The Cairo Conference (codenamed Sextant), also known as the First Cairo Conference, was one of fourteen summit meetings during World War II, which took place on 22–26 November 1943. The Conference was held at Cairo in Egypt between China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Attended by Chairman of the National Government of China Chiang Kai-shek, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it outlined the Allied position against the Empire of Japan during World War II and made decisions about post-war Asia.
The Conference agenda was to formulate a strategy to counterattack the Empire of Japan, make arrangements for the post-war international situation and coordinate the counter-attack on Burma and the aid to China. The Cairo Declaration, issued after the conference, demanded Japan's unconditional surrender, the return to China of all occupied lands, and the shaping of a new post-war East Asia.
The Cairo Conference established China's status as one of four world powers, which was of great political and strategic significance to China. Although many of the resolutions and promises made at the conference were not implemented, and the plan of action was repeatedly postponed and changed, the aim of a joint Chinese, British, and American counter-attack on Burma was eventually achieved.
Background International relations After the outbreak of the Pacific War, the British Empire, the United States, and the Republic of China signed a new treaty, formally renouncing their extraterritoriality in China and upholding China's sovereignty. On 11 January, Britain and the United States issued a joint declaration, announcing the abrogation of all unequal treaties against China over the past century. On the other hand, Sino-British relations were not harmonious, as it became apparent that the British sphere of influence in East Asia was crumbling.
In 1942, the Chinese government was both surprised and angry when the British did not agree to the Chinese National Army's military interference in Burma (now Myanmar). China wanted to end imperialism, but British imperialism had a long history. Churchill also held on to the conservative British colonialist mindset and refused to believe that Asians could unite and fight for an Allied victory He was also prejudiced against China and did not want it to become a world power.
Politically, the United Kingdom was both suspicious and contemptuous of China to the point of hoping to isolate it. The British feared that China's strong independence from Western powers could influence independence movements in its Asian colonies, such as India, where discontent was already brewing. They were therefore reluctant to spend material or troops to assist China. Even if both the Kingdom of Italy and Nazi Germany surrendered, the British Navy still preferred to field its spare forces in the Pacific Ocean, rather than Burma. Lord Alan Brooke, the British Chief of Staff, was even more contemptuous of China.
There was a fundamental difference between the British and the Americans in their post-war expectations. Churchill wanted the post-war world to be dominated by the United Kingdom and the United States, but Roosevelt envisioned a new world in which the European colonialists would grant independence to their colonies and shape Woodrow Wilson's vision of self-determination for all countries alike. Furthermore, Roosevelt wanted the Four Policemen (the United States, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China) to guide and guard the post-war world from potential conflicts. That was partly due to the rise of the Soviet Union, as US military experts became increasingly worried of the Soviet Union losing or making peace with Nazi Germany, since that meant Britain would be defeated as well. The US was not confident of winning the war even if it had mobilised all its forces into the European battlefield. Hence, the US military believed that consolidating relations with the Soviet Union was necessary for victory.
Development war After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Empire of Japan took control of Southeast Asia, and Burma became the only area in which the Chinese, British, and American military forces could jointly fight the Japanese. Each of their forces were then under their own command and rarely conducted joint military operations. Furthermore, the British commander in India and Chiang Kai-shek had conflicting views on how to counterattack the Japanese in Burma. As such, no real alliance was formed between the three.
In Asia, the primary task of the Allies was to unite the Asian countries and to open up the China Burma India theatre of war. However, there was a disagreement between China and Britain about the restoration of Burma. Burma was strategically important to China, and with the fall of Burma in April 1942, China's last international supply route was blocked, the only available supply route now being the airlift, Hump route, over the Himalayas.
The British wanted to concentrate all their forces in Europe and attached far less importance to the Far East than to the European theatre of war. The recovery of Burma was only a political affair for Britain, not a matter of immediate interest, and the only real beneficiary from the opening of the Yunnan-Burma highway was China. As such, Britain, which was less than enthusiastic about the Chinese war effort, was not willing to fight for the opening of the Yunnan-Burma highway. After the defeat of Rangoon, Britain lost its enthusiasm for Burma. The British military felt that its navy was needed to recover Burma, but the British Navy was engaged in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific Ocean. Politically, after the Japanese Army conquered Burma, the Burmese became pro-Japanese and anti-British. Roosevelt raised the notion of an independent Burma yet again, but since Burma would cease to be a British colony after the war, the British were wholly uninterested.
First Quebec Conference (1943) In October 1942, British and American generals had already reached a preliminary agreement to participate in the battle to recover Burma with British and Indian divisions. However, Britain repeatedly tried to overturn the decision afterwards. In August 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt decided at the Quebec Conference, codenamed Quadrant, to establish a new joint "South East Asia Command" with British Field Marshal Lord Mountbatten as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in the region. He would be directly under the command of the British-American Combined Chiefs of Staff, with the main task of establishing an airlift route through China as soon as possible and sending troops to seize Myanmar and link up with Chinese troops invading from Yunnan.
Churchill, however, wanted Britain to defeat Japan by force and to restore Britain's position in her Asian colonies even though he and the British military had no real intention of retaking Rangoon and fighting all the way to China. Eventually, he agreed reluctantly when he was prompted by the Americans to mobilise the British Navy to move east from Europe in preparation for a counterattack on Burma.
On 2 October, Mountbatten went to Chongqing with the Quebec Resolution to present it to Chiang Kai-shek with a secret letter from Churchill that specifically mentioned that military action in southern Burma would depend on Chinese military action in northern Burma. Mountbatten wanted the Chinese troops to support the British in their recovery of Burma and suggested for him to be in command all Chinese troops entering Burma along with the Allied Southeast Asian Command. China believed that the counterattack on Burma should be carried out simultaneously in southern and northern Burma and that fighting in southern Burma should be to cut off the enemy's rear and that otherwise attacking from only the north would be a waste of manpower. This made China reluctant to field troops.
Meanwhile, the US military had established an island-hopping strategy in the Pacific, the efficacy of which had not yet been tested, but the Allies already had already developed the tendency of ignoring the Chinese Theatre. In October 1943, the British and American Joint Chiefs of Staff began to formulate a plan to attack Japan from the Pacific without going through mainland China, and the US military hierarchy doubted the strategic importance of China.
Regarding the European Theatre, Churchill and Roosevelt had several disagreements. Churchill wanted to meet Roosevelt alone before the Cairo Conference to discuss the Grand Alliance plan of action in Europe for fear of heavy casualties to British forces, but the United States did not want to postpone the counterattack because of Stalin's insistence for the Anglo-Americans to open a second front to relieve the pressure faced by Soviet troops against Germany. Churchill strongly advocated action in the eastern Mediterranean to hold the Germans back so that they could not be drawn into France since if the Allies controlled the eastern Mediterranean, they would not have to go through Iran to support the Soviet Union, and the British Navy in the Indian Ocean could be used elsewhere. The United States, however, resolutely opposed action in the eastern Mediterranean.
Planning for the conference The idea of the Cairo Conference originated from the Moscow Conference, in October 1943, of the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, the United States, the Republic of China, and the Soviet Union. The United States believed that the meeting confirmed the importance of joint action by the four powers, and at the meeting the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the ROC signed a declaration of continued cooperation and issued a declaration on the joint establishment of international institutions after the war. US Secretary of State Cordell Hull lobbied the Soviet Union to include China in the Quadruple Powers, but the Soviet Union had signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with Japan and so found it difficult to do so. The Soviet Union and the United Kingdom hence did not recognise China as a power, but both of them eventually accepted the American proposal to include the Republic of China as a signatory of the Moscow Declaration of 1 November 1943. The declaration by the four powers stated their intentions to fight to the end until victory and in particular citing their intentions not to sign a separate peace treaty with the enemy, and demanding that all countries fight for the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, the tripartite occupation of post-war Germany, and allied cooperation for international peace and security after the war.