No peace even after a Big Mac meal

McDonald’s decision to leave Russia permanently after more than 30 years recalls in ironic magnitude the fast food giant’s decision to open its first restaurant in Moscow in 1990, in a symbolic thaw in the Cold War that occurred even before the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Now, in the wake of the war in Ukraine, another home of McDonald’s, the American gastronomic icon’s departure from Russia highlights the questionable assertion made by the American journalist Thomas Friedman in what he called the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention. (Those are the arches of the McDonald’s logo.)

According to Friedman, no two countries that both possessed McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each had got its McDonald’s. That is because McDonald’s operates only in countries that possess a middle class which is prosperous and extensive enough to support its franchises.