Monroe Doctrine Quotes

Mr. Morris, you should be proud of your great state. Its reception into the Union was a precedent which may have far-reaching effects hereafter, when the Pole and the Tropics may hold alliance to the Stars and Stripes. The power of Treaty may yet prove a vast engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true place as a political fable.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

You should talk to Ian about Cuba, old chap, that really gets him going. He says, and I agree, you lost. The Soviets sucked you into another trap. A fool’s mate. He believes they built their sites almost openly—wanting you to detect them and you did and then there was a lot of saber-rattling, the whole world’s frightened to death, and in exchange for the Soviet agreement to take the missiles out of Cuba your President tore up your Monroe Doctrine, the cornerstone of your whole security system.

In 1904 Roosevelt pronounced what has come to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. It mandated that any nation engaged in “chronic wrong-doing”—that is, did anything to threaten perceived US economic or political interests—would be disciplined militarily by the United States, which was to serve as an “international police power.”8

I think, sir, that a war, in the name of the Monroe Doctrine, will unite them to us.

The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible. These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in Age of Reason, a book that so outraged his contemporaries that he died rejected and despised by the nation that had once revered him as 'the father of the American Revolution.'... Other important founding fathers who espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe. [The Christian Nation Myth, 1999]

the Monroe Doctrine should be treated as the cardinal feature of American foreign policy.” But, he warned, “it would be worse than idle to assert it unless we intended to back it up, and it can be backed up only by a thoroughly good navy.

Didn’t JFK give Khrushchev a written promise not to invade Cuba, not to permit an invasion from American territory—or from any other place in the Western Hemisphere? Written, by God! So now, a hostile European power, Soviet Russia, totally against your Monroe Doctrine, is openly established ninety miles off your coast, the borders of which are guaranteed in writing by your own President and ratified by your own Congress. The Big K pulled off a colossal coup never duplicated in your whole history. And all for nothing!

Contrary to the writings of some historians, Monroe's proclamation was entirely his own creation-not Adam's. The assertion that Adams authored the "Monroe Doctrine" is not only untrue, it borders on the ludicrous by implying that President Monroe was little more than a puppet manipulated by another's hand. Such assertions show little insight into the presidency itself and the type of man who aspires to and assumes that office; indeed, they denigrate the character, the intellect, the intensity and the sense of power that drive American presidents.

Tiberius Caesar”—Adams supported Jefferson whenever he thought him right, particularly in regard to the 1807 embargo on American products to England and France, a retaliation for their wartime restrictions on United States trade. Since New England lived by trade with Europe, J.Q.A.’s support of the embargo so infuriated Massachusetts that he was forced out of the Senate before his term was up. But Jefferson’s successor, Madison, made him the first U.S. minister to Russia, and then sent him to Ghent to negotiate the end of the War of 1812, and on to London as minister, where he stayed until he became Secretary of State to the new President, Monroe, for whom he drafted what is still known (even if it is no longer in force) as the Monroe Doctrine.

Finally, the ambassadors concluded their task of keeping Europe not only out of American affairs but, indeed, out of the entire Western Hemisphere. In 1846 President Polk observed: “We must have California.” Since that Pacific littoral was part of Mexico, Polk provoked Mexico into a war with the United States. California, Arizona, and Utah were ceded two years later. More peacefully, the tidy-minded Polk acquired the Pacific Northwest by treaties with England. With the acquisition of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, the Union now filled the continent from sea to shining sea. In 1867 the Russians sold us their icebox, Alaska, while Hawaii was annexed in 1898, along with Puerto Rico and the reluctant Philippines. While this filling in of vast spaces with neatly ruled new states, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams produced for President James Monroe a doctrine declaring that the two American continents were off limits to Europe, as Europe would be to us. In 1917, by entering World War I, we in effect voided the Monroe Doctrine. But that was to gain yet another world, one that is currently—optimistically—called “global.” Benjamin

Navy Secretary Adams, a wealthy, polo-playing yachtsman, sent for Butler and delivered a blistering reprimand, declaring that he was doing so at the direct personal order of the President of the United States. Butler saw red. “This is the first time in my service of thirty-two years,” he snapped back, “that I’ve ever been hauled on the carpet and treated like an unruly schoolboy. I haven’t always approved of the actions of the administration, but I’ve always faithfully carried out my instructions. If I’m not behaving well it is because I’m not accustomed to reprimands, and you can’t expect me to turn my cheek meekly for official slaps!” “I think this will be all,” Adams said icily. “I don’t ever want to see you here again!” “You never will if I can help it!” Butler rasped, storming out of his office livid with anger. Just two days after his attack on the government’s gunboat diplomacy, which provoked a great public commotion, Undersecretary of State J. Reuben Clark privately submitted to Secretary of State Stimson the draft of a pledge that the United States would never again claim the right to intervene in the affairs of any Latin American country as an “international policeman.” The Clark Memorandum, which later became official policy—for a while at least—repudiated the (Theodore) Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that Smedley Butler had unmasked as raw gunboat diplomacy.

One might pause here to wonder how it is that the United States claims to support democracy and freedom in the world when it so often backs dictators like the Shah and Somoza. As I tell my human rights class every year, the United States always supports democracy and freedom, except when it doesn’t, which is all the time…. As political analyst Stephen Gowans explains, the United States is simply not what it claims to be, and most likely never has been: The United States—which began as 13 former British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America pursuing a “manifest destiny” of continental expansion, (the inspiration for Nazi Germany’s lebensraum policy); which fought a war with Spain for colonies; which promulgated the Monroe Doctrine asserting a sphere of influence in the Americas; which stole Panama to create a canal; whose special operations forces project US power in 81 countries; whose generals control the militaries of the combined NATO members in Europe and the military forces of South Korea; whose military command stations one hundred thousand troops on the territories of former imperialist rivals, manifestly has an empire. And yet this reality is denied, as assuredly as is the reality that the United States, built on the genocide of Native Americans and the slave labor of Africans, overtly white supremacist until the mid-1960s, and covertly white supremacist since, is unequivocally not a beacon of Enlightenment values, unless liberalism is defined as equality and liberty assigned exclusively to white men who own productive property. Indeed, so antithetical is the United States to the liberal values of the equality of all peoples and nations, freedom from exploitation and oppression, and the absence of discrimination on the bases of class, race, and sex, that it’s difficult to apprehend in what sense the United States has ever been liberal or has in any way had a legitimate claim to being the repository of the values of the Enlightenment.2

the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which progress advances at the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, that I did not make the favourable impression I had anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honours, the lowliest citizens in point of property, education, and character. Fortunately recollecting the peroration of a speech, on the purifying influences of American democracy and their destined spread over the world, made by a certain eloquent senator (for whose vote in the Senate a Railway Company, to which my two brothers belonged, had just paid 20,000 dollars), I wound up by repeating its glowing predictions of the magnificent future that smiled upon mankind—when the flag of freedom should float over an entire continent, and two hundred millions of intelligent citizens, accustomed from infancy to the daily use of revolvers, should apply to a cowering universe the doctrine of the Patriot Monroe.

I have come to believe that our culture’s popular understanding of these difficult doctrines is often a caricature of what the Bible actually teaches and what mature Christian theology has historically proclaimed. To Laugh At, To Live By What do I mean by a caricature? A caricature is a cartoonlike drawing of a real person, place, or thing. You’ve probably seen them at street fairs, drawings of popular figures like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Caricatures exaggerate some features, distort some features, and oversimplify some features. The result is a humorous cartoon. In one sense, a caricature bears a striking resemblance to the real thing. That picture really does look like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Features unique to the real person are included and even emphasized, so you can tell it’s a cartoon of that person and not someone else. But in another sense, the caricature looks nothing like the real thing. Salient features have been distorted, oversimplified, or blown way out of proportion. President Obama’s ears are way too big. Aunt Cindy’s grin is way too wide. And Marilyn Monroe . . . well, you get the picture. A caricature would never pass for a photograph. If you were to take your driver’s license, remove the photo, and replace it with a caricature, the police officer pulling you over would either laugh . . . or arrest you. Placed next to a photograph, a caricature looks like a humorous, or even hideous, distortion of the real thing. Similarly, our popular caricatures of these tough doctrines do include features of the original. One doesn’t have to look too far in the biblical story to find that hell has flames, holy war has fighting, and judgment brings us face-to-face with God. But in the caricatures, these features are severely exaggerated, distorted, and oversimplified, resulting in a not-so-humorous cartoon that looks nothing like the original. All we have to do is start asking questions: Where do the flames come from, and what are they doing? Who is doing the fighting, and how are they winning? Why does God judge the world, and what basis does he use for judgment? Questions like these help us quickly realize that our popular caricatures of tough biblical doctrines are like cartoons: good for us to laugh at, but not to live by. But the caricature does help us with something important: it draws our attention to parts of God’s story where our understanding is off. If the caricature makes God look like a sadistic torturer, a coldhearted judge, or a greedy génocidaire, it probably means there are details we need to take a closer look at. The caricatures can alert us to parts of the picture where our vision is distorted.

The doctrine that bears Monroe’s name—that the United States opposes all European intervention in the Western Hemisphere—owes much to the work of Monroe’s secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, who was instrumental in the formulation of the policy. But it was also at least partly of Jeffersonian inspiration. In Jefferson’s case, it was fitting that a man who had spent his life in pursuit of control would extend it as far as he could in the service of his nation, leaving a kind of last declaration of independence. This time it was a matter of policy, not of revolution. It was a declaration all the same. I

Fresh from victories over Spain, Germany, and Britain, and dominant from Alaska to Venezuela, Roosevelt declared in his 1904 State of the Union speech that the US had assumed responsibility for the peace and stability of its geopolitical neighborhood. In the future, TR stated, “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, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”76 This resolution became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

When, in 1913, Theodore Roosevelt paid a visit to Santiago and welcomed Chile as a partner in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, a Chilean newspaper recorded its impressions of the former president. Roosevelt, it said, “is a typical product of United States civilization: vigorous, impulsive, not heedful of the consequences of his actions, strongly susceptible to error, but at the same time possessed of the noblest of humanitarian sentiments.

Anti-immigrants ought to shift their focus of attention to the primary causes of the problem of ‘illegal immigration’, such as lawbreaker employers, the snail-inert-pace of the U.S. Congress, President Reagan’s failed Latin-American policies, the Monroe Doctrine, among others. And yet, for centuries, they continue to insult, belittle, and lethally attack mainly the ‘victims’ of this economic illness—immigrants. Dear Mr. Vice-President, are we living in the 2000s or in the 1900s?

It is equally easy to see how Schmitt associates this notion of international law with the United States – but it is worth noting that for Schmitt, unlike Carr and other realists, the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson is not central to this critique, or rather is simply a continuation of early American policies. The key date here is not 1919 but 1823, the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine which symbolizes the emergence of a new kind of imperial rule. The Monroe Doctrine purports to warn off European powers from attempting to take new territories in the Americas, but actually involves an assertion of American power over the rest of the Western hemisphere. This is a new kind of Empire, a hegemony under which the US dominates usually without actually formally ruling; the US often intervenes in the affairs of the lesser American powers, and sometimes does so militarily, but always in the name of progressive values and in the putative interests of the locals – this is a form of rule that is both more effective than traditional empire because it does not involve the usual administrative costs, but also more hypocritical, because it denies its own nature, pretending to exercise power only in the interests of others.

The League of Nations Covenant (which specifically endorses the Monroe Doctrine) represents the global extension of this hegemony. The US did not join the League, but American economic power underwrote the peace settlement and, eventually, in the Second World War, US military power was brought to bear to bring down the jus publicum Europaeum and replace it with 'international law', liberal internationalism and, incipiently, the notion of humanitarian intervention in support of the liberal, universalist, positions that the new order had set in place. On Schmitt's account, the two world wars were fought to bring this about – and the barbarism of modern warfare is to be explained by the undermining of the limits established in the old European order. In effect, the notion of a Just War has been reborn albeit without much of its theological underpinnings. The humanized warfare of the JPE with its recognition of the notion of a 'just enemy' is replaced by the older notion that the enemy is evil and to be destroyed – in fact, is no longer an 'enemy' within Schmitt's particular usage of the term but a 'foe' who can, and should, be annihilated. Schmitt

just as the Monroe Doctrine gave the same rights to the USA in South America.

Both nations have an idea of Manifest Destiny and a concept of the Monroe Doctrine in their ideological arsenal, and both are continental powers with political and cultural influence that extends far beyond their national borders.

China seems to have skillfully adapted a Monroe Doctrine, or “Ménluó” (a transliteration of the word “Monroe”) Doctrine, in America’s backyard.

The State Department Policy Planning Council soon expanded on these concerns: “the primary danger we face in Castro,” it concluded, is “in the impact the very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movement in many Latin American countries… The simple fact is that Castro represents a successful defiance of the US, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half”—that is, back to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted Washington’s intention and right to dominate the hemisphere.

Summary of COVID-24: SARS-CoV-3 is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 3. Common symptoms include fever, sweating, sneezing, coughing, sporadic nerve pain across the extremities and fatigue. While we are still in the early stages of understanding this virus, most cases identified to date have resulted in mild symptoms that appear to resolve themselves without the need for medical intervention. However, an unknown percentage of people infected have experienced acute respiratory distress syndrome, requiring medical intervention. In China, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom, there have been reports of some patients suffering from multiple organ failure, to include septic shock. At this present time, we are unable to determine how contagious the virus is or its incubation period. Until more of this information can be identified, the CDC recommends issuing a level 2 travel advisory for China, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

the new YU-9 torpedo, which has a top speed of sixty-nine knots.

most effective way to solve the problem is to cull the herd of the sick and elderly, the ones who are no longer able to contribute to society or for whom the economic drain they impose on society outweighs what they are able to contribute.

We are merely providing your military with foreign military aid to purchase Chinese-made equipment instead of that Russian garbage.

Mark shook his head and smiled at what he was being told. “How are you able to do all of this without it being a privacy issue?” Adrian smiled as he replied, “It’s in the disclaimer of the game. It’s not our fault users don’t read it.

There was definitely a more anti-Chinese bent to the protest than previous such events. Signs read: Free Tibet. Free Falun Gong. End Censorship

China discuss how they planned to leverage Jade Dragon and Dr. Zhong’s lab-created virus to defeat the West and lay claim to China’s manifest destiny.

we engineered the virus to be more effective against certain subsets of people. To further that request, Unit 61398 acquired for us the American, UK, EU, and Russian responses and lessons learned from the COVID-19 virus.

toward specific underlying health conditions like diabetes, fatty liver, heart disease or cancer. This was particularly easy to create when we had the genetic data. This means the virus will not affect healthy individuals as much, but it will ravage those with underlying issues.

This meeting included representatives from all the three-letter agencies, the Coast Guard, CBP, DHS, his military groups,

these trucks are equipped with long sword 10s or CJ-10s. They’re a land-attack cruise missile, capable of carrying a five-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead or a low-yield tactical nuclear warhead,” Gary explained as he showed Kurt half a dozen images of the trucks, the missile pod from different vantage points and the trucks marshalling into a convoy as they offloaded from the ship. Kurt only shook his head as he took in the information in disbelief. “This is like the Cuban Missile Crisis, only this time we weren’t able to block the Cubans from receiving the missiles.” Gary nodded in agreement.

American SOSUS system,

Her task force had closed to within visual range of the Northern Fleet, but in doing so, they’d taken crippling losses. Only five of her original eleven destroyers remained, two of which were badly damaged. She’d started the battle with six frigates; now only one was still actively in the fight. The Korean corvettes that had joined them had all been destroyed. Only one of the PKG guided-missile killer patrol boats had returned from their charge.

He decided to go for broke. “Fire tubes four, five, and six at Master One. Set to active sonar and cut the wires!” Before the command could be echoed, Takahashi was already barking his second order. “Fire tube three at Master Two. Set to active sonar. Cut the wire. Fire Sea Wasps in tubes one and two to projected intercept course with the Chinese torpedoes and set to shallow proximity detonation!

Weapons, reload all tubes. When tubes are reloaded, fire tubes one, two, and three at Master One—same mission. Fire tubes four, five, and six at Master Two—same mission!

It’s a bit more complicated than that, but essentially, yes. The plane can carry bombs, but that’s not what it’d be using. A while back, there was a program called ‘Rods of God.’ It basically involved placing these twenty-meter-long rocket-assisted tungsten rods on a satellite in space. We could then have the satellite aim at a hardened underground bunker or a target that was heavily defended and release the rod from space. The rod would fall through the atmosphere, gaining in speed. Once in the upper atmosphere, a rocket on the back would power up and help the rod accelerate to speeds of up to Mach 20 or roughly fifteen thousand miles per hour. When it hit the target, it’d be like hitting it with a three-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead, only without any of the nuclear fallout.

Stotts remembered Rogers’ Rangers’ fifteenth rule: Don’t sleep past dawn; dawn’s when the French and Indians attack. He hoped none of the Chinese had gone to Ranger school.

Colonel Ribas introduced the three civilians and who they worked for. The most recognizable person they saw was the owner of SpaceX,

Rather than ally directly with Britain in the matter, however, President Monroe instead made a unilateral declaration: while currently existing European colonies would not be molested by the U.S., under no circumstances would new ones be permitted; nor would reconquest of the new Latin nations. While at the time only possible because the British were resolved on the same course, this “Monroe Doctrine” basically declared to the world that the Americas were henceforth open only to United States exploitation. This would have a tremendous influence on the subsequent internal history of Latin America. As in Mexico so in the rest of the region—the Liberals looked to the U.S. for support, while the Conservatives gazed towards a Europe rendered powerless to help them (unless the Europeans didn’t mind a war with the ever-stronger United States).

Rather than ally directly with Britain in the matter, however, President Monroe instead made a unilateral declaration: while currently existing European colonies would not be molested by the U.S., under no circumstances would new ones be permitted; nor would reconquest of the new Latin nations. While at the time only possible because the British were resolved on the same course, this “Monroe Doctrine” basically declared to the world that the Americas were henceforth open only to United States exploitation. This would have a tremendous influence on the subsequent internal history of Latin America. As in Mexico so in the rest of the region—the Liberals looked to the U.S. for support, while the Conservatives gazed towards a Europe rendered powerless to help them (unless the Europeans didn’t mind a war with the ever-stronger United States). The result in the immediate was that in 1824 Peru was finally forced into independence. The following year Bolivia was subjected to “liberation” with great loss of life. At last, in 1826, Chiloe, Puerto Cabello, San Juan de Ulloa, and Callao, Peru all surrendered. Spain’s empire in the New World was reduced to the Philippines, the Marianas, Puerto Rico, and Cuba siempre leal— “ever loyal Cuba.” Under cover of the Monroe doctrine, American interests worked ever for the triumph of anti-clericals over the Catholic interest.

Ambassador Wang, if China cannot have overseas bases to protect our economic interests in the Caribbean and South America, then we need to build up allies who can. You know that as well as I do. My job is to get Cuba, Venezuela, and El Salvador ready to fight the Americans if need be, and to protect our economic interests in the region.

At the time of Nautilus’s launching back in January, the Caribbean Sea Frontier, an area command with bases in San Juan, Trinidad, Guantánamo, and Aruba-Curaçao, had begun running air-sea patrols in the Gulf of Honduras after the leftist government of Guatemala requested arms from the Soviet bloc in reaction to a U.S. decision to give covert support to an antigovernment “liberation” movement. To protect Honduras from invasion and to monitor and regulate arms shipments into the region in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, which had since 1823 warned European powers against meddling in the Western Hemisphere, the United States airlifted arms to Honduras. On May 20, the first Soviet arms shipment arrived in Guatemala. A few days later, the commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet ordered a contingency evacuation force into the area comprised of an antisubmarine carrier and five amphibious ships with a Marine battalion embarked. On June 18, the United States announced an arms embargo against Guatemala. The crisis ended eleven days later with a U.S.-backed coup that installed a new government under the dictator Carlos Castillo Armas.

Not all heroes wear capes. Some heroes have to wrestle around in the mud so others can stay clean.

Like most opportunities in life, when you hear a knock at the door, most of the time you just have to be willing to walk through into the unknown to discover that opportunity you never thought possible.

Just focus on one day at a time. And when that’s too big, focus on the next hour. When that’s too hard, focus on the next minute. If all else fails, just think about the one thing you have to do right then, and just keep going. Make your vision small, and you’ll get through this.

There was an old saying: if you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans.

the only luck in combat was bad luck.

protected.

What is to be cannot be avoided,

God of Heaven and Earth, maker of all creation, be with my family as I embark upon this mission. Keep them safe and filled with hope. Bless our country and the soldiers fighting for her. Let our endeavors today lead us closer to a world of peace. As I step into the unknown, light my path and steady my resolve. May my actions reflect your will. Amen.

Readers of this book will not encounter discussions of the Middle Kingdom Syndrome, China’s concept of tianxia (“all under heaven”), imperial China’s tributary system, or strategizing as reflected by the board game wei ch’i. These ideas are not entirely irrelevant to China’s contemporary international relations, but these references serve more the purpose of conjuring up some cultural disposition without explicating the interpretive logic necessary to show the usefulness or validity of the suggested extrapolation. It is about as useful as invoking Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, the idea of Fortress America, the analogy of American football, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s treatise on sea power, and even Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian War to illuminate current U.S. foreign policy. Any country with a long history and a rich culture, including China, offers contested ideas and competing, even divergent, doctrines and schools of thought. Indeed, strategic thoughts often embody bimodal injunctions, such as to be cautious and audacious, confident and vigilant, uncompromising and flexible, optimistic about eventual victory and realistic about short-term set back (Bobrow 1965, 1969; Bobrow, Chan, and Kringen 1979). Chinese diplomatic discourse and military treatises feature both lofty Confucian rhetoric on the efficacy of moral suasion and hard-nosed, realpolitik recognition of military coercion (Feng 2007; Johnston 1995)— just as contemporary analyses of and pronouncements about U.S. policies often incorporate both liberal and realist themes and arguments. Such elements can coexist.

Suddenly, Esteban became aware that in his peripheral vision,

good leaders make decisions based on the facts they have on hand. Poor leaders make decisions based on the emotions of the moment.

I classify unknowns into one of the following two types: known unknowns (expected or foreseeable conditions), which can be reasonably anticipated but not quantified based on past experience as exemplified by case histories. Then unknown unknowns (unexpected or unforeseeable conditions), which pose a potentially greater risk, simply because they cannot be anticipated based on past experience or investigation. Known unknowns result from recognized but poorly understood phenomena. On the other hand, unknown unknowns are phenomena which cannot be expected because there has been no prior experience or theoretical basis for expecting the phenomena.

Food is fuel, nothing more. You eat because your mind needs fuel to fight, to think, to operate…

It’s only a matter of time until the Chinese conquer Asia, and once they have it firmly in their grip, they’ll be unstoppable. They’ll control all the shipyards, ports, and manufacturing of South Korea, they’ll control all the chip production out of Taiwan, and they’ll have all the oil, natural gas, and other minerals they’ll need with control of the Russian Far East and Mongolia. What I’m telling you, Jack, is if we don’t make some radical changes now, we’re going to buckle.

No, it’s not. It’s one side of a story, and it’s a side written by a group of hyperpartisan reporters who are driven by the need to drive traffic to their websites to generate marketing dollars. It’s not the truth and we all know that.” Katrina stared back at him for a second, not sure if he was serious or what. “Blain, if you tell a lie loud enough and long enough, it simply becomes the truth. We have to get ahead of this or it’s going to become a problem.

mean, this is what authors write about in dystopian novels,

Seventy-two virgins—screw that. I’d rather have seventy-two whores who know what they’re doing in bed than seventy-two virgins.

James Monroe served as the fifth President of the United States between 1817 and 1825. He was from Virginia and the last of the Founding Fathers to serve as President and was a wounded veteran of the Revolutionary War. After the war he studied law and served as a delegate in the Continental Congress. As president he and John Quincy Adams, who served as his Secretary of State, eased the prevailing partisan tensions bringing about what was called an “Era of Good Feelings.” He easily won a second term in office and in 1823, announced that the United States opposed any European intervention in the Americas by European Countries by enacting the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe strongly supported the founding of independent colonies in Africa for the return of freed slaves. These colonies eventually formed the nation of Liberia, whose capital was named Monrovia in his honor. In 1825 Monroe retired to New York City where he died on the 4th of July, 1831.

When Castro learned of the deal made without him, he was furious and felt betrayed by what he considered his ally. Castro, acting on his own, demanded that the United States stop the blockade of the island, and end its support for the militant Cuban dissidents in exile. He also insisted that the United States return Guantánamo Naval Base to Cuba and stop violating Cuban airspace, as well as its territorial waters. The United States totally ignored him and his demands, dealing instead directly with the Soviet Union. Castro feeling slighted did the only thing left for him, and refused to allow the United Nations access to inspect the missile sites for compliance with the withdrawal agreement. Although costly, the Soviet Union thought of this entire “missile exercise” as a display of Communist power in the Americas. This was a total disregard of the Monroe Doctrine regarding foreign influences in the Americas. Although ultimately it was a futile attempt, the Soviet Union hoped that it would inspire other Latin countries to follow the move towards Communism. During the next two decades, many attempts were made by Cuba to influence other Latin American countries to accept Communism. This influence was exercised primarily by inserting sympathetic leftist leaning movements into their political structure. However most of these attempts failed with the exception of Nicaragua. In 1967 “Che” Guevara attempted such a blatant movement in Bolivia. In time however many of these Latin countries such as Venezuela, took a shift to the left through their constitutional electoral process and embraced socialistic forms of government on their own.

In time, no doubt, the inevitable memorial committee would form, and solemn scholars would comb his works for quotations suitable to chisel in stone. Statute books and official histories would celebrate his administrative achievements: the Monroe Doctrine reaffirmed, the Old World banished from the New World, the great Canal being cut; peace established in the Far East; the Open Door swinging freely in Manchuria and Morocco; Cuba liberated (and returned to self-government just in time for his departure); the Philippines pacified; the Navy hugely strengthened, known literally around the world; the Army, shorn of its old deadwood generals, feeling the green sap of younger replacements; capital and labor balanced off, the lynch rate declining, the gospel