Soon, they became intensely involved in Cuban affairs, and subsequently grew to be Cuba's most valuable customer-essentially because she did not possess a sugar industry to meet the demands of the natural market for Cuban sugar.4 Sensing an opportunity, the US investors began to pour significant amounts of capital into Cuba's means of sugar production (sugar mills, transportation and communication networks and the whole lot) which garnered a stake in the Cuban sugar industry.5.
After this strong relationship in trade grew between the US and Cuba, the 1823 Monroe Doctrine was introduced by John Quincy Adams. However, the very principle of the Monroe Doctrine went against what Adams initially said in 1821: "but America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy".6 The self-restraint policy Adams established in 1821 appeared to be nonexistent come 1823, as a whole new foreign policy was devised. The Doctrine was the foundation for a new policy of "excluding European power politics from the Western Hemisphere, if necessary by using European diplomacy".7 With the Doctrine being the sphere influence, the two Old World powers were removed from the Americas. Britain had surrendered her claims to the US while Latin America was slipping away from Spain thanks to the Monroe Doctrines' central policy. Consequently, the US was free to act as her own power, without intervention, in the Americas.8 .
While the Doctrine was inaugurated, American influence expanded in Latin America, especially Cuba, as European intervention began to wane. However, the US hegemony in the West quickly resembled the practices carried out by the European powers in the region prior to the establishment of the Doctrine. America was becoming a different kind of world power.9 A different power in the sense that she was turning her back on Europe and at the same time expanding herself into the Western region with the Doctrine under her belt posing as an authoritative pass.