After the end of World War II in 1945, while Britain regained Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu, Thailand switched camps again - now to the United States of America, on which it had declared war three years earlier. The US had emerged from the devastating global conflicts as one of the two superpowers in the soon-emerged Cold War.

The war of national liberation in Vietnam against French colonialism resumed with full vigour under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. On May 7, 1954, the French surrendered to the Vietnamese communists after its defeat in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. (see Daniel Moran., Wars of National Liberation , London, Cassell, 2002; pp. 97-107, or Lawrence Freedman, The Cold War - A Military History , London, Cassell, 2001; pp. 89-118)