The Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President

Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuela Crisis of
1902–1903. The corollary states that the United States will intervene in conflicts between the
European countries and Latin American countries to enforce legitimate claims of the
European powers, rather than having the Europeans press their claims directly.

Roosevelt tied his policy to the Monroe Doctrine, and it was also consistent with his foreign
policy included in his Big Stick Diplomacy. Roosevelt stated that in keeping with the Monroe
Doctrine, the United States was justified in exercising "international police power" to put an
end to chronic unrest or wrongdoing in the Western Hemisphere. While the Monroe Doctrine
had sought to prevent European intervention, the Roosevelt Corollary was used to justify US
intervention throughout the hemisphere. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt renounced
interventionism and established his Good Neighbor policy for the Western Hemisphere.

The Roosevelt Corollary was articulated in the aftermath of the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903. To
preclude European intervention, in December the Roosevelt Corollary asserted a right of the United
States to intervene in order to "stabilize" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and
Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts.

While the Monroe Doctrine had warned European powers to keep their hands off countries in the
Americas, President Roosevelt was now saying that "since the United States would not permit the
European powers to lay their hands on, he had an obligation to do so himself. In short, he would
intervene to keep them from intervening."[

Though the Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine, it could be seen as a
departure. While the Monroe Doctrine said European countries should stay out of Latin America, the
Roosevelt Corollary took this further to say the United States had the right to exercise military force
in Latin American countries to keep European countries out.

Roosevelt first used the Corollary to act in the Dominican Republic in 1904, which at the time was
severely indebted and becoming a failed state. This model—in which United State advisors worked
to stabilize Latin American nations through temporary protectorates, staving off European action—
became known as "dollar diplomacy". The Dominican experiment, like most other "dollar diplomacy"
arrangements, proved temporary and untenable, and the United States launched a larger military
intervention in 1916 and lasted to 1924.

U.S. Presidents also cited the Roosevelt Corollary as justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba (1906–
1909),[5] Nicaragua (1909–1910, 1912–1925 and 1926–1933),[6] Haiti (1915–1934),[6] and the
Dominican Republic (1916–1924).

In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt further renounced interventionism and established his "Good
Neighbor policy" that led to the annulment of the Platt Amendment by the Treaty of Relations with
Cuba in 1934, and the negotiation of compensation for Mexico's nationalization of foreign-owned oil
assets in 1938.

The era of the Good Neighbor Policy ended with the ramp-up of the Cold War in 1945, as the United
States felt there was a greater need to protect the western hemisphere from Soviet influence.