Starting in the early 1950s, as the US became embroiled in Indochina, Thailand was important because it was next door to the conflict and its military was more than willing to be a US ally. The US started to develop its presence in Asia during the late 1940s, when British power was receding and the West came to consider Maoist China an enemy. The first, based on published works and interviews, begins around World War II. “‘Spheres of influence’ à la the Cold War,” he writes, “remain the order of the day.” He wants the US to win Thailand back. He assumes that although economic relations among countries are now multilateral, in politics “the world is again more bipolar than multipolar,” with the US on one side and China on the other. In Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the US and a Rising China, Benjamin Zawacki argues that since around 2000 the US has “lost” Thailand to China through negligence and bad diplomacy. It belongs to the vocabularies of the cold war and the Great Game. The idea of one country “losing” another implies ownership. Thai and US soldiers at the end of a live-fire military display, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, February 2017
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