Drawing on a wide range of recently declassified documents, Lee outlines the regional and international context of American diplomatic history towards Korea and Vietnam and analyses the relationship between containment, the bipolar international system, and European and American concepts of empire at the beginning of the era of decolonization. He argues that although policy makers in the United Kingdom and Canada adopted a more defensive containment policy towards Communist China than the United States did, they generally supported American attempts to promote pro-Western elites in Korea and Vietnam. This is an important book for anyone interested in American foreign policy, Anglo-American relations, Asia and the international system, and British and Canadian foreign policies.