Now, the Ford Doctrine

For more than 150 years the U.S. Monroe Doctrine barring European powers from meddling in Latin America guided U.S. foreign policy in the Southern Hemisphere. In recent times the doctrine has grown dusty; no one in Europe was interested in Latin America. Last week President Ford uncorked a new version of the old policy, enunciating what might be called the Ford Doctrine. Angry over Premier Fidel Castro's decision last December to dispatch Cuban troops to Angola, Ford denounced Castro as an "international outlaw" before a group of Cubans in Miami just about to receive their U.S. citizenship (and thus become potential voters), and said that the U.S. would take "appropriate action" against Castro if he intervened anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

Ford left undefined what appropriate action he meant. In one sense, he appeared to be simply reaffirming the U.S. commitment to the hemisphere's senior defense treaty, the Rio Pact. But it also appears that Ford was declaring what Secretary of State Kissinger had been telling Latin American leaders privately last month on his tour of the Latin nations: that the U.S., with the support of key Latin nations, would move against Cuban military intervention anywhere in the hemisphere. In any event, all putative Administration notions of further normalizing relations with Cuba are now in the deepfreeze.

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