ABSTRACT
American-East Asian relations since World War II provide one of the most exciting fields of study for historians. There was a notable gap between perception and policy in America's cold war diplomacy in Asia. American-British relations in Southeast Asia became less and less cooperative toward the end of the war, and there was even less coordination in China and Japan. The US-Chinese confrontation in Korea was at first a subtheme of the cold war, but steadily it began to acquire a momentum of its own. Obviously, the story of American-Asian relations after the outbreak of the Korean War is a complex one, and no simplistic conceptual scheme suffices to deal with this phenomenon. America has traditionally been an Asian power. This reflects not only its geographical location between Europe and Asia, but also its position between the advanced industrial countries of Europe and the less-developed areas of the globe.
