And commentators today predict the emergence of a

; and commentators today predict the emergence of a Chinese
Monroe Doctrine.
35
US leaders conferred joint ownership of the doctrine to
those they deemed reliable allies that had achieved “civilized” status. Theodore
Roosevelt decided that Argentina, Brazil, and Chile were “guarantors of the
doctrine so far as America south of the Equator is concerned” (in contrast,
Roosevelt contended that to ask the same of (p.30) states in the Caribbean and
Central America “would be about like asking the Apaches and Utes to guarantee
it”).
36
Another sign of the international reach of the Monroe Doctrine can be seen in
the establishment of competing foreign policy “doctrines.” During the 1902
Venezuela debt crisis, Argentine Foreign Minister Luís Maria Drago proposed a
hemispheric policy of prohibiting the forcible collection of debts by European
powers. Initially presented as a complement to the 1823 message, in time the
“Drago Doctrine” became an alternative to the unilateral interventionism of the
Roosevelt Corollary.
37
In Mexico Porfirio Díaz similarly called for a “Díaz
Doctrine” in which the states of the Americas would collectively enforce the
1823 prohibition of European colonization and intervention.
38
In later times, the
Soviet Union’s “Brezhnev Doctrine” asserted the right of intervention in
communist countries (though this was eventually superseded by Gorbachev’s so-
called “Sinatra Doctrine,” which enabled Eastern Europeans to follow the
singer’s advice from “My Way”).

The Monroe Doctrine in the Nineteenth Century
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The proliferation of such “doctrines” reshaped the rhetorical style and political
salesmanship employed by US statesmen. Nineteenth-century presidents and
secretaries of state sought the cover of tradition by invoking Monroe. As late as
1917, Woodrow Wilson chose not to create a “Wilson Doctrine,” but rather to
present his internationalist vision as an outgrowth of the Monroe Doctrine.
39
By
the mid-twentieth century, however, American presidents began to pronounce
their own foreign policy doctrines. Indeed, most presidents since Truman have
one named after them, even if they did not actually formulate a new or coherent
diplomatic strategy. Here we have come full-circle, for the purpose of
presidential foreign policy doctrines in recent times has been as much for a
president or his partisans to communicate a position to a domestic audience as it
has been to proclaim a new diplomatic approach or objective.
40
All of these themes can be seen not only in the original articulation of the 1823
message but also in the formulation of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine in 1904. Viewed from the outside-in, the corollary was the product of
specific geopolitical contingencies in the Caribbean. Yet, more than this, it was