Free Market = Pro War??

My results, from the popular Political Survey. As with the Political Compass I have some issues with the reasoning, and don't feel adequately represented.
For example, look at the vertical axis: free market/pro-war vs socialist/anti-war.
No, sorry, I'm not going to have that.

Globalization - that glorious manifestation of free people, free markets and free minds - ties the economic interests of countries together, breeding cooperation and preventing war. In this regard I am firmly a Cobdenite, who sought to develop international peace via free trade. He knew that no major wars have been fought between liberal democracies, and that it is authoritarian states, not private enterprise, that turn to war to get what they want.

This idea is often known as the McDonald's Rule, since no two countries with a McDonald's has ever gone to war. Whatever our personal tastes regarding the nutritional value of a Big Mac I think we can all wonder at such a fact. It should help expose the sickening ignorance of those who claim McDonald's is some kind of imperial force.

In his new book The World is Flat, NYT columnist Thomas Friedman introduces The Dell Theory.
In an interview with Yale Global he says:

The Dell Theory says that no two countries that are part of the same global supply chain will ever fight a war as long as they're each still part of that supply chain.

He traced parts from his computer to some of the nations that supplied them, and  points out that such mutual dependence drastically raised the costs of any military engagement:

If you do go to war and you're part of one these supply-chains, whatever price you think you're going to pay, you're going to pay ten times more.  Once you lose your spot in the supply chain because you've gone to war, the supply chain doesn't come back real soon.They're not going to.

The survey categorizes me "pro-war" even though I answered "The UK was right to go to war in Iraq" as "Strongly disagree". It is they who are being oxyMORONS, not me.

Addendum:
Witty review from New York Press

Comments

[Quinn]

Much to my surprise, I am on the free market pro-war side as well; I am a bit south-west of you on the graph.
As a Stopfordian of sorts, I agree with you on Mr Cobden. I have to disagree with some of your analysis, however. While it is clear that liberal democracies do not wage war against each other (and this is just one of the things that recommends democracy) I am not sure that it is just authoritarian states that turn to war; after all, it was democracies that turned to war to get what they wanted in Iraq. Even if it wasn’t the primary reason, the economic arguments for invading and controlling massive oil reserves must have been mentioned around Washington prior to the war, and by private companies too.
Also, while I generally argue against war, I do think that it may sometimes be necessary. I am not anti-war for the sake of it. It would be a terrible thing if some real injustices in the world were not tackled because of concerns over supply chains. Using your McDonalds example, if they expanded into North Korea, and North Korea then invaded South Korea, I would hope that we would then do the right thing for moral reasons, and not be influenced by business concerns.
Of course the hope would be that if McDonalds opened in North Korea it would be part of a freeing of North Korean society in general, but I hope you get my point. There were good reasons for and against the war in Iraq, and on balance I was against it; but I wouldn’t agree with us not tackling a murderous despot just because there were concerns about business suffering as a consequence.

[AJE]

I think I agree - the Theory is not meant as a standard to live by, rather an interesting result. The question is whether integrating supply chains makes war more or less likely - and I think it's less.

Regarding the Iraq war, it depends on who started it really. The fact is that it wasn't a war between two liberal democracies, it was caused by a somewhat evil dictator. Even if we both disagree with the decision to use unilateral military intervention, it's clear that if Iraq were a peaceful democracy there would have been no war. We can also ask what facet of America drove the invasion. Was it their liberal democracy? Whilst America is undoubtedly a capitalist society, the war was a demonstration of vested private interests in alliance with a neo-conservative aggressive foreign policy. Not very liberal at all.

Like you, I don't think that we should make it our aim to never use our military. But I think globalization will make that decision less likely. Indeed if McDonalds were in North Korea, the world would be a better place.

[Quinn]

I pretty much agree with you last comments. At the risk of sounding pedantic, however, I read this post on qwghlm.co.uk today that made the point that NATO bombed Belgrade in 1999 despite the fact that it had seven branches of McDonalds.

This doesn't affect your point that "integrating supply chains makes war...less likely" (as opposed to impossible), but I think it is worth knowing that the McDonalds example is not quite watertight.

By the way, if you have never read qwghlm, check out the "Toys" on the left hand side bar, in particular the Blunkett and Daily Mail generators. Make me laugh anyway.

[AJE]

Thanks for the link - those Daily Mail headlines are genius, and it's an interesting post about Friedman. In my post I was talking about integrated supply chains, and Chris uses "trading partner" as interchangeable. I'm not sure that that's quite true. Clearly being trading partners doesn't prevent hostility, but I think an integrated supply chain is different all together. For example the Fairtrade movement will focus on trading issues since they're visible and nationalistic. An integrated supply chain is the invisible hand at it's best - we don't even know which countries are involved in the production of almost any good. This economic force that binds nations together is going to be far harder to hijack for political motivations.

But you're right - it's not the McDonalds Rule, but the McDonalds Tendency.