oe unfortunately provided no means to ensure the enforcement of his ideas, and thus the Doctrine was not upheld very rigorously until the late 1890's (Rappaport 26).
             Through the course of United States history, the Monroe Doctrine has been enforced on numerous occasions. In the 1840's, James Polk used it to justify U.S. expansion, and in 1845 he threatened U.S. military force in California and Oregon, as well as against French and British efforts to prevent the U.S. annexation of Texas. During the 1870's and 80's, the Doctrine took on new meaning. The U.S. began to interpret it both as prohibiting the transfer of American territory from one European power to another and as granting the U.S. exclusive control over any canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through Central America (Rappaport 56).
             In 1898, the U.S.'s expansionistic drive propelled it into a war with Spain, later referred to as the Spanish-American War. This conflict originated out of Cuba's demands for independence from Spain. While U.S.
             ...