A government under the gun

March 14 can claim a major — and unexpected — victory at the polls, but they’ll have to pay close attention to Lebanon’s real balance of power if they want to avoid miscalculation and overreach. The pathology of sectarianism and Hezbollah’s entrenched military power place far more serious constraints on the prospect for changing Lebanon than electoral politics do. The results of the June 7 ballot are just one of many factors that determine what Saad Hariri’s coalition can and cannot achieve — maybe even one of the smaller factors. The biggest, on the contrary, is the old rule of force: Hezbollah’s militia. If the Party of God perceives a threat to the autonomy of its militia, it will do anything, including a military takeover of Beirut, to neutralize the perceived threat. Hezbollah did so in May 2008, and has made clear it would do so again, regardless of the