5 "A Monroe Doctrine for Radio": The Development of U.S. Radio Policy in Latin America, 1912–1919

In the 1910s, policymakers pursuing the twin goals of network control—the ability to communicate and to deny the same to America's opponents— looked beyond American colonial holdings for the first time. They sought control over the radio circuits connecting the United States and Latin America, a region where private corporations and foreign governments held the property rights. Foremost among the foreign powers was Britain, whose lingering influence in its erstwhile informal empire dwarfed its formal property rights. As British Marconi sought to link the region to the United States, naval policymakers identified American control over radio communication in the Western Hemisphere—the "Monroe Doctrine for radio"—as the central foreign policy objective.
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