The latest catchphrase to enter the English language as a result of military conflict is the term 'asymmetrical warfare'. At its broadest, asymmetrical warfare is simply any conflict in which there is a significant qualitative 1 mismatch between opponents in any or all of the following: manpower, firepower, technology and tactics. While the phrase is new, the concept is not. Asymmetrical warfare has been going on for about as long as humans have fought each other in organized ways. In the (...) South African context, for example, one need only think of the devastating attacks by King Shaka's highly-organized regiments (equipped as they were with revolutionary weaponry like the short stabbing spear or assegai), against the various tribes and groups that got in the way of Shaka's expansionist goals. Asymmetry was also an essential component in the successes of the rifle, canon and Gatling-gun equipped colonial armies who subdued the tribesmen of Africa and elsewhere. In the more recent past the ANC's low-tech guerrilla campaign against the conventional might of the apartheid regime is yet another example. There are, of course, complexities here, and asymmetries are not all of the same ilk, nor do they remain fixed, and certainly it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a conflict can properly be defined as asymmetrical. Nonetheless the general concept is easily recognizable. (shrink)

1. General. Explain briefly why the question, Do you believe in God? is ambiguous. (6) 2. The premodern period: (i) Set out as clearly as possible the cosmological argument for the existence of God. (ii) Explain why this does not entail infinite regress. (5) 3. The early modern period: Has the argument from the orderliness of nature (design) something new to add to the approach of the cosmological argument, by focussing on “natural” religion? Explain briefly. (5) 4. The later modern (...) period: (i) What is the name of Kant’s book in which it is argued that religion is unacceptable if not based on reason? (ii) What is it in our normal experience that, according to Kant, indicates the need for the postulate of God (even if the existence of God can’t be proved)? (iii) What two other postulates are required, in this respect? (4) ` Total: 20.. (shrink)