The Vietnam War was not merely a war of the sixties' generation, if considered within the spectrum of a global cold war history. Following the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the US Merchant Marine corps was assigned to carry home the troops from the Pacific theatre of World War II. Twelve ships of their command were ordered to make a long detour to transport thirteen thousand French combat troops from Europe to Vietnam. The sailors objected to the idea, according to Marilyn Young's depiction of the event, of using American vessels “for carrying foreign combat troops to foreign soil for the purpose of engaging in hostilities to further the imperialist policies of foreign governments.” Despite their protests, a new war began quietly in the South China Sea in October 1945.

The global cold war historical perspective can modify the temporality of the war's ending as well as its commencement. In October 2001, the US Senate voted in favor of a bilateral trade agreement between Vietnam and the United States. This event, which took place unremarkably in the midst of the first major international war of the new millennium in Afghanistan, was an extension of the February 1994 agreement when the United States formally lifted its trade embargo against its old enemy. The new bilateral trade agreement ended punitive tariffs on Vietnam's exports to the US market and nominally completed the process of normalization between two nations that fought one of the longest modern wars.