Gunboat diplomacy as rescue, coercion, and political leverage

James Cable's Gunboat Diplomacy works as a casebook of naval interventions rather than a narrow list of ships firing on shore. One 1920 entry has an American destroyer help protect Manzanillo from fire and violence, while another follows Soviet forces attacking White Russian shipping at Enzeli and turning the occupation into political leverage over Persia. British examples include shielding Eleftherios Venizelos after electoral defeat and carrying the former emperor Charles away from Hungary after his failed restoration. The catalog also records American Marines embarked in USS Pennsylvania during a Panama-Costa Rica border dispute and the creation of the United States Yangtze Patrol to protect lives, property, and national interests in China. These cases show that gunboat diplomacy could mean evacuation, protection, bargaining, political custody, or coercion without a formal war. The sequence supplies concrete interwar examples before distinguishing that diplomatic practice from the design of a literal gunboat.