While Americans generally objected to European colonies in the New World, they also desired to increase United States trading ties throughout the region. Americans feared that Spain and France might try to colonize over the newly independent Latin American people who had just overthrown European rule.

Meanwhile, Spain was still a colonial power, ruling over Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. In these colonies, Spanish rule was strong and had resulted in the growth of strong resistance movements, which in the case of Cuba only could be suppressed in a 10-year-long war.

As the United States gained military and economic strength, American leaders began to understand the Monroe Doctrine as justification for the Untied States involvement in Latin America. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt, who had been a supporter of the Spanish American War, added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. As the corollary worked out in practice, the United States increasingly used military force to restore internal stability to nations in the region. Roosevelt declared that the United States might exercise international police power in obvious cases of such wrongdoing or weakness. If the United States decided that a country's internal affairs required policing, then the US took it upon itself to take control of the situation. Over the long term the corollary had little to do with relations between the Western Hemisphere and Europe, but it did serve as justification for Untied States intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The Untied States now committed itself to maintaining stability in the Western Hemisphere. In order to prevent European nations from involving themselves in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere, the Roosevelt Corollary proclaimed the exclusive right of the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.

In 1898, the United States was fighting the Spanish-American War. The victory over Spain made the United States a colonial power and ended Spain’s colonial empire in Cuba. The Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, as well as the formerly independent nation of Hawaii, became American possessions after the war. The excuse for entering the war was that the Americans had been concerned about the Spanish colonial power on Cuba, which the Cuban people had struggled since1868 for there independence from Spain. Americans also worried as the Spanish colonial authorities had a program of Reconstruction, on the island that not only seemed to threaten their security, but also brought severe suffering on the Cuban popula

Some topics in this essay:
Monroe Doctrine, Reconstruction Plan, War Untied, Western Hemisphere, Latin American, British Italian, Valeriano Weyler, Cuba Untied, Spain Americans, Rico Caribbean, monroe doctrine, western hemisphere, concentration camps, latin american, exercise international, world power, exercise international police, colonial power, united exercise, dominican republic, international police, united exercise international, international police power, cuba puerto rico, western hemisphere europe,