The collapse of optimism about “Peace of the Golden Arches” .. What does McDonald's closure of its Russian branches mean after 3 decades?

The closure of the American fast-food chain McDonald's branches in Russia - against the background of the war on Ukraine - recreated the image of many memories at the end of the Soviet Union, where food was - and still is - an important political symbol, especially as it was associated with a brand whose entry into the heart of the former Soviet Union was a sign of The end of the Cold War era.

On a winter morning on January 31, 1990, a large crowd of Muscovites in the famous Pushkin Square, in the center of the capital, Moscow, was eager to taste a McDonald's burger after the opening of its first branch in the Soviet Union, which was a symbol of the prosperity of American capitalism and the fall of the ideology of the Soviet Union.

A number of journalists, photographers, Russian and foreign correspondents and even diplomats, and dozens of policemen joined the crowd in anticipation of the crowd getting out of control, and the reporters writing these details knew that there is an important press story that goes beyond ordinary Russians’ appetite for all things American, or their eagerness to devour American burgers when the restaurant opened It's 10 am.

To locals and foreigners alike, the opening was the first physical confirmation, just two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was serious about economic and political reform.

The golden arches indicated that democracy and liberation were irreversible, the evidence at the time being in the Big Mac.

More than three decades later, history has gone backwards. This week, McDonald's said it was closing 850 restaurants in Russia, arguing that it could not ignore the "human suffering" caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.

The Chicago-based company said that the closure is temporary, but this appears to be an expression of hope more than a plan, so does this mean the isolation of Moscow or the withdrawal of the West?

Memories of 1990

For older Russians, McDonald's still has symbolic significance. It was the first major international brand to set up shop in Moscow and Pizza Hut followed suit a few months later. At the time, the Soviet Union had less than two years to live, but it was still hard to imagine Russia entering a decade Unbridled privatization, or a new class of "oligarchy" will take over the country's oil and mineral resources, or foreign investors will flock to the Russian capital in search of huge returns.

In 1990, most Russians were forbidden to own foreign currency, so McDonald's priced their burgers in non-convertible rubles. The downside was that the Big Mac cost between 2% and 3% of the average monthly salary for Russians, and the equivalent bill in the United States today is $60. .

The price was not a deterrent, customers liked the size of the milkshake and did not resent the long queue they were used to in Soviet times, and McDonald's served more than 30,000 meals on the first day, and the Big Mac burger was not just an exotic food, it was a taste of the United States that Its brands were the subject of admiration, envy, active circulation on the black market, the bleak years of the Soviet Union.

Russians' embrace of Western fast food, pop culture, and jeans came to signify the country's integration and its middle class into the global capitalist system, and McDonald's and other fast food restaurants showed that Russia was quickly joining Western globalization, as Russians were finally allowed to travel.

A few months before the opening, citizens gathered in Pushkin Square to use their newfound freedom to demonstrate and express their impatience with the slow pace of reform. The opening of McDonald's can be seen as Gorbachev's response to the protesters by saying that the reforms are serious and real.

A citizen in front of a McDonald's that just opened in the Soviet Union (French)

The dream of peace "naive"

In his article in the American magazine Foreign Policy, Paul Musgrave, an academic at the University of Massachusetts, said that in the 1990s Americans were imagining a world that could be just like them, in which it was believed that international integration, interests and economic globalization in themselves could make war less possibility.

But the developments of current events suggest that the legacies left by the "imperial decline" will generate a new wave of conflict, contrary to what was written by the American journalist and political theorist Thomas Friedman, who considered that the benefits of economic integration reduce the political options open to governments, which makes the war - which disrupts this integration. - So unattractive as practically unimaginable.

The writer says that if this idea sounds like the theory of "capitalist peace" - as understood by the economists Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Richard Cobden - then it is largely true.

These ideas were popular at the end of the Cold War and the rise of American unipolarity, and at a time of American optimism, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev participated in an advertisement for Pizza Hut, and the “golden arches of conflict prevention” theory proposed by Friedman and its conclusion that the expansion of global capitalism will lead to a decline in war, He summed it up: "No two countries that have McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other."

But Friedman later admitted that the relationship between McDonald's and peaceful relations was not causal.

The presence of McDonald's did not offer magical properties to reduce conflict.

Instead, McDonald's deliberately positioned its restaurants in countries that were unlikely to go to war in the first place and that has gone to great lengths to build a middle class that can afford Western luxuries, for example McDonald's today operates in only a few African countries.

An article by the American academic and political scientist Samuel Huntington in 1993 in Foreign Policy also "The Clash of Civilizations" predicted that the future would witness civilized bloodbaths.

Opening McDonald's or occupying Kosovo?

The Golden Arches theory was shaken at the end of the 1990s, after NATO began air strikes on the Serbian capital Belgrade (with McDonald's seven branches in it) during the Balkan War.

However, Friedman claimed that this was a "temporary exception that proved my rule" and wrote in the New York Times "Once NATO turned off the lights in Belgrade, shutting down the electricity grids and the economy, the citizens of Belgrade demanded an end to the war, quite simply, they wanted to be part of the world, more From what they wanted Kosovo to be a part of, they wanted to reopen McDonald's, much more than they wanted to reoccupy Kosovo."

Other tests of the theory came in 1999 when India and Pakistan threatened nuclear strikes over the Kashmir crisis, the wars between Israel and Lebanon in 2006, and when tensions between Russia and Georgia escalated in 2008, but these conflicts were relatively small and quickly resolved, thanks to the economy.

In 2022, the Golden Arches theory was tested more seriously than ever before, and before that in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, McDonald's was at the front again, the three branches in the region were closed in Sevastopol, Simferopol and Yalta.

The following month, 5 more branches were closed in eastern Ukraine, including 3 in the rebel-held city of Donetsk, Britain's bigissue newspaper reported.

As anti-American sentiment grew, McDonald's became a target. An April 2014 poll showed that 62% of Russians would like to see the company leave the country. Even President Putin took part in the debate, supporting expansion of a Soviet-style franchise "based on different types." It is a traditional Russian food that competes in quality standards with restaurant chains such as McDonald's."

And the author of the book "The Fast Food Industry" Adam Chandler says in his article in the American newspaper (Washington Post) that the golden arches theory of conflict prevention also included the idea that the economic system that supports it will be American-led.

In 1986, even before the end of the Cold War and the golden arches theory seemed possible, the American newspaper The Economist launched the Big Mac Index, which uses the price of a Big Mac meal around the world as a way to measure currency values, and the idea was also that the United States made the measurement tool .

But this aspect of the conflict looks very different today, Chandler says, as European countries - perhaps most notably Germany - have played unexpectedly strong roles in the crisis in Ukraine, while America is working largely behind the scenes and that has not (so far) changed the course of the conflict. Russia work.

Whether the Russian war revealed the limitations of American power or reminded many factors of the strength of its attractiveness, the fact is that countries - whether they went to war or not - do not always act in their own economic interests, and the golden arches theory of war and peace symbolizes seductive optimism after the Cold War Now, the idea seems strange, naive, narcissistic, and a bit mired in hindsight.

The rupture of theory and the end of the optimism that inspired it is a reminder of how limited peace is and how chaos power can be.