  We review the evidence for and against the possibility that a strong enough
poloidal field stabilizes an axisymmetric magnetostatic field configuration. We
show that there does exist a class of resonant MHD waves which produce
instability for any value of the ratio of poloidal and toroidal field strength.
We argue that recent investigations of the stability of mixed poloidal and
toroidal field configurations based on 3-d numerical simulations, can miss this
instability because of the very large azimuthal wave numbers involved and its
resonant character.
