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War! What is it good for?
Nov. 14th, 2005 09:49 amWell, ridding Europe and Asia of gencoidal midgets c1939-45 was a pretty good start.
Further to my post on nuclear weapons a week or so ago, I've been thinking more about ways to stop people going to war and killing each other.
It's widely accepted that the prevelance of nuclear weapon ownership amongst major military powers has severely curtailed the incidence of the traditional stand-up-and-fight army vs. army nation state wars of the past, which can only be said to be a good thing. However, nuclear weapon ownership, even on both sides of a conflict, does not serve as an absolute guarantor of peace: witness India and Pakistan who still occasionally trade shots and rattle sabres over Kashmir. With this in mind I got me to wondering if there was any factor which absolutely prevented nations going to war with one another - and I found it. The United Nations? Not a chance. That impressively corrupt body has the odd succss on it's hands, but it seems that tends to be more by luck than judgement. The true means of spreading peace is an economic one and it's called the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict prevention.
What this theory states is simple: no two nations with McDonalds franchises have ever gone to war on each other*. Of course, this is due to wider economic factors and trade which would make it profoundly uneconomic to kick off on trading partners, but McDonalds (and more recently the Dell theory of Conflict Prevention, which states that no two nations which are a part of a global supply-chain network have ever gone to war on each other) seems to be the predicating factor.
This leads to the inevitable conclusion that the anti-globalisation protestors who spend their afternoons cheerfully lobbing bricks through the windows of McDonalds franchises rather than getting a job and earning an honest living are not only self-deluding, but they are in fact self-deluding warmongers. Rather than helping the poor innocent natives of Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso preserve their native way of life in the face of homogenising culture by attempting to slow or even reverse the spread of globalisation, they are in fact increasing the probability of those self-same natives dying in one of the internice brushfire conflicts to which those unlucky nations without branches of McDonalds and Dell outlets are so prone.
These anti-globalisation sorts should be rounded up and shot. It's the only language these people understand. And it's for the good of world peace, too, so everyone is a winner.
I look forward to the day when, rather then the UN showing up in trouble spots worldwide to sit and twiddle their thumbs whilst labouring under Byzantine rules of engagement and failing to save lives, peacekeeping forces show up in APCs gaudily painted red and gold with troops all dressed as Ronald McDonald. As the lessons of recent history show us, it's the most effective way of bringing peace to war zones that we have.
*Revised after the war in Yugoslavia
Further to my post on nuclear weapons a week or so ago, I've been thinking more about ways to stop people going to war and killing each other.
It's widely accepted that the prevelance of nuclear weapon ownership amongst major military powers has severely curtailed the incidence of the traditional stand-up-and-fight army vs. army nation state wars of the past, which can only be said to be a good thing. However, nuclear weapon ownership, even on both sides of a conflict, does not serve as an absolute guarantor of peace: witness India and Pakistan who still occasionally trade shots and rattle sabres over Kashmir. With this in mind I got me to wondering if there was any factor which absolutely prevented nations going to war with one another - and I found it. The United Nations? Not a chance. That impressively corrupt body has the odd succss on it's hands, but it seems that tends to be more by luck than judgement. The true means of spreading peace is an economic one and it's called the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict prevention.
What this theory states is simple: no two nations with McDonalds franchises have ever gone to war on each other*. Of course, this is due to wider economic factors and trade which would make it profoundly uneconomic to kick off on trading partners, but McDonalds (and more recently the Dell theory of Conflict Prevention, which states that no two nations which are a part of a global supply-chain network have ever gone to war on each other) seems to be the predicating factor.
This leads to the inevitable conclusion that the anti-globalisation protestors who spend their afternoons cheerfully lobbing bricks through the windows of McDonalds franchises rather than getting a job and earning an honest living are not only self-deluding, but they are in fact self-deluding warmongers. Rather than helping the poor innocent natives of Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso preserve their native way of life in the face of homogenising culture by attempting to slow or even reverse the spread of globalisation, they are in fact increasing the probability of those self-same natives dying in one of the internice brushfire conflicts to which those unlucky nations without branches of McDonalds and Dell outlets are so prone.
These anti-globalisation sorts should be rounded up and shot. It's the only language these people understand. And it's for the good of world peace, too, so everyone is a winner.
I look forward to the day when, rather then the UN showing up in trouble spots worldwide to sit and twiddle their thumbs whilst labouring under Byzantine rules of engagement and failing to save lives, peacekeeping forces show up in APCs gaudily painted red and gold with troops all dressed as Ronald McDonald. As the lessons of recent history show us, it's the most effective way of bringing peace to war zones that we have.
*Revised after the war in Yugoslavia
