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Foreign Affairs Big Mac I

Foreign Affairs Big Mac I

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December 8, 1996, Section 4, Page 15Buy Reprints
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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.

Since Israel now has a kosher McDonald's, since Saudi Arabia's McDonald's closes five times a day for Muslim prayer, since Egypt has 18 McDonald's and Jordan is getting its first, the chances of a war between them are minimal. But watch out for that Syrian front. There are no Big Macs served in Damascus. India-Pakistan? I'm still worried. India, where 40 percent of the population is vegetarian, just opened the first beefless McDonald's (vegetable nuggets!), but Pakistan is still a Mac-free zone.

Obviously, I say all this tongue in cheek. But there was enough of a correlation for me to ask James Cantalupo, president of McDonald's International and its de facto Secretary of State, what might be behind this Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention -- which stipulates that when a country reaches a certain level of economic development, when it has a middle class big enough to support a McDonald's, it becomes a McDonald's country, and people in McDonald's countries don't like to fight wars; they like to wait in line for burgers. Or as Mr. Cantalupo puts it: ''We focus our development on the more well-developed economies -- those that are growing and those that are large -- and the risks involved in being adventuresome $(for those growing economies$) are probably getting too great.''

In the 1950's and 60's developing countries thought that having an aluminum factory and a U.N. seat was what made them real countries, but today many countries think they will have arrived only if they have their own McDonald's and Windows 95 in their own language. This year McDonald's went into its 100th country and for the first time it earned more revenue from McDonald's overseas than from McDonald's America.

Said Mr. Cantalupo: ''I feel these countries want McDonald's as a symbol of something -- an economic maturity and that they are open to foreign investments. I don't think there is a country out there we haven't gotten inquiries from. I have a parade of ambassadors and trade representatives in here regularly to tell us about their country and why McDonald's would be good for the country.''

The question raised by the McDonald's example is whether there is a tip-over point at which a country, by integrating with the global economy, opening itself up to foreign investment and empowering its consumers, permanently restricts its capacity for troublemaking and promotes gradual democratization and widening peace. Francis Fukuyama, author of the classic work ''The End of History,'' argued to me that a country's getting its own McDonald's was probably not a good indicator of that tip-over point, because the level of per capita income needed in a country to host a McDonald's is too low. ''I would not be surprised if in the next 10 years several of these McDonald's countries go to war with each other,'' he said.

Yes, there will be conflicts, but more inside countries than between them. No question, the spread of McDonald's (a new one opens every three hours) is part of this worldwide phenomenon of countries integrating with the global economy and submitting to its rules, but this is not a smooth linear process. It produces a backlash inside countries from those who do not benefit from this globalization, who feel that their traditional culture will be steamrolled by it and who fear that they won't eat the Big Mac, the Big Mac will eat them.

How well governments and global companies manage these frustrations will be the real determinant of whether economic development will lead to wider democratization and wider peace. Here again McDonald's is an intriguing pioneer. When the riots broke out in Los Angeles one of the few commercial buildings not trashed was McDonald's. Wednesday's column will explore why.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 4, Page 15 of the National edition with the headline: Foreign Affairs Big Mac I. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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