One of the casualties when Russian tanks rolled past Gori was the
beguiling “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” proposed by
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist: “No two countries that
both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.”
Alas, you can buy Big Macs in both Moscow and Tbilisi, so we now know a
little consumer capitalism is insufficient immunisation against
old-fashioned clashes between imperialism and independence.
From the FT