The McDonald Offensive

Fun fact: the Russia-Georgia conflict is the first war ever started between two countries who both have McDonald's franchises.

Why does that matter, aside from being an interesting bit of trivia? In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman observed that no two countries with McDonald's restaurants had ever entered into armed conflict (at the time of publication in 1999). He cited this as proof of the pacifying effect of globalization. His underlying reasoning was that countries with heavily interlinked economies will not go to war with each other for fear of disrupting mutually beneficial trade links. Unfortunately, Russia didn't get the memo, and no amount of McRibs was able to keep Russian tanks from rolling into South Ossetia.