that the whole Gulf Stream was within its maritime jurisdiction.
The message of Monroe was an assertion that the fate of both the
Americas was of immediate concern to the safety of the United
States, because the fate of its sister republics intimately
affected its own security. This proved to be an enduring
definition of policy, because for many years there was a real
institutional difference between the American hemisphere and the
rest of the world and because oceanic boundaries were the most
substantial that the world affords.

Adams, however, would have been the last to claim that his method
of securing the fundamental purposes of the United States was
itself fundamental. It is particularly important for Americans to
make a distinction between the things which they have always
wished to obtain and the methods which they have from time to
time used. To build a policy today on the alleged isolation of
the American continents would be almost as absurd as to try to
build a government on the belief in Divine Right. The American
continents are no longer separated from the rest of the world by
their national institutions, because the spirit of these
institutions has permeated much of Europe, Asia, and even Africa.
No boundaries, not even oceans, can today prohibit international
interference. But while the particular method followed in 1823
is no longer appropriate, the ends which the United States set
out to attain have remained the same. Independence, absolute and
complete, including the absence of all entanglements which might
draw the country into other peoples' quarrels; the recognition of
a similar independence in all other peoples, which involves both
keeping its own hands off and also strongly disapproving of
interference by one nation with another--these have been the