States, the so-called 'War of 1812' – even young people then had the most vivid memories of the capture of Detroit, the invasion of Maryland, the British burning of the Capitol and the White House and they were still reeling with surprise, if not pride, at having defeated the British fleet.

There remained only two obstacles to the unity of this country under a non-European flag. There were border clashes with the Canadians and Spain still owned Florida. In his second term, Monroe settled the borders with Canada and, as proof of his goodwill, he stripped the 3,000-mile border of all its forts. He made it painfully clear to the Spanish that if they stayed in Florida, they would have to fight for it against hopeless odds. The Spanish, who were then being battered by rebellions throughout their entire South American empire, saw the point and ceded Florida once for all. Not without, however, the bitter afterthought which rankles to this day that they'd been given Florida at the end of the War of Independence as a reward for not pressing their claims to Gibraltar.

Spain, in fact, at this time – and we're talking about the 1810s and Twenties – was the favourite whipping boy from the Caribbean to Cape Horn. Talk about an idea whose time had come! Revolution was the means and independence was the idea. It's astonishing to look at the map today, at the vast extent of the Spanish dominion in Central and the whole of South America and realise, in merely the eight years that James Monroe was in the White House, the number of countries that fought for and won their independence from Spain. First Chile, then Argentina and Colombia. Then Nicaragua and Mexico and Honduras and Guatemala and Venezuela. Then Peru, then Uruguay and Bolivia. All in eight years.

Paraguay had gone a few years before and in 1822 Brazil proclaimed itself free from Portugal. There were other conquered places, colonies, mostly of Britain but after the triumphs of 1814, these island colonies were not regarded as threats to anybody.

Well, with all these liberating upheavals in South and Central America and with Florida recovered and Canada pacified, Monroe, seeing the last European power ousted from North America, Monroe was moved to look over the whole Western hemisphere and he felt enough confidence in the growing power of the United States to proclaim his doctrine which declared, simply and grandly, that henceforth the United States would oppose all European intervention in the Americas. Cuba was still a hold-out and would be until in 1898, the United States jumped in to help her eject the Spaniards from their last American stronghold.

Since then, it's been assumed by the United States, and for that matter by the whole of Southern and Central America, that no European power would intervene in an American dispute and certainly would not attempt to get a military foothold. Obviously and increasingly throughout this century and the rise of the United States as a world power, no country of the 21 American republics ever presented a threat to the United States.

In the first third of this century, Uncle Sam basked in the benevolence of his role as the big protector of embattled little states to the south. American businessmen invested far and wide in sugar and fruits and oil and mining and if American interests were threatened by some upstart rebel, the marines were sent in. They were sent in to Nicaragua twice when that country defaulted on its American loans. And if some Mexican bandit temporarily terrified his countrymen, he had only to dare to cross over the American border, as one of them did in 1916, and the bugle sounded and the American cavalry beat him back again.

For most, indeed for all, of my time, South America was looked on by Americans as a dark continent peppered with picturesque Indian relics. Central America was a hotbed of tinpot dictators and almost monotonous and enumerable military coups. Will Rogers, the old cowboy philosopher, once said, 'In our country, every boy has a chance to be president. In Central America, every boy has to be president'.

Not until 1933, however, did an American president, Franklin Roosevelt, put out a public proclamation forswearing ever again American intervention in Western hemisphere nations, giving them a hundred years after the Monroe Doctrine, a Monroe Doctrine of their own.

Well, today, not even the most obtuse politician or the most bland commentator would deny that a new era has dawned, exploded rather, in United States Central America relations. The eruption came 21 years ago when the Russians installed missile bases in Cuba. President Kennedy, during that awful October weekend, himself mentioned the Monroe Doctrine to remind any American who'd forgotten it that a European power was threatening to intervene in the Americas and I think there's little doubt now that if the Russians had not backed away from the naval and air quarantine that Kennedy set up, the United States would have gone into Cuba, at least to obliterate the missile sites.

Today, I'm sure that if Nicaragua's Sandinista government were a rebel government, even a leftist government of the old sort supplied with arms and men from neighbouring states, it would be fretted about but it would not be thought of as a possible threat to the security of the United States and, similarly, if the government of El Salvador were being opposed only by local guerrillas, it would not seem so important a bastion of stability.

What riddles this whole mounting debate about giving substantial aid in arms and money to the guerrillas fighting the Sandinistas and giving more aid to prop up the elected government of El Salvador is the fear in Washington – bolstered by the knowledge claimed by the intelligence services – that not only the Soviet Union is bringing in massive military aid, but also Cuba and the PLO. The administration has described Cuba as an 800-mile aircraft carrier and tells intelligence committees of the Senate and the House that the flow of arms and armaments from the Soviet Union does not stop short at conventional weapons and represents, 21 years after the missile crisis, a sustained intervention in the affairs of republics that in the nuclear age are in the United States' front yard.

If, as the administration claims, the threat to this country's security is real and massive, then it's amazing that the president has not appealed for massive help, including arms and men. The ratio of economic aid to military aid is still three to one but when the president made his fervent appeal to Congress to vote an amount of military aid the Congress does not seem disposed to grant him, the one standing ovation they gave him was for his promise not ever to send in to El Salvador American men.

It reminded me of Franklin Roosevelt's promise given to American mothers in his last rally before the 1940 election. 'I say to you, mothers, again and again and again, that no American boys will be sent into any foreign war'. This is what everybody aches to hear and they ache to hear it again because they very much fear it may happen – may have to happen – if the United States chooses to arrest the spread of Soviet-supported regimes in the Caribbean.

This is a consummation devoutly to be driven from the mind, even though in the latest opinion polls 72 per cent of Americans think it likely that if the rebels topple the government of El Salvador, leftist rebels will do the same to other governments in other Central American countries. In other words, the domino theory is back again in America's front yard and this time three Americans in four think it apt to happen and don't propose to do much about it.

The Democrats' official reply to the president is the rather limp one of saying, 'Let's get the rebels and the El Salvador government sitting down together to negotiate' – something the rebels have no intention of doing. It is an unresolved problem and nobody seems to have the answer.

Winston Churchill once said, 'The day the airplane was invented was a bad day for Britain'. We can say, without giving aid or comfort to anybody, 'The day the Americans invented a nuclear bomb was a bad day for America'.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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