After a military coup ousted Thaksin in September 2006, partly owing to the bilateral trade negotiations that skirted around civil society scrutiny, Thai-US relation increasingly drifted, held hostage by Thailand's domestic political volatility and turmoil. The Americans have tried during the post-coup period to 'revitalise' this bilateral alliance, one of its five major bilateral treaty spokes in East Asia, in both Track I and II endeavours, but thus far to no avail, as neither side sees much urgency in this process. The Thai government is content to avoid the political controversy closer ties with US would likely generate domestically, and American policymakers are yet to coalesce around a shared diagnosis of the problem to underpin their strategic diplomacy. the Thai-US alliance is certainly not what it used to be, and appears in need of a complete revamp after more than two post-Cold War decades