Ronald McDonald and McDonnell-Douglas two sides of the same coin

The export of American products, services and common culture has been spear headed by the fast food industry. The export of US political and military imperialism has been spear headed by the armaments industry. The restaurant chain McDonald's and the military aircraft manufacturer McDonnell-Douglas have come to represent, respectively, two devices that are used for ensuring American global reach.

The McDonald's Corporation is the most important symbol of America's service economy. It is responsible for 90 percent of the US's new jobs. It is estimated that one in eight of workers in the US have at some point been employed by McDonald's. The corporation is America's largest purchaser of beef, pork and potatoes. It spends more on marketing than any other brand name. It is America's biggest distributor of toys. Today the Golden Arches (the M-for McDonald's sign) are now more widely recognised than the Christian cross. McDonald's has replaced Coca-Cola as the world's most famous brand.

That is the case not merely in the US. Internationally, American fast food chains have taken on a wholly different significance. For starters, the McDonald's Corp is the largest owner of retail property in the world. Internationally, the Golden Arches have taken on symbolic value that has far surpassed those of the swastika and the hammer and sickle.

American fast food represents Americana and the promise of modernisation. After the fall of the Berlin Wall within months McDonald's opened its first restaurant in Eastern Germany. In 1992 thousands of people waited patiently in Beijing outside the city's first McDonald store at its grand opening. When McDonald's opened in Kuwait the line of cars waiting at the drive-through window extended for seven miles. Around the same time Kentucky Fried Chicken hit its all time record earnings for one week $200,000, during Ramadan, in the Holy city of Makkah-tul-Mukarmah. Simply eating at Pizza Hut or McDonald's and drinking coke or Pepsi, as if by magic, can lift one social standing. This is the image that goes hand in hand with the sparkling clean tables and counters of the fast food take away stores.

The fast food chains have become imperial fiefdoms, sending emissaries far and wide. Den Fujita, the man who brought McDonald's to Japan 30 years ago once promised his Japanese countrymen, ''If we eat McDonald's Hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years we will become taller, our skin will become white, and our hair will be blonde.'' Statements like this may lead one to believe that the job of the fast food chains in brain washing is a fait accompli. Sixteen years ago, when McDonald's opened its first restaurant in Turkey, no other foreign franchiser did business there. Turkey now has hundreds of outlets for US companies. Support for growth of franchising has become part of US foreign policy. The State Department now publishes detailed studies of overseas franchise opportunities and runs a Gold Key Program at many of its embassies to help American franchisers find overseas partners.
Due to incredibly fierce competition in the US between the chains, many have turned their attentions to markers outside America. The McDonald's Corp refer to their strategy as ''global realization.'' To date McDonald's has over 15,000 restaurants outside the US in more than 117 countries.

The fact the fast food has come to represent US imperialism is not something that has gone unnoticed by some who have paused to take stock of the status quo. In response to the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, there was a trashing of over a dozen Macdonald's and four KFC's in China. In 1996 Indian farmers ransacked a KFC in Bangalore, in protest against the US erosion of the traditional Indian agricultural practices. In 1997, a McDonald's in Cali in Colombia was bombed. In 1995 a group of four hundred Danish anarchists looted a McDonald's in Copenhagen and burned it to the ground. Fast food restaurants (McDonald's being the most popular of for attack) have been bombed, burned and abused in; St Petersburg in Russia, Athens in Greece, Cape Town in South Africa, Antwerp in Belgium and the famous anti capitalist riots in Trafalgar Square in London. Although many are recognising the ills of culinary colonialism we should remember that McDonald's is merely one tool in amongst many for enforcing US junk culture on the world. The other tools are often more apparent and often more damaging. Each tools supplements the other. The spread of Junk culture augments the spread of political influence.

So what of McDonnell-Douglas? The Military might of the US as spread through the globe in an equally insidious and pernicious manner. Conflict and trouble spots have been used specifically as a pretence for established military bases or for building sea borne parking lots for aircraft carriers and destroyers. These so-called trouble spots have in the past been conjured up from peaceful and stable regions. Flare-ups have been induced by the US through it's various agencies and puppets that operate covertly and overtly. This has been exemplified by the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war that followed. This conflict provided a reason for the US to have a heightened presence in the Gulf. A more dramatic example was that of the Gulf war of the early 1990s. Military bases were set up all over the Persian Gulf region with no opposition from the heads of state in the region.

A comprehensive study of this issue is beyond the scope of this discussion. However even the briefest of glances at modern history reveals ample examples of the use of the arms trade and base building in American hegemony. As for the current tension in the World. The US may not have immediate plans to cite a Starbucks in Kandahar, but one thing is for sure. The US does intend to increase and strengthen existing bases and footholds that she has in the Islamic regions of the world. Bases and ports are some of the plum prize booty sought after in today's situations. Both McDonnell-Douglas and McDonald's are key tools used for the pursuit of this goal.