In 1823, President Monroe told Congress in his yearly address to lawmakers that any attempts by European nations to interfere in the Western Hemisphere would be considered a threat to U.S. security. In other words, bloody Europe and its wars would not be welcome in America's backyard. We're staying out of your affairs, Monroe was saying to the old Continent, and we expect you to stay out of ours.
The doctrine has been invoked by the U.S. several times, perhaps most famously by President Kennedy, who said during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that "this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies."
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said two years before he sent missiles to Cuba that the doctrine was dead and "should best be buried, as every dead body is, so that it does not poison the air by its decay." Almost half a century later, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is channeling Khrushchev.
In a meeting Friday at the Kremlin, Medvedev and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez agreed that Russia would build two nuclear reactors somewhere in oil-rich Venezuela, which is on one of only two continents that hasn't had a nuclear explosion. (The other is Antarctica.) The arrangement follows Russia's deep involvement with the construction of a nuclear power plant in Iran, another nation hostile to the U.S. that is flush in fossil fuels.
A nuclear power plant and nuclear missiles aren't the same. But the technical know-how and materials needed to harness a nuclear reaction to generate electricity aren't far removed from the knowledge and resources needed to build atomic weapons. More at:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/550676/201010151921/Memo-To-Moscow-Not-Our-Backyard.htm
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