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** USS ''Iowa'' has the nickname "the Big Stick" after Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" quote. fittingly the Iowa class were the last battleships used to be used as a tacit threat in a similar idea to this trope.
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** USS ''Iowa'' has the nickname "the Big Stick" after Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" quote. fittingly Fittingly, the Iowa class were the last battleships used to be used as a tacit threat in a similar idea to this trope.
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* Hilarious version: ''[[RunningGag Every time]]'' UsefulNotes/{{Malaysia}} decides to [[IShallTauntYou taunt]] UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}} about its territorial borders, Malaysia does indeed send a warship, only for Indonesia to send [[DisproportionateRetribution several]] [[SummonBiggerFish bigger warships]] (sometimes with an extra CoolPlane). Gunboat diplomacy only works if you're more powerful than the nation you're trying to intimidate, after all.
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* Hilarious version: ''[[RunningGag Every time]]'' UsefulNotes/{{Malaysia}} decides to [[IShallTauntYou taunt]] UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}} about its territorial borders, Malaysia does indeed send a warship, only for Indonesia to send [[DisproportionateRetribution several]] several [[SummonBiggerFish bigger warships]] (sometimes with an extra CoolPlane). Gunboat diplomacy only works if you're more powerful than the nation you're trying to intimidate, after all.
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*** A continuation of this are the occasional deployments of other NATO troops to the Baltic States. These three countries were formerly part of the Soviet Union and managed to both breakaway and join NATO while Russia was sorting itself out. Since then Russia has done a lot of saber-rattling over them since they offered a number of advantages for Russia, including increased access to the Baltic Sea. Like with the aforementioned deployments, there are some fears that the three could be abandoned if Russia chose to act, thus the deployments offered the same guarantee as those during the Cold War.
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* This trope is best summed up by the old maxim (source unknown) "Diplomacy works best when it's backed by credible threat of force."
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* This trope is best summed up by the old maxim (source unknown) unknown), "Diplomacy works best when it's backed by credible threat of force." Closely related is UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt's, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."
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* Used by both the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, whose galleons and carracks usually had the technical edge over whatever Arabian, Indian or Southeast Asian ports could deploy against them. The UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia saw good usage of it.
* At the height of its power in the 1800s, the British Empire became famous for this. It was said that the empire could quiet the whole of China by simply dispatching a single warship[[note]] Untrue, as the French found out in their 1884-85 Sino-French (mini-)War. France tried to take on China alone, and despite sinking half the antiquated Qing fleet was effectively fought to a standstill by modernised Qing Empire ground forces. The war reminded all the interested parties - France, Britain, Russia, Japan - that they needed each other's cooperation if they wanted to extract any more 'special concessions' (trade outposts, military bases) from The Empire Of The Qing - which [[InformedAttribute despite supposedly being on its last legs]], was regarded with renewed caution (until the much larger Sino-Japanese War of 1895, which revealed that the Qing's refusal to adopt a modern logistics/command system complete hamstrung their forces despite their size and usage of uber-modern weaponry)[[/note]]. Boastful hyperbole, to be sure, but hyperbole with a point. It was taken to ridiculous levels with the Don Pacifico affair when Britain's reaction to a British citizen in Greece being mugged was to send the Royal Navy over to blockade the entire country until the Greeks caught the man responsible and paid Don Pacifico compensation (although it should be noted that Pacifico was Jewish, and he was only the latest in a long line of British Jews to be abused in Greece, so the British did have, if you squint, a slightly nobler motive).
** During the Second Opium War, the British and French sent what amounted to little more than three divisions (not even 60,000 troops) to escort their ambassadors to Peking - ostensibly in the hope that they would be recognised as equals rather than being made to do the kowtow and be officially recognised as vassals/servants. The Qing court umm-ed and ah-ed and eventually met them with armed force when they kept marching on the capital. However, their decently-armed but disorganised and ill-led force of 200,000 (which had zero experience of modern warfare to boot) was quickly routed and the Imperial Court fled the city still refusing to negotiate. The Allies stuck around and pillaged the place until they did.
*** Cleverly exploiting this was the way Russia peacefully and amicably acquired her Maritime Provinces in 1860. By negotiating a settlement and treaty to stop Allied troops from ransacking Beijing further, the Russian Ambassador established a certain rapport with the Emperor was able to [[ManipulativeBastard convince him]] that the sparsely-inhabited (Han Chinese were prohibited to settle there by the Manchu Qing dynasty, whose semi-nomadic people were the only people living there) lands in question were not only economically useless but also impossible to protect. He actually had a point there, as just seven years later Russia sold her lands in North America (the USA's current state of 'Alaska') to the USA for the exact same reasons. From that point onward, Russian diplomats were always keen to point out that Russia's acquisitions of Qing territory had been by mutual agreement and not made under duress - criticising at great length the French and the Japanese for their own less subtle approaches.
** The governor of Guangzhou tried this against The British East India Company, without appreciating the close ties between The Company and the British government or the extent to which two hundred years of nothing more than border-skirmishes with steppe tribes and mountain-kingdoms had left Qing Chinese forces woefully inexperienced and ill-equipped for waging a full-scale modern war of the kind Europe had been fighting for four hundred years very nearly non-stop by that point (chiefly the Hundred Years' War, Eighty Years' War, Thirty Years' War, Seven Years' War, War of American Independence, War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars).
* Subverted with the "[[UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars Gunboat War]]" between Denmark-Norway and the United Kingdom from 1807 to 1814. Because the Royal Navy had forced Denmark to hand over its battle-fleet through the 1807 bombardment of Copenhagen (i. e. a direct attack on the civilian population of the Danish capital), Denmark could only continue the unequal struggle with its smaller naval ships, i. e. gunboats.
* The USA's Central-South American Banana Republics were, as per the page image, kept in line by constant reminders of the threat of force and the occasional USA-organised/supported coup d'etat. From a little after the US Civil War up until relatively recently, this trope has been in force to some extent.
** The page image also refers to a policy of gunboat diplomacy by proxy. The United States didn't want European warships intruding into the American sphere of influence; instead, the Europeans would ask the US to send a gunboat to apply pressure on their behalf.
*** Specifically, the page image is referring to the Monroe Doctrine - that the USA would resist all European attempts to interfere in 'their' zone of influence, i.e. the whole of the Americas. No-one took it seriously at the time, as the US was a third-rate power and it was clear that places like British Canada and Spanish Cuba were not part of the Americas, by this definition. Nor were places like Argentina, which was ''Britain's'' model Banana Republic. Anyhow, note how Roosevelt is aiming the gun at the monarchical European figure while the poor, defenseless Latin American cowers beneath him. The image doesn't actually show gunboat diplomacy as such but instead presents a benign ideal of it, as one would expect of a (biased) US political cartoon.
*** Incidentally, they started taking it seriously during the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar, when an American fleet in the Caribbean wiped out an entire Spanish fleet. [[CurbStompBattle In an afternoon.]] While suffering one casualty. From heatstroke. (American demands afterwards rapidly jumped from "get out of Cuba" to "give us all of your islands", especially when a second Spanish fleet in the Philippines fared little better.)
* The SMS ''Panther'' is the TropeNamer and TropeCodifier, when it was dispatched by the German Empire to Morocco in 1911, during the Agadir Crisis. This incident popularised the phrase "gunboat diplomacy" and also contributed to the First World War.
** The "Panther's Leap" also counts as a subversion of sorts, since the entire affair was a complete farce. She was ostensibly dispatched to Agadir to protect German citizens in the port, but this plan had one glaring flaw: there were no German citizens in Agadir. Realising this, the German government sent a telegram to the only German citizen in the area - a perfectly happy, unendangered man called Wilburg - and ordered him to travel 75 miles south to Agadir to be "rescued". The ''Panther'' arrived on July 1st, 1911, only to discover that Wilburg hadn't arrived, so the gunboat sat impotently in the bay waiting for him. When he finally did reach Agadir, he was so exhausted from his journey that his only priority was finding a hotel for the night. The next morning he awoke to discover that the ''Panther'' had been joined by a second German gunboat, the ''Berlin''. Deciding it was time to go and get himself rescued, Wilburg made his way down to the beach and waved at the ships... who promptly ignored him. Frustrated, Wilburg began to jump up and down and throw a tantrum on the beach - only for the officers of the ''Berlin'' to assume he was a deranged native. It was only when Wilburg stood with his hands on his hips and glared at them in silent fury that it dawned on them that this might be the man they were supposed to rescue - because [[InsaneTrollLogic no native would ever stand with his hands on his hips.]] Wilburg was duly saved from the terrifying prospect of a nice day on the beach. In truth, the entire episode had been intended to warn the French of trying to obstruct German colonization in Africa but backfired spectacularly when it drew the ire not just of the French, but the British as well.
** Worse yet, the incident demonstrated Austria-Hungary's complete unwillingness to back Germany up when push came to shove. Rather than seeking a new ally - i.e. Russia, a rising power with close economic ties to Germany - they tried even harder to enlist Austro-Hungarian support. Ultimately, German support for Austria-Hungary and fear of Russia's growing economic and military power impelled Germany to escalate a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI into a pan-European conflict involving France and Germany as well]][[note]] under the fatalistic logic that war was inevitable (largely because of French desire to retake Alsace-Lorraine) and the odds would only get worse as time went by and Russia became even more powerful - Russia had already matched Germany in artillery by 1914, to say nothing of the size of her trained reserve of manpower as a country with more than twice the population of Austria-Hungary and Germany put together [[/note]]. Neutral but virulently Germanophobic Britain using the invasion of Belgium as a pretext to attack Germany and Germany staging a FalseFlagOperation to bring The Ottoman Empire into the war against Russia were just the icing on the cake.
*** At the start, only Churchill and Gray were in support of intervention, and both the political leadership and general public in Britain were unwilling to get involved in the war. It was the (vastly exaggerated) atrocities[[note]]There's no denying the German military behaved badly in Belgium; but their actions were vastly exaggerated in terms of number and awfulness as a propaganda tool, including British newspapers adding a lot of completely invented ones just to be sure. Exaggeration of German atrocities in [=WW1=] was so notorious that many people in [=WW2=] refused to believe reports of Nazi atrocities - believing that their own media and politicians were lying again.[[/note]] which the German army committed in Belgium which finally propelled them to act. Those atrocities were themselves propelled by the Germans not being familiar with the nature of urban combat, where every shot echoed, causing a false belief that the troops were constantly under threat of ambush by local partisans. By the standards of the time, partisans were considered war criminals so those atrocities were considered "appropriate" by the occupying forces.
* During the interwar era, the Danzig crisis of 1932, which pitted a Polish Navy destroyer acting under orders from Poland's government and the Free City of Danzig, whose political position remained contested during the period. Polish statesman Józef Piłsudski decided to order the ORP Wicher to host the visit of a group of British destroyers to the Free City of Danzig (which was technically recognized as an independent entity at the time by most foreign governments, including Poland). Despite the aggressive posture, the Polish goal behind sending a warship to foreign waters was primarily to prevent the French and British governments from striking any deal with Nazi Germany that would be unfavorable to Poland with a show of strength. On the date of the British visit, 14 June, the Wicher steamed into the Danzig harbor, with secret orders to shell government buildings if any disrespect was shown to the Polish flag. Danzig officials were ultimately forced to accept the Polish government's right to station warships in the city harbor whenever they pleased, which only resulted in a further deterioration of relationship between the two entities in the years leading up to World War II.
* The two Moroccan Crises of 1905 and 1911. Both also illustrate the major problem with the gunboat approach; you have to have the biggest stick around to pull it off, or you'll be slapped down by those who ''do''.
* USS ''Texas'' earned the nickname "The Old Statesman" (think about it) after being used (along with several other ships) to exert diplomatic pressure on the Mexican government during what's now called the "Tampico Incident." She was actually one of the last ships literally referred to as a gunboat during her career to be used in this capacity.
** USS ''Iowa'' has the nickname "the Big Stick" after Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" quote. fittingly the Iowa class were the last battleships used to be used as a tacit threat in a similar idea to this trope.
* There is the similar modern concept of "flattop diplomacy", flat top being the slang term for aircraft carrier. There is a bit more to it though. In flattop diplomacy, a carrier is docked in a foreign port where there are diplomatic tensions. The threat that the carrier poses is minor compared to the threat of starting a war with the carrier's home nation.
* American exercises off Libya in the 1980s, especially the Gulf of Sidra incidents.
** OlderThanTheyThink once you find on a map where the Barbary States were located. The [[SemperFi Marine Corps]] hymn doesn't mention the Shores of Tripoli because of anything they did in the ''20th'' century.
** The Barbary Coast states were known as pirates and slave takers until visited in turn by the Americans, the British, and the French at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These three each persuaded them to turn to more gentle ways of life by the use of [[SemperFi exceedingly]] [[WoodenShipsAndIronMen strong]] [[LegionOfLostSouls persuasions]].
* The [[UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}} Taiwan Strait]] Crisis of [[TheNineties 1995-6]] was another instance, although some argue that the US [[NiceJobBreakingItHero overdid it]]--almost fatally --when UsefulNotes/BillClinton ordered ''two'' Carrier Battle Groups instead of just one. The crisis also demonstrated the potential for gunboat diplomacy to backfire. The crisis was precipitated by the Chinese military conducting missile tests less than 40 miles from ROC-controlled territory as well as a mobilization of Chinese troops in Fujian province (the province closest to Taiwan) and several live-fire exercises. The actions were intended to scare the Taiwanese populace into not re-electing then-President Lee Teng-hui, who was seen by China as being pro-independence - the crisis actually ''boosted'' Lee's popularity in the 1996 election and gave him an outright majority in the polls as opposed to a mere plurality. China has since learned its lesson and hasn't tried anything so radical in subsequent Taiwanese elections.
* Perhaps most famously, the diplomatic mission of Commodore Matthew C. Perry ([[Series/{{Friends}} not that one]]) to the Empire of Japan. His "diplomacy" involving the demand that Japan open its ports to trade with the United States, or else his fleet would sail all the way to Edo (now known as Tokyo) and burn it to the ground. He also claimed that the US Navy would send more ships to reinforce him than actually existed, but the Japanese didn't know that at the time.
** Subverted by his Russian equivalent, Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin who managed to open Japan for Russia '''after''' a tsunami destroyed his fleet.
** This was only the most famous of several rounds of this trope with Japan; Britain, after an English businessman was murdered for refusing to dismount and pay his respects to a passing noble, sent a squadron to bombard the towns of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki. Part of why Commodore Perry's tactics worked was because a growing faction in the Shogunate were going "Guys, we have ''got'' to get some of that for ourselves!"
** The final Japanese surrender in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII was signed on USS ''Missouri'', a battleship. Perry's US flag was brought along for the occasion as [=MacArthur=] was a blood relative of Perry's.
* Defied repeatedly to its own ultimate detriment by Joseon Korea, which had seen what "opening markets" had done to China and wanted little part of it. The American armed schooner General Sherman was sent to Pyongyang in 1866, ostensibly to open trade relations, only to be destroyed by fireships when the crew refused to accept "no" for an answer. Later the same year, an estimated 800 French soldiers aboard six warships attempted to seize the mouth of the Han River and coastal access to the capital, only to be forced back by winter and overwhelming opposition. Talk of a joint French-American punitive expedition went nowhere, but in 1871, the Americans tried again with over 600 marines and five warships, taking five fortifications along the Han River and managing to only strengthen the regent's opposition to modernization, including new proclamations against "appeasing foreigners." It wasn't until their rapidly-modernizing Japanese neighbours threatened to fire on the capital Hanseong (today Seoul) itself that the Hermit Kingdom was finally forced to open its markets to foreign trade, with Japan, America, and Russia at the forefront. Exactly as the Joseon rulers had feared, this resulted in their nation being annexed (albeit by Japan rather than a European power).
* In order to construct the Panama Canal, US President Theodore Roosevelt encouraged the Panamanians to revolt against their Colombian rulers, promising assistance from the US Navy. The rebellion was successful mainly because USS ''Nashville'' just happened to be in local waters, discouraging the Colombians from sending troops to quell the rebels.
* Used without end by both sides during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar with various degrees of success. There were many versions, from troop movements around the border, military exercises that were either intentionally leaked or outright covered by the media, [[NukeEm nuclear weapons testing]]... The "who blinks first" attitude shared by both sides nearly led to WorldWarIII and the EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, multiple times.
* Inverted, after a fashion, by the British government in the 1970s when the Argentine government first made threatening moves against the Falkland Islands. Two frigates were quickly dispatched to Britain's own territory, as opposed to dropping into a major Argentine port to say hello, and were backed up by a fast-attack submarine that would have come as quite a rude shock if the Argentines had decided to press on regardless. Instead, they wisely took the hint and the invasion plan was shelved. Sadly, Mrs Thatcher's Conservative government was rather less on the ball regarding Latin America than the outgoing Labour administration under Jim Callaghan, and ten years later Galtieri had another go... Ironically, if Galtieri had waited ''one more year'', massive budget cuts would've left the Royal Navy so downsized it would no longer have been able to take back the Falklands.[[note]]British submarines would've still been able to sink the entire Argentine Navy if called upon, but with Britain's aircraft carriers retired there would've been no way to send a counter-invasion force without it being sunk by the Argentine Air Force.[[/note]] Galtieri didn't do this largely because he feared he wouldn't be able to wait another year; he'd seized power in a coup and given his unpopularity he feared being deposed soon by another coup. Seizing "Las Malvinas" would be a glorious victory to distract from his economic failures and brutality, so he gambled that Britain just wouldn't care enough about the tiny barely-populated islands to actually fight for them.[[note]]He completely failed to grasp that Margaret Thatcher, a deeply divisive figure within her own country, would've committed political suicide if she'd made such a show of weakness as giving up British territory to invasion without a fight.[[/note]]
** Britain is also prone to doing this by sending something to the Falklands every time Argentina starts making noises about 'Las Malvinas'. Until recently, it was usually a submarine (which after what happened to the ''Belgrano'', Argentina is more than a little twitchy about), though in 2012 after a few particular noises too many, the ''Dauntless'' a brand new Type 45 'Daring' class Destroyer (equivalent of the US ''Arleigh Burke'' class) was sent to the islands.
* Hilarious version: ''[[RunningGag Every time]]'' UsefulNotes/{{Malaysia}} decides to [[IShallTauntYou taunt]] UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}} about its territorial borders, Malaysia does indeed send a warship, only for Indonesia to send [[DisproportionateRetribution several]] [[SummonBiggerFish bigger warships]] (sometimes with an extra CoolPlane). Gunboat diplomacy only works if you're more powerful than the nation you're trying to intimidate, after all.
* An interesting dueling version: During [[UsefulNotes/TheIndoPakistanConflict the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War]], the US sent in the Enterprise battle group to threaten India to stop [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomping]] the Pakistanis, only for the Soviets (who were sympathetic to India[[note]]Ironically this sympathy was for ''business'' rather than ideological reasons. India was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and maintained friendly relations with both sides of the Cold War, and bought quite a lot of weapons from the Soviets.[[/note]]) to do the same thing. To prevent this from becoming a PretextForWar, the Americans stood down, although India offered very generous terms to Pakistan in the Shiala Agreement. India developed UsefulNotes/TheThirdEyeOfBharat to prevent anyone from ever using this tactic to push them around again. But in response, the UsefulNotes/PakistanisWithPanters developed their own UsefulNotes/PakAttack, bringing further tension to the region.
* The order of the day between North and South Korea: if you don't like how things are going in the diplomatic table, you arrange a "joint military exercise (with live rounds!)" near your neighbor's land or naval border. Sometimes the "training bullets" fly outside the exercise zone, too.
** The US and South Korea habitually do joint training exercises near the hot area. When, in 2013, North Korea started one of the worst rounds of saber-rattling yet, the US sent a missile destroyer and a couple of B-2 heavy bombers to play, in a show designed to say "careful who you mess with".
*** Unfortunately, due to peculiarities of the North Korean society (these guys tend to ''believe'' their own propaganda), [[NiceJobBreakingItHero it sends exactly the wrong message]]. When these powerful American forces leave, the North Koreans believe they've chased them off.
*** One ''successful'' account of this would be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_axe_murder_incident Operation Paul Bunyan]]. The background of the story is that the South Koreans had a tree on their side that needed to be cut since its presence prevented them from keeping an eye on a North Korean facility across the border. When they sent a small squad of Americans and their own soldiers to trim the tree, several North Korean soldiers crossed to the South Korean side and told them that the tree had been planted by Kim Il Sung himself, and trimming it was forbidden. When the Americans refused to stop their work, the North Korean soldiers attacked them with axes, killing several of them. The United States responded with the above-mentioned '''Operation Paul Bunyan''', involving a more...aggressive trimming of the tree consisting of American combat engineering regiments, South Korean special forces, American AA and tank battalions, Cobra attack helicopters, F-111 attack aircraft, ''B-52 nuclear bombers with fighter escort,'' and enough naval and army forces on standby to reduce everything within a 5-mile radius of the tree to ash if given the word. The North Koreans were understandably alarmed about the sudden show of force (one intelligence officer monitoring NK radio communications at the time said that the sheer amount of firepower "blew their [...] minds") and deployed some machine gun teams on their side, but they wisely stayed well clear of the American forces as they chopped the tree down.
* Shows of force are not limited to one's adversaries. They can just as much be messages to one's allies: "I will support you in the face of this third country threatening you" is more credible if you have your own skin in the game, like your own soldiers and ships.
** As a specific example, take the presence of American soldiers in Europe as part of UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. US foreign policy up through UsefulNotes/WorldWarII traditionally favored neutrality (at least with respect to Europe) and staying out of potentially entangling alliances and conflicts.[[note]]Indeed, the proposed [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Amendment Ludlow Amendment]] (1937) and later [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricker_Amendment Bricker Amendment]] (1951) would have made it harder for the US government to do otherwise.[[/note]] Even during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar and the formation of NATO, there was much worry among some in Western Europe that, if Warsaw Pact troops ''did'' invade, the US would just [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere leave them to their fate]] rather than send their own soldiers to die on someone else's land; the US's commitment to using nuclear weapons in retaliation was similarly questioned (why bring TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt on everyone, including Americans, when not using them would only mean [[DayOfTheJackboot Western Europe gets new management]] but at least not a nuclear wasteland?). Placing US troops in Europe was at least partly to assuage these fears - it would be far more difficult for Washington to politically justify not getting involved in a Warsaw Pact invasion scenario if American blood had already been shed.
*** The Berlin Brigade, a US Army contingent that was stationed in West Berlin (the UK and France also had similar contingents), can be considered an example of the previous on a smaller scale. Unification of Berlin was a prized objective of East Germany and the Soviet Union for reasons political[[note]]Having a unified capital that went back to the German Empire would give East Germany more legitimacy to its claim of representing all of Germany and allowed communist propoganda to portray the Bonn-based West Germany as an illegitimate puppet (and by extension shame the Western powers supporting it)[[/note]] and pratical[[note]]West Berlin, being so far behind the Inner German Border and having special rules that effectively became legal loopholes for emigration (not to mention how heavily guarded the Iron Curtain was), was a popular destination for many East German defectors[[/note]], and it wasn't like the Soviets wouldn't consider trying to strongarm the West into giving up West Berlin (c.f., the 1947-48 Berlin Blockade, the tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie in 1961) - in a hypothetical Warsaw pact invasion West Berlin would almost certainly be a target. The force wasn't all that large - about 3,000 for the US - and in an actual shooting war they would not have lasted more than a few days to any serious push by Warsaw Pact troops because they would be outnumbered by a ridiculous margin and be immediately cut-off from supplies behind the Iron Curtain. The real point was to make US citizens die in the defence of West Berlin and West Germany so that the USA's isolationists would be unable to oppose the war, and make NATO think it was less likely that the USA would abandon them if war broke out.
* Both China and America have been sending their [[SarcasmMode magnificent naval fleets]] to the South China Sea. The PRC, to defend the undersea resources they claim to be rightfully theirs (which is to say, ''the entire sea'' [[note]] International law puts a country's Exclusive Economic Zone up to 300 km out from their coastline. The South China Sea doesn't align with the PRC's Coastline at all, and the sheer size of it means that the only way they could legally claim it all (as they do; their "logic" is apparently along the lines of "[[InsaneTrollLogic it has China in its name so it obviously belongs to China]]") is by controlling every bit of land that borders it - which is where the not-PRC countries of Vietnam, Malaysia, and The Philippines come in with their pesky independence and legal rights.[[/note]]); the USA, to curb the PRC's claim by protecting the interests of her South-East Asian allies, who under international law have legitimate and universally recognised (except by the PRC) claims to it.
** China's own attempts at gunboat diplomacy seem to actually be backfiring against them. By antagonizing their neighbors, China has actually pushed these to have closer ties to the US. The Philippines is already a given considering that they're already a recognized "Major Non-NATO Ally". More ironic however is Vietnam, a communist country and America's former foe in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar are now moving towards closer ties towards their old foe. (It doesn't help China's case that ''they'' are also an old foe of Vietnam. Even if they have ideologically similar governments, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War China has been at war with Vietnam more recently than America has]].) If China fears being encircled by enemies supported by the west, they surely aren't doing a very good job preventing it.
* Employed by the USSR in the so-called [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar First Socialist War]] (China's punitive war against Vietnam concerning the latter's incursions into China-friendly UsefulNotes/{{Cambodia}}...which Vietnam had conduced to stop the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime). In 1979, as the [[UsefulNotes/ChineseWithChopperSupport PRC]] wound up its limited offensive upon Vietnam, the Soviet Union - Vietnam's ideological and Realpolitik backers - conducted one of the largest military manoeuvres in its history. More than thirty divisions were airlifted to the Sino-Russian border in less than a week, and the Navy burned through three years of its fuel reserves in the course of a month. Two divisions were actually left in Mongolia after the exercises, as doing so was cheaper than bringing them back. As far as the Soviets were concerned, not to mention the Vietnamese, the Chinese had been scared into submission. The Peoples' Liberation Army's desire to avoid the appearance of caving in to Soviet pressure actually made them want to continue to prosecute the war beyond the (limited and from a military standpoint, ''stupid'') objectives they had been set. The PRC ultimately ended up withdrawing and declaring victory, even though they'd plainly been driven out by Vietnam.
* This trope is best summed up by the old maxim (source unknown) "Diplomacy works best when it's backed by credible threat of force."
* Iran, under pressure of embargo over their nuclear development, had threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. The US responded by deploying their biggest aircraft carrier to patrol the waters.
* Northrop Grumman - the owners of the shipyards where US aircraft carriers are built - actually sell T-shirts and posters with the image of USS ''Enterprise'' from the front and the legend: "[[BadassBoast 90,000 tons of diplomacy.]]"
* In 1825, King Charles X of UsefulNotes/{{France}} sent a gunboat to UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}} to demand, under threat of war if they did not agree, an indemnity of 150 million francs to be paid over five years to compensate the slaveowners and planters who lost their "property" in the revolution. Since Haiti's total revenue for the year 1825 was only 5.1 million francs, they were forced to empty the treasury and take out a loan from France. Even after the French reduced their demand to 90 million francs, Haiti ended up paying a total of 112 million francs from 1825 to 1938 because of the loans. The New York Times estimates that Haiti lost at least $21 billion or as much as $115 billion of potential economic growth over a period of 200 years.
* The three "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars Cod Wars]]" between the United Kingdom and Iceland can be seen as another modern example. Here the British were unsuccessful in their attempts to impose their policies on Iceland. Iceland knew that their strategically vital location in the Cold War meant they were too important to NATO for the British to actually open fire, illustrating that gunboat diplomacy doesn't work if the stronger nation is bluffing and the weaker nation knows it.
* A Website/{{Cracked}} [[https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1958-roadhouse-gets-lot-right-5-lessons-bouncer.html article]] about the daily life of bouncers in bars or clubs is an example of small-scale application of this trope. Big scary muscular guys are preferable to tiny pint-sized powerhouses or martial artists, precisely because big muscular men will intimidate the patrons so much just by their looks and reminding the patrons that they are not the biggest guy in the room that they will think twice before causing trouble.
* Averted by the Charter of the United Nations, which bans States from threatening the use of force against the territorial integrity or the independence of another State.
* At the height of its power in the 1800s, the British Empire became famous for this. It was said that the empire could quiet the whole of China by simply dispatching a single warship[[note]] Untrue, as the French found out in their 1884-85 Sino-French (mini-)War. France tried to take on China alone, and despite sinking half the antiquated Qing fleet was effectively fought to a standstill by modernised Qing Empire ground forces. The war reminded all the interested parties - France, Britain, Russia, Japan - that they needed each other's cooperation if they wanted to extract any more 'special concessions' (trade outposts, military bases) from The Empire Of The Qing - which [[InformedAttribute despite supposedly being on its last legs]], was regarded with renewed caution (until the much larger Sino-Japanese War of 1895, which revealed that the Qing's refusal to adopt a modern logistics/command system complete hamstrung their forces despite their size and usage of uber-modern weaponry)[[/note]]. Boastful hyperbole, to be sure, but hyperbole with a point. It was taken to ridiculous levels with the Don Pacifico affair when Britain's reaction to a British citizen in Greece being mugged was to send the Royal Navy over to blockade the entire country until the Greeks caught the man responsible and paid Don Pacifico compensation (although it should be noted that Pacifico was Jewish, and he was only the latest in a long line of British Jews to be abused in Greece, so the British did have, if you squint, a slightly nobler motive).
** During the Second Opium War, the British and French sent what amounted to little more than three divisions (not even 60,000 troops) to escort their ambassadors to Peking - ostensibly in the hope that they would be recognised as equals rather than being made to do the kowtow and be officially recognised as vassals/servants. The Qing court umm-ed and ah-ed and eventually met them with armed force when they kept marching on the capital. However, their decently-armed but disorganised and ill-led force of 200,000 (which had zero experience of modern warfare to boot) was quickly routed and the Imperial Court fled the city still refusing to negotiate. The Allies stuck around and pillaged the place until they did.
*** Cleverly exploiting this was the way Russia peacefully and amicably acquired her Maritime Provinces in 1860. By negotiating a settlement and treaty to stop Allied troops from ransacking Beijing further, the Russian Ambassador established a certain rapport with the Emperor was able to [[ManipulativeBastard convince him]] that the sparsely-inhabited (Han Chinese were prohibited to settle there by the Manchu Qing dynasty, whose semi-nomadic people were the only people living there) lands in question were not only economically useless but also impossible to protect. He actually had a point there, as just seven years later Russia sold her lands in North America (the USA's current state of 'Alaska') to the USA for the exact same reasons. From that point onward, Russian diplomats were always keen to point out that Russia's acquisitions of Qing territory had been by mutual agreement and not made under duress - criticising at great length the French and the Japanese for their own less subtle approaches.
** The governor of Guangzhou tried this against The British East India Company, without appreciating the close ties between The Company and the British government or the extent to which two hundred years of nothing more than border-skirmishes with steppe tribes and mountain-kingdoms had left Qing Chinese forces woefully inexperienced and ill-equipped for waging a full-scale modern war of the kind Europe had been fighting for four hundred years very nearly non-stop by that point (chiefly the Hundred Years' War, Eighty Years' War, Thirty Years' War, Seven Years' War, War of American Independence, War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars).
* Subverted with the "[[UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars Gunboat War]]" between Denmark-Norway and the United Kingdom from 1807 to 1814. Because the Royal Navy had forced Denmark to hand over its battle-fleet through the 1807 bombardment of Copenhagen (i. e. a direct attack on the civilian population of the Danish capital), Denmark could only continue the unequal struggle with its smaller naval ships, i. e. gunboats.
* The USA's Central-South American Banana Republics were, as per the page image, kept in line by constant reminders of the threat of force and the occasional USA-organised/supported coup d'etat. From a little after the US Civil War up until relatively recently, this trope has been in force to some extent.
** The page image also refers to a policy of gunboat diplomacy by proxy. The United States didn't want European warships intruding into the American sphere of influence; instead, the Europeans would ask the US to send a gunboat to apply pressure on their behalf.
*** Specifically, the page image is referring to the Monroe Doctrine - that the USA would resist all European attempts to interfere in 'their' zone of influence, i.e. the whole of the Americas. No-one took it seriously at the time, as the US was a third-rate power and it was clear that places like British Canada and Spanish Cuba were not part of the Americas, by this definition. Nor were places like Argentina, which was ''Britain's'' model Banana Republic. Anyhow, note how Roosevelt is aiming the gun at the monarchical European figure while the poor, defenseless Latin American cowers beneath him. The image doesn't actually show gunboat diplomacy as such but instead presents a benign ideal of it, as one would expect of a (biased) US political cartoon.
*** Incidentally, they started taking it seriously during the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar, when an American fleet in the Caribbean wiped out an entire Spanish fleet. [[CurbStompBattle In an afternoon.]] While suffering one casualty. From heatstroke. (American demands afterwards rapidly jumped from "get out of Cuba" to "give us all of your islands", especially when a second Spanish fleet in the Philippines fared little better.)
* The SMS ''Panther'' is the TropeNamer and TropeCodifier, when it was dispatched by the German Empire to Morocco in 1911, during the Agadir Crisis. This incident popularised the phrase "gunboat diplomacy" and also contributed to the First World War.
** The "Panther's Leap" also counts as a subversion of sorts, since the entire affair was a complete farce. She was ostensibly dispatched to Agadir to protect German citizens in the port, but this plan had one glaring flaw: there were no German citizens in Agadir. Realising this, the German government sent a telegram to the only German citizen in the area - a perfectly happy, unendangered man called Wilburg - and ordered him to travel 75 miles south to Agadir to be "rescued". The ''Panther'' arrived on July 1st, 1911, only to discover that Wilburg hadn't arrived, so the gunboat sat impotently in the bay waiting for him. When he finally did reach Agadir, he was so exhausted from his journey that his only priority was finding a hotel for the night. The next morning he awoke to discover that the ''Panther'' had been joined by a second German gunboat, the ''Berlin''. Deciding it was time to go and get himself rescued, Wilburg made his way down to the beach and waved at the ships... who promptly ignored him. Frustrated, Wilburg began to jump up and down and throw a tantrum on the beach - only for the officers of the ''Berlin'' to assume he was a deranged native. It was only when Wilburg stood with his hands on his hips and glared at them in silent fury that it dawned on them that this might be the man they were supposed to rescue - because [[InsaneTrollLogic no native would ever stand with his hands on his hips.]] Wilburg was duly saved from the terrifying prospect of a nice day on the beach. In truth, the entire episode had been intended to warn the French of trying to obstruct German colonization in Africa but backfired spectacularly when it drew the ire not just of the French, but the British as well.
** Worse yet, the incident demonstrated Austria-Hungary's complete unwillingness to back Germany up when push came to shove. Rather than seeking a new ally - i.e. Russia, a rising power with close economic ties to Germany - they tried even harder to enlist Austro-Hungarian support. Ultimately, German support for Austria-Hungary and fear of Russia's growing economic and military power impelled Germany to escalate a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI into a pan-European conflict involving France and Germany as well]][[note]] under the fatalistic logic that war was inevitable (largely because of French desire to retake Alsace-Lorraine) and the odds would only get worse as time went by and Russia became even more powerful - Russia had already matched Germany in artillery by 1914, to say nothing of the size of her trained reserve of manpower as a country with more than twice the population of Austria-Hungary and Germany put together [[/note]]. Neutral but virulently Germanophobic Britain using the invasion of Belgium as a pretext to attack Germany and Germany staging a FalseFlagOperation to bring The Ottoman Empire into the war against Russia were just the icing on the cake.
*** At the start, only Churchill and Gray were in support of intervention, and both the political leadership and general public in Britain were unwilling to get involved in the war. It was the (vastly exaggerated) atrocities[[note]]There's no denying the German military behaved badly in Belgium; but their actions were vastly exaggerated in terms of number and awfulness as a propaganda tool, including British newspapers adding a lot of completely invented ones just to be sure. Exaggeration of German atrocities in [=WW1=] was so notorious that many people in [=WW2=] refused to believe reports of Nazi atrocities - believing that their own media and politicians were lying again.[[/note]] which the German army committed in Belgium which finally propelled them to act. Those atrocities were themselves propelled by the Germans not being familiar with the nature of urban combat, where every shot echoed, causing a false belief that the troops were constantly under threat of ambush by local partisans. By the standards of the time, partisans were considered war criminals so those atrocities were considered "appropriate" by the occupying forces.
* During the interwar era, the Danzig crisis of 1932, which pitted a Polish Navy destroyer acting under orders from Poland's government and the Free City of Danzig, whose political position remained contested during the period. Polish statesman Józef Piłsudski decided to order the ORP Wicher to host the visit of a group of British destroyers to the Free City of Danzig (which was technically recognized as an independent entity at the time by most foreign governments, including Poland). Despite the aggressive posture, the Polish goal behind sending a warship to foreign waters was primarily to prevent the French and British governments from striking any deal with Nazi Germany that would be unfavorable to Poland with a show of strength. On the date of the British visit, 14 June, the Wicher steamed into the Danzig harbor, with secret orders to shell government buildings if any disrespect was shown to the Polish flag. Danzig officials were ultimately forced to accept the Polish government's right to station warships in the city harbor whenever they pleased, which only resulted in a further deterioration of relationship between the two entities in the years leading up to World War II.
* The two Moroccan Crises of 1905 and 1911. Both also illustrate the major problem with the gunboat approach; you have to have the biggest stick around to pull it off, or you'll be slapped down by those who ''do''.
* USS ''Texas'' earned the nickname "The Old Statesman" (think about it) after being used (along with several other ships) to exert diplomatic pressure on the Mexican government during what's now called the "Tampico Incident." She was actually one of the last ships literally referred to as a gunboat during her career to be used in this capacity.
** USS ''Iowa'' has the nickname "the Big Stick" after Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" quote. fittingly the Iowa class were the last battleships used to be used as a tacit threat in a similar idea to this trope.
* There is the similar modern concept of "flattop diplomacy", flat top being the slang term for aircraft carrier. There is a bit more to it though. In flattop diplomacy, a carrier is docked in a foreign port where there are diplomatic tensions. The threat that the carrier poses is minor compared to the threat of starting a war with the carrier's home nation.
* American exercises off Libya in the 1980s, especially the Gulf of Sidra incidents.
** OlderThanTheyThink once you find on a map where the Barbary States were located. The [[SemperFi Marine Corps]] hymn doesn't mention the Shores of Tripoli because of anything they did in the ''20th'' century.
** The Barbary Coast states were known as pirates and slave takers until visited in turn by the Americans, the British, and the French at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These three each persuaded them to turn to more gentle ways of life by the use of [[SemperFi exceedingly]] [[WoodenShipsAndIronMen strong]] [[LegionOfLostSouls persuasions]].
* The [[UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}} Taiwan Strait]] Crisis of [[TheNineties 1995-6]] was another instance, although some argue that the US [[NiceJobBreakingItHero overdid it]]--almost fatally --when UsefulNotes/BillClinton ordered ''two'' Carrier Battle Groups instead of just one. The crisis also demonstrated the potential for gunboat diplomacy to backfire. The crisis was precipitated by the Chinese military conducting missile tests less than 40 miles from ROC-controlled territory as well as a mobilization of Chinese troops in Fujian province (the province closest to Taiwan) and several live-fire exercises. The actions were intended to scare the Taiwanese populace into not re-electing then-President Lee Teng-hui, who was seen by China as being pro-independence - the crisis actually ''boosted'' Lee's popularity in the 1996 election and gave him an outright majority in the polls as opposed to a mere plurality. China has since learned its lesson and hasn't tried anything so radical in subsequent Taiwanese elections.
* Perhaps most famously, the diplomatic mission of Commodore Matthew C. Perry ([[Series/{{Friends}} not that one]]) to the Empire of Japan. His "diplomacy" involving the demand that Japan open its ports to trade with the United States, or else his fleet would sail all the way to Edo (now known as Tokyo) and burn it to the ground. He also claimed that the US Navy would send more ships to reinforce him than actually existed, but the Japanese didn't know that at the time.
** Subverted by his Russian equivalent, Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin who managed to open Japan for Russia '''after''' a tsunami destroyed his fleet.
** This was only the most famous of several rounds of this trope with Japan; Britain, after an English businessman was murdered for refusing to dismount and pay his respects to a passing noble, sent a squadron to bombard the towns of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki. Part of why Commodore Perry's tactics worked was because a growing faction in the Shogunate were going "Guys, we have ''got'' to get some of that for ourselves!"
** The final Japanese surrender in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII was signed on USS ''Missouri'', a battleship. Perry's US flag was brought along for the occasion as [=MacArthur=] was a blood relative of Perry's.
* Defied repeatedly to its own ultimate detriment by Joseon Korea, which had seen what "opening markets" had done to China and wanted little part of it. The American armed schooner General Sherman was sent to Pyongyang in 1866, ostensibly to open trade relations, only to be destroyed by fireships when the crew refused to accept "no" for an answer. Later the same year, an estimated 800 French soldiers aboard six warships attempted to seize the mouth of the Han River and coastal access to the capital, only to be forced back by winter and overwhelming opposition. Talk of a joint French-American punitive expedition went nowhere, but in 1871, the Americans tried again with over 600 marines and five warships, taking five fortifications along the Han River and managing to only strengthen the regent's opposition to modernization, including new proclamations against "appeasing foreigners." It wasn't until their rapidly-modernizing Japanese neighbours threatened to fire on the capital Hanseong (today Seoul) itself that the Hermit Kingdom was finally forced to open its markets to foreign trade, with Japan, America, and Russia at the forefront. Exactly as the Joseon rulers had feared, this resulted in their nation being annexed (albeit by Japan rather than a European power).
* In order to construct the Panama Canal, US President Theodore Roosevelt encouraged the Panamanians to revolt against their Colombian rulers, promising assistance from the US Navy. The rebellion was successful mainly because USS ''Nashville'' just happened to be in local waters, discouraging the Colombians from sending troops to quell the rebels.
* Used without end by both sides during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar with various degrees of success. There were many versions, from troop movements around the border, military exercises that were either intentionally leaked or outright covered by the media, [[NukeEm nuclear weapons testing]]... The "who blinks first" attitude shared by both sides nearly led to WorldWarIII and the EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, multiple times.
* Inverted, after a fashion, by the British government in the 1970s when the Argentine government first made threatening moves against the Falkland Islands. Two frigates were quickly dispatched to Britain's own territory, as opposed to dropping into a major Argentine port to say hello, and were backed up by a fast-attack submarine that would have come as quite a rude shock if the Argentines had decided to press on regardless. Instead, they wisely took the hint and the invasion plan was shelved. Sadly, Mrs Thatcher's Conservative government was rather less on the ball regarding Latin America than the outgoing Labour administration under Jim Callaghan, and ten years later Galtieri had another go... Ironically, if Galtieri had waited ''one more year'', massive budget cuts would've left the Royal Navy so downsized it would no longer have been able to take back the Falklands.[[note]]British submarines would've still been able to sink the entire Argentine Navy if called upon, but with Britain's aircraft carriers retired there would've been no way to send a counter-invasion force without it being sunk by the Argentine Air Force.[[/note]] Galtieri didn't do this largely because he feared he wouldn't be able to wait another year; he'd seized power in a coup and given his unpopularity he feared being deposed soon by another coup. Seizing "Las Malvinas" would be a glorious victory to distract from his economic failures and brutality, so he gambled that Britain just wouldn't care enough about the tiny barely-populated islands to actually fight for them.[[note]]He completely failed to grasp that Margaret Thatcher, a deeply divisive figure within her own country, would've committed political suicide if she'd made such a show of weakness as giving up British territory to invasion without a fight.[[/note]]
** Britain is also prone to doing this by sending something to the Falklands every time Argentina starts making noises about 'Las Malvinas'. Until recently, it was usually a submarine (which after what happened to the ''Belgrano'', Argentina is more than a little twitchy about), though in 2012 after a few particular noises too many, the ''Dauntless'' a brand new Type 45 'Daring' class Destroyer (equivalent of the US ''Arleigh Burke'' class) was sent to the islands.
* Hilarious version: ''[[RunningGag Every time]]'' UsefulNotes/{{Malaysia}} decides to [[IShallTauntYou taunt]] UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}} about its territorial borders, Malaysia does indeed send a warship, only for Indonesia to send [[DisproportionateRetribution several]] [[SummonBiggerFish bigger warships]] (sometimes with an extra CoolPlane). Gunboat diplomacy only works if you're more powerful than the nation you're trying to intimidate, after all.
* An interesting dueling version: During [[UsefulNotes/TheIndoPakistanConflict the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War]], the US sent in the Enterprise battle group to threaten India to stop [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomping]] the Pakistanis, only for the Soviets (who were sympathetic to India[[note]]Ironically this sympathy was for ''business'' rather than ideological reasons. India was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and maintained friendly relations with both sides of the Cold War, and bought quite a lot of weapons from the Soviets.[[/note]]) to do the same thing. To prevent this from becoming a PretextForWar, the Americans stood down, although India offered very generous terms to Pakistan in the Shiala Agreement. India developed UsefulNotes/TheThirdEyeOfBharat to prevent anyone from ever using this tactic to push them around again. But in response, the UsefulNotes/PakistanisWithPanters developed their own UsefulNotes/PakAttack, bringing further tension to the region.
* The order of the day between North and South Korea: if you don't like how things are going in the diplomatic table, you arrange a "joint military exercise (with live rounds!)" near your neighbor's land or naval border. Sometimes the "training bullets" fly outside the exercise zone, too.
** The US and South Korea habitually do joint training exercises near the hot area. When, in 2013, North Korea started one of the worst rounds of saber-rattling yet, the US sent a missile destroyer and a couple of B-2 heavy bombers to play, in a show designed to say "careful who you mess with".
*** Unfortunately, due to peculiarities of the North Korean society (these guys tend to ''believe'' their own propaganda), [[NiceJobBreakingItHero it sends exactly the wrong message]]. When these powerful American forces leave, the North Koreans believe they've chased them off.
*** One ''successful'' account of this would be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_axe_murder_incident Operation Paul Bunyan]]. The background of the story is that the South Koreans had a tree on their side that needed to be cut since its presence prevented them from keeping an eye on a North Korean facility across the border. When they sent a small squad of Americans and their own soldiers to trim the tree, several North Korean soldiers crossed to the South Korean side and told them that the tree had been planted by Kim Il Sung himself, and trimming it was forbidden. When the Americans refused to stop their work, the North Korean soldiers attacked them with axes, killing several of them. The United States responded with the above-mentioned '''Operation Paul Bunyan''', involving a more...aggressive trimming of the tree consisting of American combat engineering regiments, South Korean special forces, American AA and tank battalions, Cobra attack helicopters, F-111 attack aircraft, ''B-52 nuclear bombers with fighter escort,'' and enough naval and army forces on standby to reduce everything within a 5-mile radius of the tree to ash if given the word. The North Koreans were understandably alarmed about the sudden show of force (one intelligence officer monitoring NK radio communications at the time said that the sheer amount of firepower "blew their [...] minds") and deployed some machine gun teams on their side, but they wisely stayed well clear of the American forces as they chopped the tree down.
* Shows of force are not limited to one's adversaries. They can just as much be messages to one's allies: "I will support you in the face of this third country threatening you" is more credible if you have your own skin in the game, like your own soldiers and ships.
** As a specific example, take the presence of American soldiers in Europe as part of UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. US foreign policy up through UsefulNotes/WorldWarII traditionally favored neutrality (at least with respect to Europe) and staying out of potentially entangling alliances and conflicts.[[note]]Indeed, the proposed [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Amendment Ludlow Amendment]] (1937) and later [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricker_Amendment Bricker Amendment]] (1951) would have made it harder for the US government to do otherwise.[[/note]] Even during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar and the formation of NATO, there was much worry among some in Western Europe that, if Warsaw Pact troops ''did'' invade, the US would just [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere leave them to their fate]] rather than send their own soldiers to die on someone else's land; the US's commitment to using nuclear weapons in retaliation was similarly questioned (why bring TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt on everyone, including Americans, when not using them would only mean [[DayOfTheJackboot Western Europe gets new management]] but at least not a nuclear wasteland?). Placing US troops in Europe was at least partly to assuage these fears - it would be far more difficult for Washington to politically justify not getting involved in a Warsaw Pact invasion scenario if American blood had already been shed.
*** The Berlin Brigade, a US Army contingent that was stationed in West Berlin (the UK and France also had similar contingents), can be considered an example of the previous on a smaller scale. Unification of Berlin was a prized objective of East Germany and the Soviet Union for reasons political[[note]]Having a unified capital that went back to the German Empire would give East Germany more legitimacy to its claim of representing all of Germany and allowed communist propoganda to portray the Bonn-based West Germany as an illegitimate puppet (and by extension shame the Western powers supporting it)[[/note]] and pratical[[note]]West Berlin, being so far behind the Inner German Border and having special rules that effectively became legal loopholes for emigration (not to mention how heavily guarded the Iron Curtain was), was a popular destination for many East German defectors[[/note]], and it wasn't like the Soviets wouldn't consider trying to strongarm the West into giving up West Berlin (c.f., the 1947-48 Berlin Blockade, the tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie in 1961) - in a hypothetical Warsaw pact invasion West Berlin would almost certainly be a target. The force wasn't all that large - about 3,000 for the US - and in an actual shooting war they would not have lasted more than a few days to any serious push by Warsaw Pact troops because they would be outnumbered by a ridiculous margin and be immediately cut-off from supplies behind the Iron Curtain. The real point was to make US citizens die in the defence of West Berlin and West Germany so that the USA's isolationists would be unable to oppose the war, and make NATO think it was less likely that the USA would abandon them if war broke out.
* Both China and America have been sending their [[SarcasmMode magnificent naval fleets]] to the South China Sea. The PRC, to defend the undersea resources they claim to be rightfully theirs (which is to say, ''the entire sea'' [[note]] International law puts a country's Exclusive Economic Zone up to 300 km out from their coastline. The South China Sea doesn't align with the PRC's Coastline at all, and the sheer size of it means that the only way they could legally claim it all (as they do; their "logic" is apparently along the lines of "[[InsaneTrollLogic it has China in its name so it obviously belongs to China]]") is by controlling every bit of land that borders it - which is where the not-PRC countries of Vietnam, Malaysia, and The Philippines come in with their pesky independence and legal rights.[[/note]]); the USA, to curb the PRC's claim by protecting the interests of her South-East Asian allies, who under international law have legitimate and universally recognised (except by the PRC) claims to it.
** China's own attempts at gunboat diplomacy seem to actually be backfiring against them. By antagonizing their neighbors, China has actually pushed these to have closer ties to the US. The Philippines is already a given considering that they're already a recognized "Major Non-NATO Ally". More ironic however is Vietnam, a communist country and America's former foe in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar are now moving towards closer ties towards their old foe. (It doesn't help China's case that ''they'' are also an old foe of Vietnam. Even if they have ideologically similar governments, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War China has been at war with Vietnam more recently than America has]].) If China fears being encircled by enemies supported by the west, they surely aren't doing a very good job preventing it.
* Employed by the USSR in the so-called [[UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar First Socialist War]] (China's punitive war against Vietnam concerning the latter's incursions into China-friendly UsefulNotes/{{Cambodia}}...which Vietnam had conduced to stop the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime). In 1979, as the [[UsefulNotes/ChineseWithChopperSupport PRC]] wound up its limited offensive upon Vietnam, the Soviet Union - Vietnam's ideological and Realpolitik backers - conducted one of the largest military manoeuvres in its history. More than thirty divisions were airlifted to the Sino-Russian border in less than a week, and the Navy burned through three years of its fuel reserves in the course of a month. Two divisions were actually left in Mongolia after the exercises, as doing so was cheaper than bringing them back. As far as the Soviets were concerned, not to mention the Vietnamese, the Chinese had been scared into submission. The Peoples' Liberation Army's desire to avoid the appearance of caving in to Soviet pressure actually made them want to continue to prosecute the war beyond the (limited and from a military standpoint, ''stupid'') objectives they had been set. The PRC ultimately ended up withdrawing and declaring victory, even though they'd plainly been driven out by Vietnam.
* This trope is best summed up by the old maxim (source unknown) "Diplomacy works best when it's backed by credible threat of force."
* Iran, under pressure of embargo over their nuclear development, had threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. The US responded by deploying their biggest aircraft carrier to patrol the waters.
* Northrop Grumman - the owners of the shipyards where US aircraft carriers are built - actually sell T-shirts and posters with the image of USS ''Enterprise'' from the front and the legend: "[[BadassBoast 90,000 tons of diplomacy.]]"
* In 1825, King Charles X of UsefulNotes/{{France}} sent a gunboat to UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}} to demand, under threat of war if they did not agree, an indemnity of 150 million francs to be paid over five years to compensate the slaveowners and planters who lost their "property" in the revolution. Since Haiti's total revenue for the year 1825 was only 5.1 million francs, they were forced to empty the treasury and take out a loan from France. Even after the French reduced their demand to 90 million francs, Haiti ended up paying a total of 112 million francs from 1825 to 1938 because of the loans. The New York Times estimates that Haiti lost at least $21 billion or as much as $115 billion of potential economic growth over a period of 200 years.
* The three "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars Cod Wars]]" between the United Kingdom and Iceland can be seen as another modern example. Here the British were unsuccessful in their attempts to impose their policies on Iceland. Iceland knew that their strategically vital location in the Cold War meant they were too important to NATO for the British to actually open fire, illustrating that gunboat diplomacy doesn't work if the stronger nation is bluffing and the weaker nation knows it.
* A Website/{{Cracked}} [[https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1958-roadhouse-gets-lot-right-5-lessons-bouncer.html article]] about the daily life of bouncers in bars or clubs is an example of small-scale application of this trope. Big scary muscular guys are preferable to tiny pint-sized powerhouses or martial artists, precisely because big muscular men will intimidate the patrons so much just by their looks and reminding the patrons that they are not the biggest guy in the room that they will think twice before causing trouble.
* Averted by the Charter of the United Nations, which bans States from threatening the use of force against the territorial integrity or the independence of another State.
