Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

ATLANTIC CONFERENCE • 45
ASIAN CURRENCY CRISIS. In July 1997, a currency crisis in Thailand
precipitated an Asian currency crisis centered on the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In August 1997, Japan took
the initiative in advocating a proposal to establish an Asian Monetary
Fund (AMF). In the postwar era, Japan had been dependent on the
United States in terms of economic, security, and diplomatic relations.
Tokyo regarded the Asian currency crisis as an opportunity to
acquire relative autonomy from the United States and emphasized its
belongingness to Asia. Unfortunately, this AMF proposal was
aborted primarily because of strong U.S. objections and China’s indifference.
Then, Japan made announcements of cooperation loan
plans with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the
Asian Development Bank. In October 1998, Japan issued an active
proposal to provide Asia with $30 billion and in December the same
year, another plan to prepare $600 billion in total for the next three
years as special yen credits.
ATLANTIC CONFERENCE. In August 1941, United States President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill met secretly for a conference at Argentia, Newfoundland.
Upon the conference’s conclusion, the two leaders officially
proclaimed their wartime political objectives—even though the
United States had not formally entered World War II—by means of
the much-publicized Atlantic Charter. Notable among its objectives
were the Anglo–American leaders’ eschewal of “aggrandizement,
territorial or other”; their desire “to see no territorial changes that
[did] not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned”;
and their respect for “the right of all peoples to choose the
form of government under which they will live.”
The meeting’s more immediate effect was to confirm and strengthen
the Anglo–American de facto alliance that had emerged in opposition
to the German–Japanese–Italian Tripartite Pact. Nowhere was this
more evident than in the two leaders’ discussions on policy toward
Japan. Churchill urged upon Roosevelt a joint declaration that “any
further encroachment by Japan in the Southwest Pacific” would produce
a situation in which Britain and the United States “would be compelled
to take countermeasures even though these might lead to war”
between Japan and the two nations. In spite of his opposition to Japanese
aggression, Roosevelt was less convinced of an ultimatum’s utility.