It doesn’t take a massive intellect — just common sense — to realize that the link between security and prosperity is inextricable. In the Middle East, one might have thought that experience would have borne this out, and yet many nations still don’t calculate the effects of the increased risk — the “value at risk” in financial jargon — on people’s livelihood. Take Lebanon, a country famed as much for its business acumen as its knack for self-destruction. In mid-February Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah taunted Israel, threatening a tit-for-tat retaliation if the Zionist state launched a preemptive strike against his party’s armed wing. A week later Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, dared Israel to attack Lebanon. He also promised apocalyptic consequences. Isn’t it telling, when a foreign leader allows himself to threaten war by proxy? Then again, who can blame him for
