Salween River much of its length, the Salween's course is nearly parallel to that of the much larger Mekong in the east. Although the commonly accepted name is Salween, the river is known by a handful of other names regionally: "Nu" in China, "Thanlwin" in southern Burma, and "Salawin" on the border of Thailand and Burma. Several major sub-continental drainage basins border on the Salween. The Mekong basin forms nearly the entire eastern boundary of the watershed, while the Irrawaddy River flows southwards on the west side of the basin. The smallest boundary is formed by the Yangtze to the extreme north.
Kuomintang in Burma handled the KMT issue. Kenneth Young's (1970) thesis highlights the Cold War context of the concurrent Korean War as well as the complicated foreign relations between Burma, Thailand, China (both Nationalist and Communist), and the United States. He argues that Operation Paper, the covert CIA program devised to aid the KMT troops in Burma, was a complete failure for the United States. Not only had the United States failed to contain Sino-Burmese relations, it had alienated Burma through its handling of the KMT issue and its failure to restrain the Chinese Nationalists. Furthermore, Alfred McCoy (1991) questions CIA's complicity in