The Johnson Corollary

For a long while after the gunfire has died away in the Dominican Republic, diplomats, lawyers, politicians and professors will be arguing the legality and morality of the U.S. intervention.

The U.S., of course, did not invent intervention--it has been an instrument of nations ever since there have been any. The U.S. has probably used that instrument with greater restraint, and less for the purpose of territorial aggrandizement, than any other major power in human history. Yet upon no fewer than 148 occasions--the latest being in the Dominican Republic--the U.S. has "intervened" in the sense of landing armed troops on foreign shores in situations short of declared war.

The classic use of U.S. military intervention, has been to enforce respect for American lives and property. Thus, in 1801, marines landed in Tripoli to free the crew of a seized U.S. ship. In 1849, a U.S. naval force debarked in Turkey to gain the release of an imprisoned American. In 1851, U.S. troops intervened on Johanna Island, off East Africa, to exact redress for the imprisonment of an American whaling captain.

A Bulwark Against Designs. But far more important than the protection of American nationals was worry that European countries might come over the Atlantic again to intervene in pursuit of old colonialist designs. This fear, in turn, gave rise to the U.S.'s enduring defensive bulwark against foreign encroachment in the Western Hemisphere: the Monroe Doctrine.

Contained in President James Monroe's State of the Union message on Dec. 2, 1823, the doctrine declared: "The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." Implicit in the Monroe Doctrine was the threat that the U.S. would oppose any such European intervention with armed force.

While the U.S. was occupied with the Civil War, Spain regained control of its former colony of Santo Domingo and France set up the Austrian Archduke Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico. But in 1865, shortly after Appomattox, the Spaniards cleared out of Santo Domingo; a year later France, under U.S. pressure, began pulling its troops out of Mexico, leaving Maximilian to die before a Mexican firing squad. In 1903, after Germany, Britain and Italy decreed a blockade of Venezuela to force the dictator of the day to pay claims due their citizens, President Theodore Roosevelt warned the Europeans away with a threat of intervention by the U.S. fleet.

"Wrongdoing or Impotence." A year later, T.R. enunciated his "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine Bluntly, Teddy declared: "Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States however reluctantly ... to the exercise of an international police power " Teddy's was the Big Stick. In 1903 after the U.S. had kicked the Spaniards out of Cuba and supported Panama's revolt against Colombia because of Washington's interest in an isthmian canal, Roosevelt signed treaties with Cuba and Panama providing for U.S intervention to protect the fledgling republics' independence. But T.R.'s successors also invoked the corollary. In 1909 when Nicaragua erupted in chaos under the corrupt anti-American dictatorship of Jose Santos Zelaya, President Taft sent in troops, who occupied the Central American republic almost continually until 1933.

In 1915, after the ex-French colony of Haiti had deposed, blown up, poisoned or butchered six Presidents in four years, and with France already starting to land troops, U.S Marines moved in, ruled the Negro republic for 9 years. In 1916, after similarly bloody tumult in the Dominican Republic, marines intervened, stayed until 1924. In each case, the American intervention forces created local constabularies, collected customs and serviced the country's foreign debts.

The Organization. In 1933, announcing that the U.S. wanted to be a "good neighbor," President Franklin Roosevelt vowed that "the definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention." But during World War II, Roosevelt himself had to move urgently into Latin American internal affairs with economic, diplomatic and military pressure to counter Axis influence.

The Organization of American States was formed at Bogota in 1948 as a means, strongly urged by the U.S., of helping the hemisphere help itself. Among the many provisions of its charter was Article 15, stating: "No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state."

But those were relatively innocent days, especially in so far as recognition of the hemispheric aims of international Communism was concerned. In the early 1950s, when a Red regime took over Guatemala, the OAS contented itself with only, a tentative step toward meeting the Communist threat. Adopted at the OAS's 1954 conference in Caracas, at John Foster Dulles' urging, was this resolution: "The domination or control of the political institutions of any American State by the international Communist movement, extending to this Hemisphere the political system of an extracontinental power, would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and political independence of the American States, endangering the peace of America, and would call for a Meeting of Consultation to consider the adoption of appropriate action in accordance with existing treaties." But no positive OAS action followed in Guatemala, and only a U.S.-supported invasion by Guatemalan exiles toppled the Communists from power.

Thus, the danger was cited--but the remedy remained a "Meeting of Consultation." OAS meetings have never in the past been known for swift or decisive action. In more than six years of blatant Castro subversion-by-export, the OAS has had scores of meetings' managed at most to suspend trade with Cuba except for food and medicine, and bar diplomatic relations with Havana (Mexico has ignored the latter).

Made painfully aware of OAS shortcomings, President John Kennedy said shortly after the abortive 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion: "Let the record show that our restraint is not inexhaustible. Should it ever appear that the inter-American doctrine of noninterference merely conceals or excuses a policy of nonaction--if the nations of this hemisphere should fail to meet their commitments against outside Communist penetration--then I want it clearly understood that this Government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obligations, which are to the security of our nation. Should that time ever come, we do not intend to be lectured on 'intervention' by those whose character was stamped for all time on the bloody streets of Budapest."

"We Will Defend . . ." When confronted last fortnight by mounting evidence that Castro Communists had taken control of the revolt in the Dominican Republic, President Johnson had to act fast: if he had waited for the OAS to debate the whole thing, the Dominican Republic today would almost certainly be a Red-ruled island. Later, in explaining his actions, he enunciated what some have since called "the Johnson Doctrine." It is hardly that, being at most a corollary to the tried and true Monroe Doctrine. Johnson's policy is aimed, with stark simplicity, at barring "the establishment of another Communist government in the Western Hemisphere." Said Johnson: "I want you to know, and I want the world to know that as long as I am President of this country, we are going to defend ourselves. We will defend our soldiers against attackers. We will honor our treaties. We will keep our commitments. We will defend our nation against all those who seek to destroy not only the United States but every free country of this hemisphere."

If that is a new policy, it would come as a surprise to every American statesman, going back to James Monroe. For at its basis lies the sovereign right, defended by Americans of all decades of self-protection. It was perhaps best'expressed by a great Secretary of State, Elihu Root, who wrote in 1914: "it is well understood that the exercise' of the right of self-protection may, and frequently does, extend in its effect beyond the limits of the territorial jurisdiction the state exercising it ... [It is] the right of every sovereign state to protect itself by preventing a condition of affairs in which it will be too late to defend itself."

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