The 'Dayenu' School of Foreign Policy

One year ago, I announced, with great fanfare, the establishment of a new school of foreign policy thought, destined to take its place in the pantheon of the long existing "realist" and "liberal" schools. The new school was named, and will be known throughout the generations, as the "Dayenu School".

The new school takes as its intellectual inspiration one of the high points of the Passover seder, the joyous song Dayenu ("it is enough"). The song poses 14 good deeds that God could do for the people of Israel, each of which would be enough. To illustrate, if God did X that would be best, but if he actually only did Y, it is enough, dayenu. With good fortune, bordering on the miracle of the Exodus itself, the song comes just before the prodigious caloric intake, so common to the hallowed Seder traditions, produces a sense of pervasive listlessness and a collective decrease in national cognitive capacity....