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Over the summer, the United States —ostensibly to menace drug traffickers but also as a none-too-subtle warning to Venezuela. Earlier in the year, a U.S. Navy destroyer for similar reasons. And in the Taiwan Straits and Pacific, frequently show off their respective maritime military might.

Close to 200 years after first being used to assert geopolitical dominance, is very much alive and well.

In fact, the tactics employed by the U.S., China and others today fit naval strategist James Cable's for gunboat diplomacy as "the use or threat of limited naval force, otherwise than as an act of war, in order to secure advantage or avert loss."

The ships, boats and objectives have shifted since Cable first penned his , to be sure. But the core logic is the same: Conducted in tandem with political diplomacy, deploying state-of-the-art military vessels off or near a rival's coast makes one hell of a statement.

Gunboat diplomacy sets sail

Gunboat diplomacy originally took shape in the mid-19th century during an era of industrial navies, imperial rivalry and weak international law.

Steam power and heavy guns delivered mobility and shock, while diplomacy often happened via a few warships off a harbor, a short blockade or a punitive raid. These were highly visible acts, clearly attributable and designed to stop just short of war.

U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry's fleet, known as "" on account of their painted hulls, are seen as the archetype. Anchoring in Tokyo Bay throughout 1853–54, they helped secure the in 1854, forcibly opening the Japanese ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships.

Similarly, during , British navy squadrons pressured Greece to compensate a British subject.

A half-century later, Britain, Germany and Italy united to , seizing ships and customs houses to force the Venezuelan government to pay its foreign debts.

In each case, a limited naval force was openly brandished at a chokepoint or capital to win a narrow concession and then withdraw.

Troubled postwar waters

After 1945, nuclear risk, alliance politics and evolving maritime law made traditional gunboat diplomacy less attractive—and riskier.

As a result, the method adapted. Coercion shifted toward temporary, reversible shows of force and tools such as law enforcement actions at sea, patrols, boardings and embargo enforcement, .

The U.S.'s —d±ð±ô¾±²ú±ð°ù²¹³Ù±ð±ô²â "—used naval power to halt missile shipments from the Soviet Union while managing escalation and legal exposure. At the other end of the spectrum, pitted coast guard cutters and net-cutters against British trawlers. Controlled ramming and "" pushed fishing limits outward without triggering a shooting war between allies.

The classic logic of gunboat diplomacy endured, but it was increasingly hedged by law, alliance relations and fear of nuclear escalation.

Maritime policy in the modern age

Today global and regional great powers jostle with one another for power and influence across the intertwined domains of global economics, technology standards, information and law. That geopolitical environment has further called for the adaptation of gunboat diplomacy.

It has resulted in states being pushed to compete with one another in the .

Analysts now describe a "" rather than out-and-out naval confrontation. This consists of persistent, below-threshold uses of legal, informational and paramilitary tools alongside limited force to make routine activity at sea—transits, resupply, repairs—riskier, slower and more expensive.

The tool kit of maritime hybrid warfare blends nonmilitary coast guards with maritime militias, , cyber and electronic interference and pressure on undersea infrastructure.

In the , China's coast guard and maritime militia have blocked, rammed and used high-pressure water cannons to disrupt Philippine resupply at disputed islands. Beijing presents such actions as law enforcement, but the effect is coercive restraint of movement at sea.

In the , the 2023 and nearby telecom cables—linked by investigators to an anchor drag from the Hong Kong-registered New Polar Bear—and persistent GPS jamming allegedly show how seabed infrastructure and electronic warfare can raise risk and uncertainty without a shot being fired.

And then there is the U.S.

Since early September 2025, counternarcotics and maritime security operations in the have involved a conspicuous U.S. Navy and Coast Guard presence, high-seas interdictions and publicly released videos of precision strikes on small boats near Venezuela.

The Trump administration has framed these actions as part of a "" with drug cartels. But functionally, this is .

Indeed, gunboat diplomacy remains what it has always been: the application of limited, credible maritime power to shape the behavior of other states. Only now, nations have found a way to update an old strategy to make it relevant—and useful—to navigating a 21st-century waterscape.

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