Opinion | Trump’s Maga ambition may be more audacious than we think
Outrageous? Yes. But a United States of all Americas and including Greenland would be the first truly planetary North-South superpower
James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, enunciated his Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which proclaimed the Western Hemisphere (basically North and South America) off limits to further European colonisation even as America respected existing European colonies in the Americas.
Since 1823, the American drive to the Pacific, assumption of the former lands of the Spanish empire – Texas, California, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines (which became independent in 1946) – and purchase of Alaska from Russia (in 1867), all extended Pax Americana.
In the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt, as the 26th president, engineered the treaty that allowed America to build and control the Panama Canal, and declared his “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine: announcing that America would intervene as a last resort to ensure Western Hemisphere nations did not violate US rights or bring foreign aggression.
