Word: gamely
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...high-stakes a game, Obama and Clinton have at least bought experience. Ross, 60, has been at the center of high-level U.S. diplomacy since the 1980s. Throughout Bill Clinton's presidency, he led U.S. efforts to secure peace between Israel and the Arabs. Ross helped shape Obama's position on Iran during the 2008 campaign, and as the President makes a goodwill trip through the region, much of the business he is conducting in Arab capitals is in furtherance of Ross's Iran plan...
Solomon believed Israel could benefit - economically and otherwise - by staying on good terms with nearby nations. As game theorists say, he saw relations with other nations as non-zero-sum; the fortunes of Israel and other nations were positively correlated, so outcomes could be win-win or lose-lose. His warmth toward those religions was a way of making the win-win outcome more likely...
...flip side is that perceptions of a zero-sum dynamic - of a game in which one side will win and one side lose - can foster intolerance of other religions and their gods. Indeed, a close look at the Bible shows how this worldview helped move Israel from the polytheism of Solomon's time toward monotheism - a monotheism that (contrary to the standard story of Christians and Jews) doesn't seem to have taken root until the middle of the first millennium B.C.E...
Among the earliest of these prophets is Hosea, who is thought to have written in the 8th century B.C.E. Rejecting a Solomonic view - that immersion in the larger world could make Israel richer - Hosea insists the game is zero-sum: when Israel "mixes himself with the peoples ... foreigners devour his strength." Hosea's suspicion of the foreign isn't surprising. Israel, a small nation in a tough neighborhood, often did get pushed around...
...long as polytheism reigned, there were lots of those prophets. At one point, Israel contained "400 prophets of Asherah" and "450 prophets of Baal," the Bible reports darkly. Josiah's cleansing of the Temple was good strategy in a zero-sum game: the less influence these prophets had, the more...