A closer look
Political commentator Thomas Friedman famously proposed the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, aggressively arguing that no two countries that both possess a functioning McDonald's franchise have ever gone to war with one another. The economic premise was that a nation firmly integrated into global supply chains and middle-class consumerism simply has far too much financial stability to risk dropping bombs on their heavily corporatized trading partners. While this theory was eventually violently disproven by a few geopolitical conflicts, it remains a hilariously cynical view of modern international diplomacy, suggesting that world peace is best achieved not through mutual respect, but through shared cholesterol. It perfectly encapsulates the American capitalist dream, insisting that the only thing stopping total nuclear annihilation is a mutual desire to maintain uninterrupted access to chemically preserved Chicken McNuggets
