ANZUS and the Monroe Doctrine

Sixty-two years ago, Australia’s External Affairs Minister Percy Spender, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister F.W. Doidge and Special US Representative John Foster Dulles gathered in Canberra to discuss a draft Japanese peace treaty, which the USA wanted Australia and New Zealand to join, and to discuss the drafting of a tripartite security treaty, which became the ANZUS Treaty.

In the opening clause of Article IV of the ANZUS Treaty (“Each Party recognises that an armed attack in the Pacific Area on any of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety …”), the phrase “dangerous to its own peace and safety” was lifted from the Monroe Declaration, or Doctrine, promulgated by President James Monroe in his message to Congress on December 2, 1823.

What led to the Monroe Doctrine, and what did it declare? How did it find its way into the ANZUS Treaty? With what effect?

In the beginning was the formation of the Holy Alliance—Russia, Prussia and Austria—after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Britain decided against membership because it did not share the others’ view that their task was to preserve existing institutions—principally their own monarchies—should they be threatened by revolution.

Britain regarded the Holy Alliance as composed of autocratic monarchies while Britain, although a monarchy, prided itself on being a constitutional monarchy established by revolution—the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Moreover, Britain did not believe, as the Holy Alliance powers did, in engaging in “the superintendence of the internal affairs of other states”. Indeed, Britain thought that the Holy Alliance’s general principle of “setting things to right whenever they thought them wrong” was a standing threat to all. Only if “actual danger menaces the peace of Europe” (what today we call the balance of power in Europe) was interference justified. In other words, internal change was inevitable and must be accepted, but treaty obligations and Europe’s territorial balance must be upheld.

So when Ferdinand VII of Spain was forced by revolt in 1823 to accept an ultra-democratic constitution, the Holy Alliance powers wanted to intervene but Britain did not, saying, “We shall be found in our place when actual danger menaces the system of Europe”, but judging that the revolt was not a danger to the rest of Europe.

The Spanish revolt had begun in 1820, when Ferdinand, concerned about the loss, actual and prospective, to Spain of revenue and international clout occasioned by many of Spain’s Latin American colonies having declared their independence or being intent on doing so, ordered an expeditionary force to reconquer, and end the independence aspirations, of those lands. But the expeditionary force mutinied before even setting out, and a long civil war ensued—not about Ferdinand’s wish to recover Spain’s position in Latin America but because of his insistence on being an autocratic monarch. Eventually, in April 1823 France, with the consent and indeed encouragement of the Holy Alliance powers, but against the wishes of Britain, intervened militarily in Spain on Ferdinand’s side and in due course restored him to the throne.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary George Canning was fearful that France would use its successful intervention to seize the opportunity not only to become the predominant influence in Spain but also to take Spain’s place in Latin America, both politically and in trade and commerce—to the distinct disadvantage of Britain. So he decided to try to bring in the USA on Britain’s side. He proposed in August 1823 to the US Ambassador in London a public Anglo-American declaration that neither government had any claim to the current or former Spanish colonies (the USA, but not yet Britain, had formally recognised the independence of Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Chile) and neither would view with indifference the transfer of any part of them to another power.

Finding he was getting nowhere with the US Ambassador, Canning turned to the source of his concerns—France—and in October somewhat surprisingly got France to disclaim “any intention or desire” to appropriate any part of Spanish America or to obtain any exclusive advantages there. As it happened, this was the very day on which the US Ambassador’s report of Canning’s August proposal reached Washington. The ensuing discussion in the US cabinet, already concerned about France’s takeover of Spain and about Russia’s intentions regarding north-west America, took up most of November.

Jefferson and Madison, Monroe’s two presidential predecessors, urged acceptance of Canning’s proposal, but Secretary of State (and later President) John Quincy Adams declared, “It would be more candid, as well as more dignified, to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in a cockboat [the small boat often towed behind a bigger vessel] in the wake of a British man-of-war.” Monroe eventually agreed; hence his message to Congress of December 2, 1823.

By the message, the USA (in summary) informed the powers of the Old World that the New World of North and South America was no longer open to European colonisation and that any “interposition” in the New World by the European powers in an attempt to extend European political influence into the New World would be considered by the USA as “dangerous to our peace and safety” and that such “interposition in any form” could not be beheld “with indifference” by the USA or “in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the USA”. The USA would not interfere in European wars or internal affairs, and expected Europe to stay out of American affairs.

This US Declaration was not entirely welcome to Britain (see Wendy Hinde’s George Canning, 1973), but at least it warned off France from appropriating any part of Spanish America or trying to obtain there any exclusive advantages, including commercial. Moreover, the reality was that the Doctrine’s opposition to European “interposition” in the New World could be enforced only by the Royal Navy. So in the result, the cockboat did follow in the wake of the British man-of-war—and did so for the next ninety-nine years, when at the Washington Conference of 1921–22 Britain and the USA, by agreeing to have the same number of capital ships, made the cockboat and the man-of-war the same size. And soon after, of course, even equal size was out of date.

So much for the Monroe Doctrine. But how, 128 years after its promulgation, and in a quite different context, did it come to be imported into the ANZUS Treaty? Spender claims in his Exercises in Diplomacy that in discussion with his advisers in February 1951, before the Canberra talks began, “upon the form of the draft treaty toward which we should work”, it was agreed that “Our aim … [should be] a simple and effective [security] guarantee … the strongest being … a formal treaty commitment as in the North Atlantic Treaty (NAT).”

But during the Canberra talks, Spender and his advisers agreed that “the form of guarantee employed in the NAT—Article 5—was ‘out’ in view of Dulles’s observations in the talks”. Still, Spender and his advisers agreed, clearly as a second-best, “A guarantee based on the words in which the Monroe Doctrine was expressed would be satisfactory from Australia’s point of view, and this, it was decided, was what we should aim at.”

Dulles was also in on the Monroe Doctrine fatherhood act. Despite Australian and New Zealand officials having been told, well before the Canberra negotiations, by a State Department official (who came to Canberra with Dulles) that what the USA had in contemplation was a treaty which would “declare that an attack on any one party would be an attack on all”—words taken from Article 5 of the NAT—Dulles arrived in Canberra determined not to replicate that formula, because of the US Senate’s objection to it as infringing Congress’s sole right under the Constitution to “declare war”. Dulles’s own view, expressed to Congress at the time, was that the Senate’s objection was not to the point when another state committed an act of aggression against the USA, as Japan did in 1941, or declared war on the USA, as Germany did in 1941, since in those cases—in neither of which had Congress declared war—a state of war was brought into instant existence by that other state. Moreover, while Congress had the constitutional right to declare war, the President, as Commander-in-Chief under the Constitution, had the right to engage the USA in war if started by another state’s act or declaration of war.

Even so, Dulles at Canberra did not want to start another fight with Congress—the NAT wording “had been objected to in the Senate at the time and would be objected to still more now”. So in the Canberra negotiations he said he wanted “something simpler” than the NAT formula, something not containing a “formal pledge such as in the NAT”. He had in fact told the New Zealand ambassador in Washington these things weeks before the Canberra negotiations, and had gone on to tell the ambassador that his “present thinking”, though not yet “crystallised”, was for “something on the lines of a new and reciprocal Monroe Doctrine”. Moreover, in his opinion, expressed after Canberra, the “practical effect” (of the Monroe Doctrine formula) was actually the same as the objected-to NAT words; and in the Canberra negotiations he pointed out that the Monroe Doctrine was still continuing after some 130 years, which he said justified his view that, unlike the NAT, ANZUS should have no time limit.

So much for the joint parenthood of the Monroe Doctrine in the ANZUS Treaty. But what effect did including the Monroe Doctrine words have? Were Spender, and according to him Dulles, justified in asserting that Article IV was “the security guarantee clause, expressed in terms of the Monroe Doctrine”? The answer is No.

For the recognition by each party that an armed attack on any party “would be dangerous to its own peace and safety” is plainly not a guarantee or even a commitment, but simply a prescription as to how an armed attack on any party is to be viewed. The North Atlantic Treaty too, in its Article 5, prescribes how an armed attack on any of the treaty’s parties is to be viewed: as “an attack against them all”.

Where, then, if anywhere, in ANZUS, should Spender and Dulles have looked for a “security guarantee”? Plainly not in the first clause of Article IV but equally plainly in the second clause—“and declares that it would act to meet the common danger”—undoubtedly a commitment, an obligation to “act”.

That ANZUS clause is indistinguishable in effect from that used in the corresponding Article 5 of the NAT, where the commitment undertaken by each party, in the event of an armed attack on any of the parties, is to take “forthwith … such action as it deems necessary including the use of armed force”. So Spender unknowingly achieved not his second-best aimed-for outcome of “a guarantee based on the words in which the Monroe Doctrine was expressed”, but the best outcome, because in his view it was “the strongest” guarantee: “a formal treaty commitment as in the NAT”.

Still, it should be noted that in both treaties exactly what action each party takes, and whether that action includes armed force and if so how much and of what type and where and how soon, are left to each party to determine in all the many and varied circumstances at the time the commitment to “act” might arise.

So whether each of the commitments, in the NAT “to take such action as [each party] deems necessary”, and in ANZUS to “act to meet the common danger”, truly amounts to a “security guarantee” is another, and debatable matter. But at least a commitment to “act” or to “take action” is more reassuring and more of a deterrent than to say, as the Monroe Doctrine itself did, that it would be impossible for the USA to regard “with indifference” any European “interposition” in the New World; or as President Truman chose to use (but was later dissuaded) the same Monroe Doctrine word indifference, in saying in a public statement about the ANZUS draft treaty that “no one of the three parties would be indifferent to an armed attack upon the other”; or as President Roosevelt stated in August 1938, “I give to you [Canadians] an assurance that the people of the USA will not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened”; or as the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said in a meagre response to being asked by the USA for help in Vietnam, “I have respectful sympathy for the troubles of my loyal ally.”