Word: gunboat
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...sign of danger for the Mayaguez was the sudden appearance at 2:20 p.m. (3:20 a.m. in Washington) of a Cambodian gunboat. It fired machine gun bullets and a rocket across the freighter's bow and forced her to stop. Radio Operator Wilbert Bock got off a last distress call. Then the Cambodians apparently located the radio shack and the radio fell silent. But the last message was picked up in Indonesia by agents of the ship's owner and relayed to the State Department in Washington...
...newspapers and wire services around the world. Standing alone, the statement almost seemed as if Kissinger were already mobilizing troops. The reaction was immediate, emotional and sharply negative. "A colonialist enterprise doomed to failure," thundered Algerian President Houari Boumedienne, reacting to his own reading of the Kissinger statement. "Gunboat policies," ridiculed Pravda. Egypt's President Anwar Sadat warned that the oil-producing Arab nations would blow up their wells rather than let them be seized by U.S. forces. Rome worried that American intervention might risk nuclear war with the Soviets. In London, political leaders of all parties were privately...
Replete with dueling navies, commando landing parties and sinking vessels, the scenario that unfolded last week in the South China Sea recalled gunboat diplomacy of bygone years. The clash was between South Viet Nam and China over the 50 or so tiny, nearly uninhabited reefs, shoals and atolls that make up the Paracel archipelago, about 200 miles east of Viet Nam. For two days the fighting was intense, but the outcome was never in doubt. Chinese troops claimed the islands last week in the name of Chairman...
Just as the U.S. has given up gunboat diplomacy in international politics, it is also setting aside the old big-stick approach in international economics. Until recently, when a foreign government nationalized U.S. companies, Washington retaliated by pressuring the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other agencies to withhold credits from the offending nation. This approach, known as the Connally Doctrine, after former Treasury Secretary John Connally, is being replaced by the ameliorative tactics of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who preaches negotiation instead of confrontation...
...TIME contends that gunboat diplomacy is anachronistic [Dec. 24]. You cite Viet Nam and the resulting catastrophe of intervention in that civil war as proof of your thesis. It was our mistaken use of "We don't want another Munich" that led us to catastrophe in Viet Nam. It could be that the cry "We don't want another Viet Nam" will lead us to further, more serious mistakes. Our foreign policy should be governed by careful analysis, not careless analogy...