Editing Clark Memorandum (section)

{{Short description|American foreign policy position}}
The '''Clark Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine''' or '''Clark Memorandum''', written on December 17, 1928 by [[Calvin Coolidge]]'s [[United States Deputy Secretary of State|undersecretary of state]] [[J. Reuben Clark]], concerned the United States' use of military force to intervene in [[Latin America]]n nations. This memorandum was a secret until it was officially released in 1930 by the [[Herbert Hoover]] administration. 

The Clark memorandum rejected the view that the [[Roosevelt Corollary]] was based on the [[Monroe Doctrine]].  However, it was not a complete repudiation of the Roosevelt Corollary but was rather a statement that any intervention by the U.S. was not sanctioned by the Monroe Doctrine but rather was the right of America as a state. This separated the Roosevelt Corollary from the Monroe Doctrine by noting that the Monroe Doctrine only applied to situations involving European countries.  One main point in the Clark Memorandum was to note that the Monroe Doctrine was based on conflicts of interest only between the United States and European nations, rather than between the United States and Latin American nations.<ref>Bruce W. Jentleson and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. ''Encyclopedia of US foreign relations.'' (1997) 1:262</ref>

Historian Gene Sessions says the  memorandum said the Monroe Doctrine did not explicitly renounce rights of intervention in Latin America (as often stated). It had little if any influence on the development evolution of US Latin American policy.<ref>Sessions,  "The Clark Memorandum Myth</ref>