ABSTRACT
The terms 'naval' and 'maritime' are used variously by commentators to describe at-sea activity, including diplomatic, communicative engagements. Naval diplomacy is a subset of general diplomacy and will be used as a means of communication by maritime states in pursuit of their national interest. More specifically, it can be defined as the use of naval assets as communicative instruments in international power relationships to further the interests of the actors involved. Sir James Cable's hierarchy of definitive, purposeful, catalytic and expressive modes, which ranged from hard to soft power and from the highly effective to the token, became a standard in the Cold War. A contribution to theoretical development, therefore, has been to take Cable's framework forward into the post-Cold War global order. Cable announced in his final edition of Gunboat Diplomacy that 'coercive diplomacy will be less costly and less of a risk than war'.
