Absolutely. That’s the nice thing about it. It isn’t always necessary to vaporize a mountain-sized of chunk rock and iron. Just slightly nudge it while it’s still millions or billions of miles away and it won’t even come close to us.
Trouble is, that “nudge” would be like traveling back in time and doing something that would change the future.
We don’t know the repercussions of changing it’s course.
Despite all our computer skills, these things sometimes come as a surprise. But yeah, much worse than anyone can imagine.
If you are off by one degree leaving earth for a trip to the moon, a mere 238,900 miles you will miss it by 4,169 miles but of course, what could possibly go wrong?