World-System (1800-1900) Did the Monroe Doctrine Benefit Latin America?

 

The Monroe Doctrine (1820) ushered in, for the US and Latin America, the idea of spheres of influence. The US would recognize a country's dominance in regions of the World-System if other countries would recognize America's dominance over Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine was central to American grand strategy in the 20th century and has been resurrected in the 21st Century as the "Donroe Doctrine" by the Trump II Administration in the 2025 US National Security Strategy.

The original Monroe Doctrine had some benefits for Latin America (see below and in the graphic above) that only last until the 1880s. 

What the resurrected Monroe Doctrine signals for the Future is unclear, but what it does establish clearly is one explicit plank of the Right-Wing Platform: Isolationism and restricted military interventionism. My question in this post is whether the original Monroe Doctrine (1820) was any benefit to Latin American Economic Growth? 

To investigate this question, I used the LA19 model (Long-Nineteenth Century, 1800-1900) and applied it to the period 1800-1820. Then, I forecast from 1820-1920 using only the 1800-1820 data and only using the LA1 Growth Component of the model. The result is presented in the graphic*** at the beginning of this post.

From 1820 to about 1870, Geopolitical Alignment with the US would have been good for Latin America. after that, however, almost any other Geopolitical Alignment (BAU, Business-as-Usual, TECHP, Technical Productivity, W World System, LA Latin America or WE Western Europe) would have been better until 1900. 

The original Monroe Doctrine was supposedly aimed at reducing Western European influence in Latin America, a US Geopolitical objective. How shocks transmitted from the US and Western Europe were handled by Latin America is investigated here.

You can experiment yourself with the LA19 BAU model. The model is unstable, cyclical, nonlinear, and hard to stabilize without creating chaos. The LA19 US Input model, implementing the Monroe Doctrine, is also unstable but can be stabilized with instructions in the R-code using the dse Package. So, one benefit of the Monroe Doctrine was, potentially to stabilize Latin America Development.

This is not the entire story about the Monroe Doctrine: (1) What was happening in Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century to prompt the Monroe Doctrine? (2) What happened to Latin America during the Great Depression (early 20th Century)? And, (3) What can be expected to happen with the "Donroe" Doctrine in the 21st Century? I'll deal with these questions in future posts.

You can follow other posts I have written in the Blog Roll here. For more information about data sources and how the models were constructed, see the Boiler Plate.

Notes

*** The other Geopolitical Alignments (BAU,TECHP, W, LA, WE) are all grouped together since they are difficult to distinguish on the graphic, but see the AIC statistics below. 

AIC Statistics

ll the Geopolitical versions of the LA_19 model are unstable.

The best model, using the AIC criterion, takes the state of the US_19 model as input LA_US = (-1467 < AIC = -1412 < -1365). However, there is no clear separation between the other Geopolitical models, for example: LA_WE = (-1679 < AIC = -1609 < -1538), LA_W = (-1516 < AIC = -1441 < -1369), LA_TECHP = (-1611 < AIC = -1546 < -1465), LA_BAU = (-1552 < AIC = -1483 < -1402). From the graphic at the beginning of this post, after 1880 the BAU, TECHP and W start performing better in terms of exponential growth.

LA19 Measurement Model

The first component is Overall Growth, the second Component is Export-led Growth, the third Component is Malthusian Exports and the fourth component is a Real Export Controller. LA1=Overall Growth, LA2=Q-N-X, LA3=X-XREAL-N, LA4=N-XREAL.

In other words, Economic Control in Latin America was directed at shocks from World Trade which would become very important in the early 20th Century with transmitted shocks from the World Wars and the Great Depression. I look at how the Latin American Economic models handled shocks in another post here.