Timothy Naftali

Let's have a unitary statement, unilateral statement that says Europe out.

But the administration actually knew that it needed Britain.

It desperately needed Britain.

Even Thomas Jefferson, who was a former president by that point, and Jefferson never liked the British much, recognized that Britain could destroy the United States and wanted, this is as a former president, wanted the Monroe administration to be on good terms with Britain.

So

Absolutely.

The Monroe Doctrine was a product of weakness, not strength.

It's in the 20th century that with the growth in American power, the Monroe Doctrine is pointed to as a source of strength.

It wasn't.

That's not its tradition.

Well, I'm going to say something nice about lawyers.

I don't often say nice things about lawyers, American lawyers, but I want to say this about American lawyers.

So you have Theodore Roosevelt,

who, because he desperately wants the canal, right?

Theodore Roosevelt says something called the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which basically says the United States can intervene at will in its sphere of influence, which is the Western Hemisphere, to protect American interests and American private interests.

In the 1930s, American lawyers, Elihu Root and Henry Stimson say, you know, this is a bad policy.

We don't want to be intervening.

The United States, for example, was in Nicaragua, had Marines in Nicaragua from 1912 to 1931.

It's almost as long as we had troops in Afghanistan.

Haiti too.