Sir James Eric Sydney Cable KCVO CMG (15 November 1920 – 27 September 2001) was a British diplomat and naval strategic thinker. As an author, he became well known for a series of his works published between 1971 and 1994 about gunboat diplomacy. The Telegraph described him as "one of the most influential naval strategic thinkers of the last half-century". During the Second World War he served as an officer in the British Army.