Golden Arches of Peace

I was completely at a loss of what symbol to do, so I looked back on Julia's post about Nike, and thought I would do another famous American symbol, McDonald's Golden Arches. This famous symbol came from the physical arches constructed on the first McDonald's franchised outlet store in 1953 in Phoenix, Arizona. The two arches looked like a "M" when viewed from the side. They became the company's new logo in 1962.

While I was reading through the history of the Golden Arches, I was even more interested to find Thomas Friedman's Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention from his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree. This theory states that two countries with McDonald's restaurants would would not go to war with each other, as they were countries who had a strong middle class to support a McDonald's and therefore would not be interested in going to war. It this theory, McDonald's symbolizes the greater global system and the want to avoid war in order to maintain their their position in that greater world order. Although their have been exceptions in the past ten years that have challenged this theory, it still brings up the greater question, is globalization the best peace keeper in history?