Editorial: The Cairo Pact
The Cairo Three-Power Pact pledges destruction of the Japanese Empire and the rise of free China as the major Far Eastern nation. If it provides the united military power to make that pledge a fact, Japan will be confined permanently to her own islands.
This recognizes that the old era of foreign domination is past; that the key to the future is Western cooperation with China, and no imperialist deals with Japan. On that basis, Pacific peace is to be built.
All of which is a great victory for American policy. The inclusion of China in the four-power Moscow Pact, which is now implemented by the American-British-Chinese agreement, is due chiefly to Secretary of State Hull and President Roosevelt.
Indeed, this agreement underwrites the Roosevelt assurance to Congress last September:
The United Nations will never again let her [Japan] have authority over the islands which were mandated to her by the League of Nations… And the same thing holds good in the case of the vast territories which Japan has stolen from China starting long before this war began.
Thus, Japan’s loot of half a century is to be reclaimed. Manchuria, Formosa and the Pescadores go back to China. Korea, after a necessary period of help, is to be independent. The morale effect of these pledges on the Chinese, staggering from almost seven years of war, is obvious. It will be harder now for Jap propagandists to poison China.
Of course, the Cairo communiqué leaves many questions unanswered. United Nations agreement is not yet complete. Will Britain return Hong Kong to China? What becomes of French Indochina, Thailand, Malaya, Burma and the Dutch East Indies when the Japs are driven out? Are they to be trained for independence on the Philippine model, under their former rulers or under United Nations trusteeship? And the strategic mandated islands, are they to be under American or international guardianship?
Where does Russia come in? This four-power conference is being held in two sections, with Marshal Stalin absent from the Pacific sessions because Russia and Japan are nominally at peace. But his representative, Andrey Vyshinsky, attended unobstructively. That indicates Russian concurrence. Moreover, the return of Manchuria to China could not be guaranteed without Stalin’s tacit consent – probably leaving important Russian claims there to be negotiated by Moscow and Chungking directly.
When Russia is freed of the Nazi menace, she doubtless will become an active partner in the alliance against Japan – for neither Russia nor the present Pacific Allies can risk a Far Eastern settlement in which Russia has no part.
Also, the Cairo communiqué leaves open the complicated questions as to Japan’s future, when shorn of her conquests and disarmed. Is there to be Allied military occupation, short or long? Must the Emperor go? Is the Allied formula for free elections by the people, and civil liberties, to be applied? What about reparations, or Jap labor to rebuild liberated areas? Will a law-abiding small Japan have equal rights to markets, materials, trade and membership in the international organization, as hitherto promised by the Allies to all peaceful nations?
But it would be out of focus to expect answers to all the questions which will arise with Pacific victory, when we are so far from victory. On the political side, this conference was content to agree on the general goal while wisely it concentrated most on immediate military means. For Americans should be under no illusion – as certainly the Chinese are not – that any of the fine political pledges are of value unless enforced by much more Allied military power than has been put into the Pacific War so far.
Two years after Pearl Harbor and Singapore, Japan holds virtually all of her conquests, still keeps us 3,000 miles from Tokyo. The Cairo Pact is a sign that the Allies at last are ready to fight a major Pacific war. The test of the Cairo military threats is how soon and how hard and how continuously Adm. Nimitz, Gen. MacArthur, Lord Louis Mountbatten and Generalissimo Chiang can strike at the vitals of the Jap octopus.
Action counts now.