His army is safely garrisoned, inside strong though isolated positions, and the police have so far contained democratic rallies in the towns with minimal violence.
And although Iraq has handed over more documents, these have so far contained little new to answer outstanding disarmament questions.Russia wants the inspectors to say how long they will need to address these.
That is still a catastrophe for a country that seemed to be rushing towards prosperity and pluralism.Indeed, the fact that the scale of the disaster has so far been contained should not deflect attention from the dangers ahead.
Although the impact of the debt crisis has so far been contained, the World Bank said, "prolonged rising sovereign debt could make credit more expensive and curtail investment and growth in developing countries".
"The violence has so far been contained, more or less," says a former ZANU-PF minister who has joined Mr Makoni, "but if the election goes to two rounds it'll go right up".Moreover, the heads of the army, the prison service and the police have all stated flatly that they will not let Mr Tsvangirai win.
That aid package has so far failed to contain the Greek crisis, while stocks worldwide have plunged on fears about the weakness of other European economies and the prospect that contagion could drive the global economy back into recession.
Hundreds of Buddhist monks marched through rain-washed streets for the third day in Myanmar's main city yesterday, taking the lead in monthlong protests that the military junta has so far been powerless to contain.
No meat at Sainsbury's has so far been shown to contain horsemeat.
But Morocco, like Egypt and Algeria, does allow limited freedom of expression and has so far been able to contain protests.
The human genome has so far been shown to contain more than 20 members of this gene family.
