A fun story I covered many years ago was the opening of the first McDonald’s in New Delhi. This was back in the 1990s, when we mostly felt a lot better about globalization, back when Tom Friedman was formulating his wry (and often misinterpreted) “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”—the hypothesis that a country with a McDonald’s in it was unlikely to go to war with another McDonald’s country, the idea being that two countries sufficiently integrated into the global economic order to have McDonald’s would have shared economic interests and commitments to multilateral institutions that would make war the least desirable option in a conflict.
Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, worked as the theater critic at the New Criterion, and had a long career in local newspapers. He is also a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. When Kevin is not reporting on the world outside Washington for his Wanderland newsletter, you can find him at the rifle range or reading a book about literally almost anything other than politics.
