Appendix B
SEXTANT AND THE POSTWAR POLITICAL BALANCE IN ASIA-A REFLECTION
The definitive account of the political implications of tile
suggested shift in power within the Allied coalition, beginning with
SEXTANT, remains to be written. If, as some recent writers1 have
contended, the Tehran conference marked an adjustment in the political
balance of postwar Europe in favor of the USSR, it may be argued with
equal plausibility that the political balance in Asia was also set in
favor of the USSR, or at least against Nationalist China. At best,
such conclusions are still speculative, as are equally facile
conclusions on the relationships of wartime strategy and postwar
political developments. Much remains to be explored and explained, and
the full answer will probably not be found in the archives of the
Western Allies. For example, much has been made in postwar
journalistic writing of President Roosevelt's alleged promises to the
Soviet Union, beginning with Tehran, of territory in which the Chinese
were long interested. Little if any attention has been paid to the
question of what effect the revelation at SEXTANT Of a dichotomy in
thinking between the Western Allies over the importance of China's war
role might have had on the Soviet Union's postwar policy for Asia.
That Stalin at Tehran was made aware of tile current divergence of opinion between the Americans
and British over Burma operations is evident. Sherwood, on the basis
of his studies of the Hopkins Papers, has told how, shortly after
Roosevelt arrived at Tehran, Stalin called at the President's quarters
in the Soviet Embassy. The only other men present at this first
meeting between the two wartime leaders were the two interpreters,
Bohlen and Pavlov. In the course of the conversation, "Roosevelt told
Stalin of his conversations with Chiang Kai-shek and the plans for
offensive operations in Burma."2 In his own postwar memoirs, Churchill
has revealed, "The fact that the President was in private contact with
Marshal Stalin and dwelling at the Soviet Embassy, and that he had
avoided ever seeing me alone since we left Cairo, . . . led me to seek
a direct personal interview with Stalin."3 At the ensuing private
audience with Stalin on 30 November, during which he sought to make
the British position on strategy clear to the Soviet leader, Churchill
stated his lack of enthusiasm for "an amphibious operation in the Bay
of Bengal" for which the Americans were pressing. He also touched on
how much sooner ,Japan would be beaten if the USSR entered the war in
the Pacific.
[544]
The summary of the decisions of the SEXTANT Conference, sent by
Roosevelt and Churchill to Stalin at the close of the meetings back in
Cairo--generally worded as they were-clearly showed that China would
not get the amphibious operation Chiang had wanted and the Americans
had urged upon Churchill.4
It can only be guessed whether the inconsistency between the
American insistence at the Moscow Conference on treating China as a great
power and the failure of the Western Allies at SEXTANT to agree to
bolster that position and follow through with large-scale military
action was carefully noted down by the leaders in the Kremlin, already
confident of victory in Europe, for future reference and possible
action. If this hypothesis is correct, then one clue to Soviet
maneuvering over the price for its entry into the war against Japan
and over the postwar settlement for Asia must be sought well before
Yalta or Potsdam at Cairo-Tehran.
[545]
Endnotes
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