"It is the worst kind of 19th century gunboat diplomacy, " he said.

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Several ASEAN nations dispute ownership of islands with China, and China's preparedness to assert its claims with aggressive warnings and even a bit of gunboat diplomacy has worried smaller neighbours, notably Vietnam and the Philippines.

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Talk about gunboat diplomacy!

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Sometimes those controversies date back to before I was born. (Laughter.) And sometimes I feel as if in some of these discussions or at least the press reports we're caught in a time warp, going back to the 1950s and gunboat diplomacy and Yanquis and the Cold War, and this and that and the other.

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The fourth kind of empire, suggests Mr Darwin, was a more informal one in places such as Argentina and Egypt where British influence was exercised through commerce, investment and shrewd diplomacy (occasionally of the gunboat kind).

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