There is a theory that armed conflict is impossible between countries where well -known fast food restaurants are open. We checked whether this is really so.

For the first time, a journalist, a three -time Pulitzer laureate, Thomas Friedman, expressed this hypothesis. At the end of 1996, he Published In The New York Times, the article by Foreign Affairs Big Mac I, which formulated the following assumption: there are no two countries in which there is a McDonald’s restaurant and which have ever fought against each other. Subsequently, it received the name "Theory of Golden Ark" in honor of the company's logo. In his text, Friedman gives a conversation with one of the leaders of the company confirming his observations. Although the journalist makes a reservation that his hypothesis is not quite serious, three years later he developed it in the rapidly becoming bestseller book The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

Despite the fact that in the original formulation we are talking about the already completed armed conflicts, Friedman argues that his observation is applicable to the future. According to his assumption, the opening of the McDonald’s restaurant is an illustration of the globalization process, during which the country reaches a certain level of development and at the same time integrates into the world economy that the “creation of problems” like hostilities becomes unprofitable. However, Friedman brings a note in 1996 and the opposite version. Francis Fukuyama, author of the famous essay "End of history?", objected to the journalist that in the next ten years the war between countries with McDonald’s would probably take place.

In the 1996 article, Friedman did not specify what it was understood by the “war”, making sure that the civil wars did not fall under his hypothesis. Nevertheless, his assumption was refuted quite quickly. In Yugoslavia, the first McDonald’s Open In 1988 in Belgrade - after 11 years the city Bombed the forces of NATO countries, in which also worked Restaurants of this network. It is noteworthy that Belgrade McDonald’s before the start of the armed conflict was The subject of the pride of the Serbs and the envy of representatives of other nationalities, and during the bombing was a shelter for the townspeople.

There are other examples, if not full -fledged wars, then armed conflicts and special operations that passed between the two countries in which McDonald’s worked. So, in 1989, American troops invaded to Panama for the overthrow of the local leader Manuel Noriegi (McDonald’s works In the country since 1971). During the conflict in South Ossetia in 2008 Russia Spended "Operation to force Georgia to the world", and the first McDonald’s Open In Tbilisi back in the late 1990s.

Photo on the cover: Nicolás Ortega for Foreign Policy