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Big Mac Attack
No country with a McDonald's outlet, the theory contends, has ever gone to war with another....
Thomas Friedman, who invented the theory in 1996, said people in McDonald's countries "don't like to fight wars. They like to wait in line for burgers."...
The Russia-Georgia conflict has finally blown this theory out of the water.
From the Guardian. Clearly the theory was over-identified. Perhaps no two countries with Taco Bell's every go to war with one another.
Hat tip to Chris Blattman.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on September 7, 2008 at 06:43 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Actually, this was already contradicted by the US bombing of Yugoslavia.
Posted by: at Sep 7, 2008 7:08:48 AM
Actually, this was already contradicted by the US bombing of Yugoslavia.
Posted by: at Sep 7, 2008 7:09:14 AM
Dan Drezner wrote about this a few weeks ago.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Sep 7, 2008 8:59:23 AM
Wikipedia delivers, courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonald's_franchises:
Other conflicts that provide possible counterexamples, depending on what one considers "a war", include the 1989 United States invasion of Panama, the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the Kargil War along with ongoing skirmishes between factions of India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region.
The appearance of McDonald's does not end an existing state of war: the states of Lebanon and Israel have been under a state of war since 1973, with South Lebanon occupied until May 2000 and a significant flareup in 2006, which did not hinder the establishment of McDonald's franchises in Israel and Lebanon in 1993 and 1998, respectively. The two countries engaged in a brief state of warfare in the summer of 2006. Georgia and the Russian Federation had a brief military conflict over the break-away region of South Ossetia. All of these examples apparently contradict Friedman's unacademic musing.
Posted by: Joe Jones at Sep 7, 2008 10:30:28 AM
Tom Friedman was making a semi-good point, but it was typical Tom Friedman sloppy overstatement. It was also contradicted by the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. I'm pretty sure Panama had McDonald's.
Posted by: David R. Henderson at Sep 7, 2008 10:31:51 AM
I'd imagine Friedman failed to account for the rapid spread of McDonald's around the world. Nevertheless, the general idea that developed nations don't go to war with each other tends to hold.
Posted by: Team John L at Sep 7, 2008 11:18:56 AM
With all due respect to the Guardian and Drezner, I noted this about a month ago well before they did (admittedly on a blog by us somewhat useless political science types).
Another noteworthy thing is that this incident basically deep-sixed Russia's WTO accession chances at it needs to gain the approval of all WTO members, including Georgia.
Posted by: Emmanuel at Sep 7, 2008 1:15:43 PM
Is Tom Friedman being proved a dolt really blog-worthy? That's about as noteworthy as Tyler keeping us abreast of his bowel movements, which I trust are regular ordinary occurrences.
Posted by: Pup, MD at Sep 7, 2008 1:27:32 PM
Seriously. Why anyone gives a wit of attention to what Friedman says is beyond me.
Posted by: hughz at Sep 7, 2008 2:54:33 PM
The McDonalds hypothesis was just a rehash of the mercantilism theory. That theory was disproved by World War One, which was a pretty clear refutation.
Posted by: Kenton A. Hoover at Sep 7, 2008 3:08:39 PM
It was Kant who said that when all countries were merchant , war would finish.( The perpetual Peace). Fukuyama repeated the idea. The wwI did not disproved , the fighting countries werent engaged in commerce between them
Posted by: k at Sep 7, 2008 3:44:47 PM
People seem to have missed the fine print:
No two countries with a McDonalds -- and of which one was vastly larger than the other, and of which the smaller controlled or could theoretically control a natural resource important to the larger -- have ever gone to war with each other.
Posted by: Eric H at Sep 7, 2008 3:49:38 PM
"The wwI did not disproved , the fighting countries werent engaged in commerce between them"
As far as I know, Germany was heavily integrated into France at the time of World War I, and the world market as a whole was relatively open and free.
Posted by: Robert Olson at Sep 7, 2008 3:52:46 PM
In 1812 there were only two large democracies in the world and the younger attacked the older.
Posted by: dearieme at Sep 7, 2008 5:57:27 PM
The Russia-Georgia conflict definitely disproves the Golden Arch Theory, without question, but it has even more interesting ramifications for Fukuyama's "End of History" thesis. With Russia's overt aggression into Georgian territory, we are witnessing the real foreign policy of a quasi-authoritarian state that operates under the semblance of democracy. Perhaps this form of popularly sanctioned government is the next step in the ideological evolution of human society?
Posted by: Dennis Shiraev at Sep 7, 2008 8:31:48 PM
"In 1812 there were only two large democracies in the world and the younger attacked the older"
I'm not sure I'd characterise the UK in 1812 as a democracy given how limited the franchise was and how
strong the House of Lords. The US was arguably more democratic although by modern standards probably
wouldn't be seen as a democracy either. Both though were the freeest nations on earth (with the UK I'd
argue pipping the US on liberty standards as slavery had been ruled illegal on British soil by this stage
although there were still severe restrictions on catholics absent in the US). Perhaps more accurate to say that in 1812
the two freeest countries on earth were at war.
Posted by: iolanthe at Sep 7, 2008 8:46:33 PM
Perhaps it is more that McDonald's has reduced wait time dramatically so that people no longer need to wait in lines?
Of course more realistically, it should be noted that Georgia has provided one of the few images of obese civilian dead. Perhaps the proper phrasing is "as obesity increases war like ambition decreases?" I wonder if that would negate obesity's negative health impact?
Posted by: yasth at Sep 8, 2008 5:21:48 AM
What Friedman was trying to say, is that no developed economy is going to attack another developed economy, because the economic costs are too great. He was assuming that McDonalds are located only in developed economies.
From my travels in both Georgia and Russia, I would say that it is less than obvious that these are developed countries. Outside of their capitals, they are very much 'third world' economies.
Does anyone here really think the U.S. would invade Canada, or the U.K. would invade France, or Italy would invade Spain, anytime in the conceivable future? Certainly it isn't love and mutual admiration keeping these countries peaceful - so what is it, if not economic interdependency?
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Sep 8, 2008 1:42:54 PM
Friedman has since updated it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Theory_of_Conflict_Prevention
Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention also known as simply "Dell Theory" has been presented by Thomas Friedman in his book The World Is Flat.
“The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.”[1]
In his previous book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argued that no two nations with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one another: this was known as the Golden Arches theory. Later, Friedman upgraded that theory into the "Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention" by saying that people or nations don't just want to have a better standard of living as symbolized by McDonald's franchise in their downtown, but want to have the lump of the labour sector that is created by globalization. That is, developing nations do not want to risk the trust of the multi-national companies who venture into their markets and include them in the global supply chain.
I kind of like Friedman
Posted by: Mike at Sep 8, 2008 10:39:26 PM
What countries have Taco Bells?
And I wonder why that would be, Europe suprisingly doesn't seems to have many/any taco bells. Maybe an aversion to spicey food is correlated with control issues.
Posted by: aaron at Sep 9, 2008 1:53:50 PM
actually none of your examples truly disprove his arguement. By definition war is, or at least can be, considered a conflict in which there are 1000 battle deaths. As far as I can tell, none of these cases fit that criteria
Posted by: ty at Apr 24, 2009 9:57:52 AM
