McDonald’s Leaving Russia Means Capitalism Has Failed
“No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.” — Thomas Friedman, 1996.
This week, McDonald’s, along with hundreds of other American companies like Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Apple, have decided to close all of their operations in Russia. There are reports of hoarding burgers in fridges, mass panic, and a deep sense of sadness. CNN published a piece fondly remembering the crowds in the dead of winter in 1990 when the first McDonald’s came to Moscow, lamenting the need for its current abandonment of the former Soviet Union. After thirty plus years and becoming an “essential part of the 850 communities in which [they] operate,” McDonald’s is closing down with no prediction of a reopening date.
I’ve written about how the war is a failure of America before, but I think this may be the most important way in which it’s true. Our promises of capitalism spreading around the world and tying people’s hearts together with their pockets turned out to be a load of wet rubbish.
In the 2010s, as we saw a rise in support of socialism, proposals for wealth redistribution, and critiques of endless-hour-a-week work culture, some capitalism junkies clung to the fact that it was worth all the racism and the sexism and the tired servers working a second shift at a third job. Globalization, they said, was worth it. International goods, services, and banking was worth it. Peace was worth it.
So where did it all go wrong?
Capitalism has failed in many ways, but this is the shining proof we need to know it’s irreparably broken.
In 2012, I was a young political scientist, starry-eyed in the front row of my first-year international politics class at U.C. Berkeley. I learned about a world in which the United States ruled the world with a soft gaze and capitalism was the shining beacon of light we’d spread around the globe.
In my classes on war, realism, and political theory, I came to hear two “irrefutable truths” of the success of American ideals:
- Two democracies have…
