War *huh what is it good for* no wait stop it. Blue screen. There are lots of theories
on what causes it, sometimes it’s national security, sometimes it’s an attempt to spread
a certain ideology but more often than not it’s something else entirely, or many things
at once. Because unless you work for a major arms manufacturer you probably think war is
a bad thing, there are also many theories on how it can be prevented. For example, France
and Germany have had a spotty history at best so they decided to just become BFFs and invite
all their other friends to the BFFs club too. In the second century when the Roman’s looked
at the Scottish and thought, nah we’ll be fine without that specific strand of crazy,
they built a knee high wall to keep them out. There are some other weirder ones like whatever
this thing is on the India Pakistani border, but in fairness that clearly isn’t the best
strategy. Besides practical measures there are some more abstract theories on how conflict
can be prevented. One of the most surprising of which revolves around a multinational corporation
with a penchant for giving you diabetes… and really crappy toys. But does the theory
hold up? Can having a McDonald’s really prevent a war?
Unless you’re somehow viewing this video from inside North Korea, who knows maybe Kim
likes barely educational barely funny YouTube videos, you probably already know what a McDonald’s
is. It’s the $21 billion a year company that sells a whopping, I mean, a McMazing
75 burgers a second. There’s a site that will count the amount of food McDonalds has
sold in any given time, for example since the start of this video they’ve served about
XXX burgers, XXX of those absolutely worthless ketchup sachets and about XXX kids have been
scarred by this monster. As a proud ex-sandwich artist, I’ve got to mention that McDonalds
is actually only the second most common fast food chain. Subway, with its nearly 42,000
locations, even has a restaurant on St Kitts, an island that could be measured in length
by just 1.5% of the Subways sold daily around the world.
But what do I mean McDonalds prevents war? Well, obviously just eating a Big Mac doesn’t
make you immune to an FGM-148 Javelin infared seeking missile, but man would it be useful
if it did. This theory is the work of Thomas L. Friedman who describes his high school
years as “one big celebration of Israel's victory in the Six-Day War”. (tumbleweed)
Oh cool. In 1996, he wrote an article for the New York Times claiming “No two countries
that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's.''
In his book “The Lexus and The Olive Tree” he titled this theory “The Golden Arches
Theory of Conflict Prevention”, presumably because McDonalds would sue anyone to oblivion
that used their name and war in the same sentence. Gulp. Unfortunately for Friedman in that same
year NATO bombed Yugoslavia, reportedly causing the destruction of the McDonalds in the country
and kinda disproving his theory, although NATO obviously isn’t a country but made
up of various countries, many of which were homes to Ronald and friends.
Since Friedman released his theory to the world people have been trying to prove him
wrong. And arguably they’ve been pretty successful. People have pointed to the 2006
Israel Lebanon war, but Israel was technically fighting Hezbollah not the Lebanese government.
India and Pakistan have had various skirmishes since they both built McDonalds but these
are generally contained within the disputed territories and don't encompass what most
people would think of as all out war. Even more recently, the Crimean conflict has people
saying Friedman was talking rubbish. But in theory, at least according to them, and I
mean, who wouldn’t trust that face, Russia wasn’t directly involved in the conflict
and neither country was ever at “war” with each other. The best case for this theory
being false is the 2008 Russian Gerogian war where Russian forces were directly involved
in the invasion of areas of Georgia, but tell most people that and they ask why Russia would
invade here. Maybe to free them from an illiberal regime. Dun Dun Tsssss.
In the face of all of this evidence, Friedman rebutted the proof like a YouTube prankster,
by saying he was only joking. He says that his theory was just tongue and cheek but the
idea behind it still stands. That capitalism and being part of the global economy should
cause world peace because any country developed enough to play a role on this stage would
be too scared that war would send their development and economy spiraling. Like a Hollywood producer
trying to wring the last dollars out of the public, Friedman released a sequel to the
golden arches theory. This time he asserts “No two countries that are both part of
a major global supply chain will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are
both part of the same global supply chain”. He named this theory “The Dell Theory of
Conflict Prevention” Named so because of Dell’s vast supply chain and the book was
published in 2005 when people were still actually buying their computers.
Unfortunately for Friedman, there are some glaring issues with this theory too. With
the recent Huawei ban in the US and other rising tensions between the US and China,
while no one's declared war on anyone yet, YET, it seems clear that these countries are
not overly bothered about their interconnecting supply chains. It’s also worth mentioning
that nearly 100 years earlier Norman Angell outlined a very similar theory in his book
“The Great Illusion”, and despite him winning a nobel peace prize for his work even
he didn’t see the next four decades of terrible conflict coming.
There’s also some argument to be made that conflict is now very rare explicitly between
two large economies but with the last few decades of proxy wars and the fairly recent
prevalence in hacking and cyber warfare there are conflicts constantly between world powers
but they’re just not as in your face.
Another journalist, George Monbiot, has a theory almost directly contradicting Friedman’s.
He calls it the “Golden Arches Theory Of Decline” and to summarize his points in
a far less eloquent way. He says that the stage of capitalism McDonalds franchises represent
is one in which corporations have too much power over politics. They’re taking the
discussions meant for the public view behind closed doors to fancy offices and overpriced
restaurants with gross food like caviar and foie gras. The lobbyists of these corporations
have been able to have a much larger say in the affairs of many countries than any one
citizen has ever been able to. For example, I can’t show this footage of Mickey Mouse
without being scared of copyright enforcement even though he should have originally come
to the public domain in 1984, but Disney managed to lobby so hard that they changed copyright
law and they now won’t lose copyright on the character until 2023, so expect some attempted
changes to the law coming up soon. However, this is a relatively trivial outcome of lobbying
compared to what the tobacco, oil and car companies have been doing for years. To really
drive the point home US President Roosevelt warned in 1938 that “democracy is not safe
if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger
than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” And you know
he’s important because Robin Williams played a wax figure of him in that movie one time.
So it seems possible that not only was Friedman’s original theory at least somewhat flawed but
the presence of a McDonalds could spell the end of true democracy in a country. So once
again, Iceland seems like the right place to move to, but then again where would I get
my McSpaghetti. Wait what?
Let me know in the comments below what you would do with a copyright free Mickey Mouse.
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