If Syria does indeed face civil war, as the Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev warned yesterday, how will this impact on those countries that surround Damascus.

The obvious country to face any fallout is of course Lebanon, as Russia Today highlighted yesterday.

Since being liberated from Ottoman rule in the 1850s by the French, Lebanon has known more years of war than those of peace.

Her recent history which can be traced back to the Israeli invasion in 1982 resulted in a civil war that saw the massacres of the Palestinians in the camps of Sabra and Shatila, the eviction of US and French troops after two suicide bombings – the first time they had ever appeared – and the eventual retreat and admission of defeat by Israel in 2000, a move that emboldened Hamas who having seen how the Hezbollah had successfully liberated the ‘north bank,’ copied the tactics in the second Intifadah.

All this came of course well before the ‘Arab spring’ which still hasn’t achieved its aims, namely the establishment of an independent Arab order along the lines of western Europe.

So, if there is going to be a civil war in Syria, there will be some consequences.