So Much for the Golden Arches Theory
Pictured above is the Tblisi McDonald’s. Meanwhile, quoted below is Thomas Friedman’s Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention:
So I’ve had this thesis for a long time and came here to Hamburger University at McDonald’s headquarters to finally test it out. The thesis is this: No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.
The McDonald’s folks confirmed it for me. I feared the exception would be the Falklands war, but Argentina didn’t get its first McDonald’s until 1986, four years after that war with Britain. Civil wars don’t count: McDonald’s in Moscow delivered burgers to both sides in the fight between pro-and anti-Yeltsin forces in 1993.
Of course I suppose Friedman could try to rescue the theory by adopting a strong Russian nationalist point of view, denying that Georgia is a “real” country, and classifying this dust-up as a civil war. That, though, would put him to the right of Vladimir Putin on the question of Georgian independence and doesn’t seem very sensible.
UPDATE: Farley was on this yesterday and also had some remarks about more serious IR theories.
43 Responses to “So Much for the Golden Arches Theory”
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August 13th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Bring on the Dairy Queen Theory!
August 13th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Menu matters, Matt. Do Georgian McDonald’s have the full complement of McGoodies?
August 13th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Golden Arches theory was already OBE long, long ago with the NATO v. Serbia dust up.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Actually, a theory like this lasting as long as it has, with McDonalds in as many countries as it has been, is quite a feat. This does make conflict prediction much more complicated in the future, though.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Didn’t this theory bite the dust during the Kosovo war?
August 13th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Disproved in 1999.
There was a McDonald’s in Belgrade.
If one was searching for a rule, one would say that former Communist countries don’t apply.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Don’t worry, calipygian, Friedman has restated the theory to account for the NATO-Serbia conflict.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:37 am
First, why doesn’t my local McDonalds look like that? Maybe the Russians invaded to get their hands on the Georgians’ superior fast food establishments.
Anyway, rather than just mock Friedman, I think it may be worth seriously contemplating what this represents. This really is the case of two sorta-democracies which are sorta-integrated into the world economy going to war with each other. That is indeed not a good thing, and it should continue to give pause to those who had previously argued that such conditions would make war impossible.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Israel attacking Lebanon was the first repudiation of this theory.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:44 am
It’s a nice way to take a shot at Friedman, but the general correlation does stand up reasonably well: countries with open markets and within tangled supply chain webs are less likely to be warring with each other. This Russia-Georgia conflict is a very obvious exception.
Now what should be strongly considered is that the open markets/lotsa trade plus less war combo is a correlation. Of course planting a McDonald’s inside Iraq doesn’t solve a thing. Similarly, a McCain presidency could definitely start some wars with McDonald’s countries.
But the more insightful observation might be that rich countries are less likely to war with each other. Perhaps richness is a function of capitalism and trade and McDonald’s is emblematic of that. Or maybe obtaining peace itself is the real initial hurdle and wealth is what’s needed to perpetuate it. Or maybe trade is only one component of Matt’s liberal internationalism, which is the real driver towards peace.
I don’t know, someone else probably has a better causal mechanism here, but I don’t think the broadest strokes of what Friedman’s getting at are inherently false.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I hate to say it… but Petey’s right.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:54 am
It’s a nice way to take a shot at Friedman, but the general correlation does stand up reasonably well: countries with open markets and within tangled supply chain webs are less likely to be warring with each other.
OTOH, no major conflicts between China and Cuba, either. Or NoKo and either of them. So maybe it’s the comm’onism that’s keeping the peace.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:54 am
But what does it mean for the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention???
August 13th, 2008 at 10:11 am
It’s a nice way to take a shot at Friedman, but the general correlation does stand up reasonably well
Maybe Friedman should stop trying to make folksy versions of polisci theories. The democratic peace theory makes sense because it’s based on a theoretical understanding of the world. Friendman seems to have made his name taking these theories, trying to assign importance to economic measures that may signify something but don’t mean anything, and then making a rule.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Kosovo was a police action, not a war (cf. no congressional declaration of war).
This latest incident was a “clash”, not a war: all media accounts claimed (all the while bloody mayhem was waging and hundreds if not thousands were dying) that Russia and Georgia were on the *brink* of war - and thus, not *at* war.
See? It still stands when you want to play semantics…
August 13th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Georgia-Russia was most definitely a war. There was no semantic game playing in Russian. Putin said flatly “war”. Not “state of war”, “clash”, “defensive action”, etc. He said
“vojna” - war.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:49 am
“But the more insightful observation might be that rich countries are less likely to war with each other.”
How can this be insightful when it is utterly wrong? It seems to me that before the Cold War locked everything in stasis for 50 years, rich countries had been going to war with each other forever.
The theory is that democracies don’t go to war with each other because democracies don’t start wars, something our little Iraq misadventure would dispute.
Mike
August 13th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Sorry Tim, but as hokey as Friedman’s formulation was, economic interdependence is a restraint on social or political conflict and you’d be a fool to think otherwise. Matt’s taking a potshot and he deserves to be called out on it. The Lexus and the Olive Tree is 10 years old. In the mid to late 90s, McD’s wasn’t a bad stand in for countries that were relatively more eager to liberalize their economies.
Matt and several other bloggers offer way more value than most newspaper columnists, but frankly their criticism is getting tiring. Slagging off the competition should be beneath the dignity of a competent professional, and when it comes to Tom Friedman it sure does seem like a few bloggers have moved beyond substance and into the realm of pettiness. “I told you so I told you so nanny nyah nyah nyah na!” 5 years from now, Iraq dead-enders like Friedman could have the last laugh. But even if they don’t, Matt and company sound ridiculous.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:46 am
So, does Hamburger University have a separate international relations faculty or is it integrated with the polysci folks?
August 13th, 2008 at 11:49 am
This became false when we bombed Serbia.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Matt don’t forget that Lebanon and Israel both have McDonalds too.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
If Friedman means this, then he should just say this instead of trying to be cute. If all Friedman is doing is repeating Kant, then he’s just a hack because anyone with a middle school education can just repeat what Kant says. Since the end of the 1980’s, Friedman has based his career on being cutesy and glib and it is beyond annoying. He also is the biggest dupe on the planet who can be talked into anything as long as the speaker is an Asian CEO or a foreign cab driver.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
“economic interdependence is a restraint on social or political conflict and you’d be a fool to think otherwise”
I believe the question is…does economic interdependence restrain social and political conflict more than anything else? Religious commonality, ethnic unity, cultural affinity, mutally assured destruction and a host of other things all function as restraints on conflict, at least in theory. Fools like Friedman have elevated economic interdependence above and beyond all such other restraints but their contentions appear to be unraveling.
Mike
August 13th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
This became false a long time before Kosovo or Israel-Lebanon. I’m pretty sure Panama City had a couple McDonalds when Bush I decided to invade in his pursuit of Noriega.
August 14th, 2008 at 2:10 am
He’s a sloganeer, that’s all there is too it. That’s why he has to go through ridiculous convolutions of turning “the world has become more interconnected with advancements in communication technology” to “the world is flat”.
Some people seem to think that’s cute. Some people think it’s provocative. Personally, I find it annoying.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Normally in IR a “war” is classified as a thousand battle deaths (I take this to mean combatant deaths). By this definition the Golden Arches theory holds up in Georgia, Serbia and Lebanon-Israel, since in none of those 3 conflicts did more than one thousand fighters (uniformed or not) die in battle. I guess one could probably reach 1000 if one went back to the pre-McDonald’s days in Lebanon and classified the early 80s as a war with Israel, with the more recent clash being a continuation of same (bit of a stretch, though). So, to my knowledge, the only 2 countries with McDonald’s who have clearly experienced more than 1000 mutual battle deaths are India-Pakistan, but again, the post-McDonald’s era in those countries has seen LESS than 1000 battle deaths. So for my money, Golden Arches Theory still holds (and I don’t think I’m doing the re-classifying dodge, since the 1000 battle deaths criterion has been around a long time . . . )
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