Search results for ""Author Alexander Nicoll""

Like most years in the 50-year history of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), 2008 saw events that could have significant consequences for international relations and global balances of power. These included the election of Barack Obama as US president; the brief war in Georgia, which caused the West to look at Russia with more watchful eyes; and a cataclysmic crisis in the world’s financial markets that seemed to threaten globalisation and even capitalism, and to herald a period of greater economic austerity. Even as these events occurred, the security issues and risks that have been the core focus of the work of the IISS during the past half-century continued to loom large, among them nuclear proliferation and the relations between the major powers. In addition to these perennial themes was another set of issues that has in recent times risen higher on the international security agenda, including the security ramifications of natural disasters and environmental dangers such as climate change. In its anniversary year, the IISS held several high-level conferences around the world. Speeches given at these events addressed all of these issues, and this Adelphi Paper offers a selection of them. The speakers were statesmen, senior military officers, high officials and international security experts. All were concerned first and foremost with the pressing issues of the moment, as their duties required them to be. But the fact that they also addressed recurrent themes testifies to the enduring nature of the strategic challenges faced by policymakers.

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Singapore and Hong Kong had fallen to the forces of Imperial Japan, Thailand and Burma had been invaded and islands across the Pacific captured. But one place, one tiny island fortress garrisoned by a few thousand hungry and exhausted men, refused to be beaten. That island fortress was Corregidor which guarded the entrance to Manila Bay and controlled all sea-borne access to Manila Harbour. At a time when every news bulletin was one of Japanese success, Corregidor shone as the only beacon of hope in the darkness of defeat. The Japanese 14th Army of Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma, threw everything it had at Corregidor, officially named Fort Mills. But deep within the island's rocky heart, a tunnel had been excavated into Malinta Hill and there the US troops, marine, naval and army, endured the terrible onslaught. At their head was General Douglas MacArthur who became a national hero with his resolute determination never to surrender, until ordered to evacuate to Australia to avoid such a senior officer being captured by the enemy. Bur with his departure, the rest of the garrison knew that there was no possibility of relief. They would have to fight on until the bitter end, whatever form that might take. That end came in May 1942\. The defenders were reduced to virtually starvation rations with many of them wounded. Consequently, when, on 5 May the Japanese mounted a powerful amphibious assault, the weakened garrison could defy the enemy no longer. Corregidor, the 'Gibraltar of the East', finally fell to the invaders. Those invaders were to become the invaded when MacArthur returned in January 1945\. For three weeks, US aircraft, warships and artillery hammered the Japanese positions on Corregidor. Then, on 16 February, the Americans landed on the island. It took MacArthur's men ten days to hunt down the last of the Japanese, after many had chosen to commit suicide rather than surrender, but Corregidor was at last back in Allied hands. In this unique collection of images, the full story Corregidor's part in the Second World War is dramatically revealed. The ships, the aircraft, the guns, the fortifications and the men themselves, are shown here, portraying the harsh, almost unendurable, realities of war.

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As dawn was breaking on the morning of 19 August 1942, Allied troops leapt ashore to the east and west of the French port of Dieppe. These were British commandoes accompanied by U.S. Rangers, tasked to silence the German gun batteries that flanked Dieppe. Other troops - the men of the 2nd Canadian Division - landed closer to Dieppe to capture the German positions that overlooked the port while, minutes later, the main body of the predominantly Canadian assaulting force began clambering from landing craft that had run onto the beach along Dieppe's seafront. This was the start of Operation Jubilee, the Allies' most ambitious assault upon Hitler's so-called Fortress Europe - it quickly became a bloodbath. The early months of 1942 had been difficult ones for Prime Minister Churchill. Stalin was demanding action in Western Europe to lessen the pressure of the 280 German divisions that were bearing down upon Stalingrad. Roosevelt was insisting that U.S. soldiers must start fighting the Germans in Europe, and Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, desperately needed Canadian troops to become involved in the war to keep his politically divided nation together. Churchill's response to these measures was to authorise a super-raid' upon German-held territory, and the target selected by the planners was Dieppe. Apart from the notable success of No.4 Commando, the raid was a disaster with more than 50 per cent of the 6,086 men who landed being killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, plus all the Churchill tanks landed in support of the infantry suffered mechanical failure or were shelled into smoking wrecks. Yet amid the scenes slaughter, of confusion, and communication breakdown, were acts of almost unimaginable heroism, ingenuity, determination, and self-sacrifice to which the awarding of two Victoria Crosses paid a worthy tribute. There were also special missions associated with the raid, the details of which remained a closely guarded secret until long after the war. This book opens a window on Operation Jubilee, allowing the reader a rare insight into the death and destruction inflicted upon the Allied force during just a few hours, and of the damage done to Dieppe itself, with many of the photographs being taken by the victorious German defenders. The raid saw the heaviest casualty figures experienced by Canadians in the Second World War, and the photographs in this book are a stark reminder of that fateful day in late summer of 1942.

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