Ukraine War Spells The End Of The Golden Arches Peace Theory

Just a week ago there was a theory that no two countries that both had McDonalds outlets had gone to war against each other. Not any more.

John Roskam writes:

ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW

For the past quarter of a century, we’ve wanted to believe Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman were right. And we’ve acted as if they were right.

Fukuyama’s book The End of History  and the Last Man, published in 1992 at the end of the Cold War claimed ‘history had ended’ because every country would become a liberal democracy.

Friedman’s book The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, published in 1999, at a time when the intertwining of national economies seemed inexorable, made popular “the Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention” – “no two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a way against each other since each got its McDonald’s”.

There are at least 700 McDonald’s outlets in Russia and more than 100 in Ukraine.

The idea of a new world order of peace isn’t new.

In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant envisaged a “perpetual peace” because, ashumanity embraced “reason”, communities would no longer tolerate “all the miseries of war”.

The day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, George Will wrote that “the nation’s decade-long holiday from history [has come] to a shattering end”.

Although he was referring to America and its political debates, which appeared to him to have reached “a nadir of frivolousness”, what Will said could easily have applied to the West as a whole.

Read the rest of the article at the IPA web-site