Introduction

Abstract

GUNBOAT diplomacy is most familiar, but will never be employed in these pages, as a term of abuse, a metaphorical epithet for almost any kind of attempt by one government to exert an unwelcome influence on the policy of another. It is often applied to situations involving no threat or use of naval force, sometimes even to disputes in which the only pressures employed are economic or diplomatic.

We have no more reason to believe that the days of gunboat diplomacy are over than to believe that the threat of force will not be used on land and in the air.

Millar¹