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Article: Presidential doctrines: an introduction.
- Article from:
- Presidential Studies Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Center for the Study of the Presidency. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"If you want war, nourish a doctrine," William Graham Sumner asserted in 1903. Sumner, one of America's leading public intellectuals, was writing in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, a conflict brought on by expansionists citing the Monroe Doctrine as grounds for forcing Spain out of Cuba. The words suited the moment, but they were also quite prescient, for while at that time American politics knew but the one presidential doctrine (Monroe's), during the next hundred years doctrines would multiply, and all would explicitly threaten or broadly imply the use of American military force.
The articles in this special issue examine several presidential ...