Simms: Stalin absence complicates Québec talks
Our war with Japs hinges on Russia
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
Québec, Canada –
The absence of the Soviet Union from the Roosevelt-Churchill conference here complicates the job tremendously. It is like planning the invasion of France without knowing whether or not we could use Britain as a base of operations.
Of course, this is not Russia’s fault. On the contrary, it would have been folly for her to attack Japan while fighting for her life 5,000 miles away against Germany. and to have permitted us to use her Siberian bases would have been tantamount to a declaration of war against Nippon.
But the war in Europe is now drawing to a close. Russia therefore may soon regain her freedom of action in Asia before the Pacific and Far Eastern plans now being made here can be put into practice.
What bases to use?
In any plan of campaign against Japan, the first problem is how to get at her. We have to decide whether to attack her from aircraft carriers or from land bases. If land bases, the question is, what bases? Outside Siberia, Japan holds all the nearby bases and before we can use them, we must capture them.
Thus, the planning of our invasion of Europe was comparatively simple Britain was at hand as an ideal base.
If we could use the maritime provinces of Siberia similarly in our war against the other end of the Axis, the calculations here at Québec would be immensely simplified. Vladivostok is only 600 miles from Tokyo. Siberia envelops Manchuria, which is vital to the Japanese war efforts, on three sides. With Russia in – if only because we could use Siberian bases – the war in the Pacific would be shortened by months at least and innumerable lives saved.
Situation is anomalous
Another irony of the situation here is that today at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, Russia, Britain and America are putting the finishing touches on a tentative plan for world security against post-war aggression. The Big Four, including China, have agreed to the use of force, if necessary, to check outlaw states. For Russia to refuse to help stop the Japanese aggression now, once Nazi Germany is knocked out, would just about rob the Dumbarton Oaks formula of its validity.
Thus, while Marshal Stalin is absent from the Roosevelt-Churchill meeting here, Russia cannot be left out of the picture. She will remain the big question mark hovering over the conference.
It is hardly too much to say that were Germany to surrender soon, and allow Russia to change her policy in Asia, most of the military planning here would at once become obsolete. That is, unless two alternate sets of plans are drawn up.