The position of the “world hegemon” of the United States has been created during two centuries, largely due to the combination of “soft” and “hard power” in the foreign policy. The adoption in 1823 of the Monroe Doctrine (“America for Americans”), which declared South America the “exclusive zone of interests” of the United States, was declarative until the middle of the 19th century, since the country could not really compete with the first world power of that period, Great Britain. Nevertheless, the rapid economic development of the United States and the massive influx of immigrants contributed to the expansion to the “wild West” and the annexation of new territories. Americans increasingly began to use the methods of “hard power”, making attempts to annex Canada, invade Mexican territory. As a result of the Mexican-American War of 1846—1848, more than half of Mexicos territory was added to the United States. By the beginning of the twentieth century they surpassed the British in all indicators of foreign trade with the countries of the continent. The further tightening of the Monroe doctrine (the Tyler, Polk, and Olney doctrines), the American-Spanish War of 1898, and the adoption of the so-called “T. Roosevelt Corollary” in 1904 turned the United States into the main force of imperialism. To reduce the protest of Latin Americans, “soft power” was used in the form of the idea and practice of pan-Americanism. Its basic principles were discussed at conferences in Panama (1826), Lima (1847—1848, 1864), Santiago (1856) and resulted in the First Inter-American Conference in Washington (1889—1890).
Nikolai Ivanov (Wed,) studied this question.