Clark Memorandum - Definition and Overview

The Clark Memorandum written in 1928 by Calvin Coolidge’s undersecretary of state J. Reuben Clark stated that the United States has no right to use military force to intervene in Latin American nations. This memorandum was officially released in 1930 by the Herbert Hoover administration.

It was a repudiation of the Roosevelt Corollary and a clarification of the Monroe Doctrine. Its primary point was that the Monroe Doctrine was based on conflicts of interest between the United States and European nations, rather than between the United States and Latin American nations.