Given the risks, you might expect the ever-more apocalyptic warnings of World War III, now almost daily trotted out by the politicians and the military, to be more obviously reflected in the behaviour of financial markets.

Even comparatively localised wars tend to be deeply damaging to the economies involved, though there are exceptions which I’ll come to.

But world wars are on another scale entirely – hugely destructive events which take decades to recover from. If fought in the modern age, with its lethal nuclear arsenals, such a war might even prove fatal to the human........

© The Sydney Morning Herald