Gunboat Diplomacy: Difference between revisions

Still pretty common today -- it just involves aircraft carriers.

 

 

{{examples}}

** Threatened to happen in ''[[X Wing Series|Starfighters of Adumar]]''. Both the Empire and the New Republic were trying to win over a neutral world, and both had beforehand signed treaties stating that if they were not the favored party, they would withdraw all forces for three days and not return except under "formal banners of truce or war". The Empire intended to ignore that if it came to it, but the Imperial in charge hated being ordered to break his word so much that the New Republic ambassador, [[Ambadassador|Wedge Antilles]], was able to talk him out of it.

* One of the space ships in [[Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] [[The Culture|Culture]] novels is actually named ''Gunboat Diplomat''.

** The ''Admiral Peary'' is armed with nukes, as a safeguard against the lizards doing anything bad to Earth in their absense. If that isn't gunboat diplomacy, I don't know what is. The ''Commodore Perry'' is an FTL-capable ship that took only 5 weeks to get to Tau Ceti. The mere fact that is was able to do that freaked out the Race more than the weapons it carried. Even if they managed to destroy the ship, the humans would just send another that could attack as soon as it arrived in orbit in a matter of weeks, as opposed to decades.

* In the [[Vorkosigan Saga]], Aral Vorkosigan pulls a clever reversal of this; he draws up a list of a neighbouring polity's top five requested diplomatic concessions and suggests it as an agenda for a summit. The diplomacy, in this case, is purely so that he can get his gunboat closer to where he suspects the action will take place. He's right, and it results in one hell of a [[Gunship Rescue]] moment.

* ''[[The War of the Worlds]]'' is usually read as an allegory for the British Empire's gunboat diplomacy in the late nineteenth century.

* This is standard policy for the [[The Federation|Earth Federation]] when dealing with space-faring aliens in Mikhail Akhmanov's ''[[Arrivals From the Dark|Trevelyan's Mission]]'' series. This is justified, as humanity's first (and many subsequent) encounters with aliens haven't exactly been on friendly terms. As such, all ambassadors are ferried by top-of-the-line cruisers. Then again, given that this 'verse has instant [[Casual Interstellar Travel]], it's not that big a deal. The only time they did not do that is when a race of [[Technical Pacifist|Technical Pacifists]] (who can somehow accurately predict possible futures using an advanced form of intuition) requested that no warships be present at negotiations.

 

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