Colonial empires and USA policy in the South-East Asia after the 1945

The following paper analyzes the characteristics of the US foreign policy decision-making process at the beginning of the Cold War, due to the active appeal of representatives of the political establishment, the military and the country’s expert community to the colonial experience of the European powers – in terms of the prospects of applying their experience in ensuring colonial control in Southeast Asia before and after the end of the World War II as part of the US political course in this region. In addition, it is concluded that more attention should be paid to the role and, therefore, to the prosopographic profile of the experts (in the broad sense of the word), who collaborated with the departments responsible for the development of American foreign policy, such as the Department of State and the Pentagon, and formulated many of the conclusions, which, at least rhetorically, formed the basis of Washington’s course in Southeast Asia after 1945. Special attention is paid to interpretations of the role of colonial knowledge in the light of the unfolding Cold War in the «third world», proposed by British diplomats and the military to their American colleagues in the logic of the «special relations» between Great Britain and the United States.