Can gunboat diplomacy survive modern weapons?

The passage argues that modern weapons can weaken the visible menace of a single warship by giving the target more ways to resist or retaliate. Effective naval coercion may therefore require more ships, greater preparation, and tighter limits on what force is expected to achieve. Economic sanctions are useful supplements but often fail when alternative suppliers exist, while irregular forces require favorable politics and secure bases. Armies and airborne intervention can be hard to deploy quickly and even harder to withdraw without escalation. Nuclear danger does not remove coercion; it increases the need for options between passivity and total war. Cable's argument is that carefully bounded naval force can remain useful precisely because the alternatives also carry severe practical and political limits.