Wiktionary
n. (context idiomatic English) The pursuit of foreign policy objectives with the aid of conspicuous displays of military power.
WordNet
n. diplomacy in which the nations threaten to use force in order to obtain their objectives [syn: power politics]
Wikipedia
In international politics, gunboat diplomacy (or " Big Stick ideology" in U.S. history) refers to the pursuit of foreign policy objectives with the aid of conspicuous displays of naval power—implying or constituting a direct threat of warfare, should terms not be agreeable to the superior force.
Usage examples of "gunboat diplomacy".
While drawing out Tombstone and getting him to talk about himself, Pamela had argued that carriers were too expensive and too vulnerable, useless high-tech toys in an age when nuclear confrontation with the Soviets was no longer a likely possibility, and when Third World banana republics no longer knuckled under to gunboat diplomacy.
Japan thought it an unforgivable reversion to the stupidities of gunboat diplomacy.
Tell your people that not all Humans want their territory, and endless rounds of gunboat diplomacy and saber-rattling.
He turned it down, having no balls for armed robbery stakeouts, going in doors gun first, gunboat diplomacy police work: meeting the Quentin bus at the depot, pistol-whipping hard boys into a docile parole.
The military forces of another age and place might have called it a show of force, or even gunboat diplomacy.
I sat there on the top step and listened to Terry and Connie and Flip Corkin and, so help me God, Agnes Moorehead as the Dragon Lady, all of them in a new adventure that took place in a Red China that had not existed in the days of Milton Caniffs 1937 version of the Orient, with river pirates and Chiang Kai-shek and warlords and the naive Imperialism of American gunboat diplomacy.
I often think that the era of gunboat diplomacy had much to recommend it.
Perhaps it was intended to serve as a roving ambassador, showing the flag, equipped for crisis management and gunboat diplomacy.