In his December 2, 1823 address to Congress, President James Monroe laid out his vision for the relationship between the U.S. and European powers of the day, such as Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal. Those were among the European countries that had colonies around the world then. President Monroe issued what was a warning to those nations not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

At the time, the Spanish and Portuguese both had a heavy presence in the hemisphere because of their colonies in Latin America. Less so did the British, but they had their own designs on the South American continent, mainly for commercial pursuits. As an emerging power, the U.S. considered European activities in South America detrimental to its interests. In President Monroe’s view, the U.S. was entitled to exercise control over the Western Hemisphere. His speech to Congress was essentially an offer to the European powers that the U.S. would not interfere in their affairs in the rest of the world if they agreed to curtail their presence in the Western Hemisphere. This notion of regional domination, which became known as the Monroe Doctrine, originated the modern-day sphere-of-influence concept in geopolitics.

As part of the deal, the U.S. promised not to interfere in the European colonies that already existed in the Americas. President Monroe stated that apart from those, “The American continents are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”

Britain, in particular, is said to have liked President Monroe’s offer. It didn’t have much at stake in South America. British colonies were mostly in Africa and elsewhere, and thus Britain had much to gain by focusing on that vast empire without the threat of competition from the emerging power in the Western Hemisphere.

The Monroe Doctrine formed the basis of subsequent U.S. military activism in South America and the Caribbean. In projecting American power, U.S. Marines were deployed to the Dominican Republic in 1904, Nicaragua in 1911, and Haiti in 1915. Over the course of the last two centuries, the U.S. has engaged in several other political and military interventions in countries around the Western Hemisphere. The most notable recent one was the naval-and-air blockade that President John F. Kennedy imposed around Cuba in 1962 in response to the Soviet build-up of missile-launching sites on the island.

When President Monroe delivered his address to Congress in 1823, Brazil had been free from Portuguese colonization for only a year. Argentina gained its independence from Spain a bit earlier in 1816. Today’s giants of South America were thus vulnerable babies then, and much of the rest of that continent was populated by people who could be easily controlled. But even by those early nineteenth century standards, President Monroe’s speech was extremely arrogant. No U.S. president today, even if they harbored that sense of entitlement, would dare speak those words aloud. President Monroe felt free to express those views because he was operating in a world that was entirely different from the one we live in now. Back then, the slave trade was in full flourish. It was a widely acceptable practice for people to sail boats from one continent to another, capture other humans, and forcibly transport them across the high seas for sale elsewhere.

I cannot count the number of people I’ve come across over the last two years who have cited the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The argument they make is that if the U.S. wouldn’t allow Soviet presence in the Western Hemisphere in 1962, then today’s Russia has equal right to carve out a protective zone for itself and dictate how everyone else in that orbit should live. More troubling is the fact that some celebrated geopolitical experts seem to fully subscribe to this sphere-of-influence notion even now. I always wonder what their response would be if the Russians and Chinese were to start capturing Africans today and forcing them to work as slaves on farms and in factories in Russia and China. After all, the Americans and other Westerners previously did exactly that. Should the Russians and Chinese be entitled to do the same thing now?

Currently in the U.S., it is almost taboo to use the word “master” in any context in the presence of African-Americans because of the word’s association with slavery. One would think that Africans, who complain endlessly about the effects of colonialism on their continent, would cringe when they hear someone making any references to spheres of influence in the geopolitical realm today. Surprisingly, a good number of Africans gleefully cheer on Putin in his war of conquest in Ukraine. Their virulent hatred of America perversely causes them to embrace the very imperialistic behaviors of external actors that they claim have irreversibly damaged Africa.

History is filled with old ways of thinking, human behaviors, and actions that would be unthinkable in our world today. The Monroe Doctrine, as articulated in 1823, is one example. That concept clearly has no place in contemporary geopolitics and should be jettisoned. Those who suffer from “America-does-it-too” syndrome and use that as a reason to justify Russian and Chinese sphere-of-influence claims today should explain whether they would submit to the types of colonization that African and Latin American countries endured in the past.