MOSCOW, February 17. /TASS/. Events involving Venezuela and Iran indicate that the West has come back to the practice of gunboat diplomacy and is turning the sea into a bridgehead for aggression, Russian Presidential Aide and Maritime Board Chairman Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview with aif.ru.
"The facts show that the sea is once again becoming a springboard for military aggression," he said. "The old practice of gunboat diplomacy is returning, as seen in events involving Venezuela and Iran," Patrushev added. He also noted that although the West "dominated the seas for a long time, until the start of this century," its hegemony is now "largely a thing of the past."
Gunboat diplomacy was a method of foreign policy pressure widely used during the age of imperialism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Powerful states would send several warships, sometimes small but effective gunboats, to the shores of an uncooperative but weaker country and bombard its ports until it accepted the proposed terms.