As McDonald's leadership surely must know, bringing "democracy" to developing nations, eventually, has a big payoff for American businesses focused on wiping out the small scale competition like Mom and Pop restaurants overseas. If one can endure patient waiting, the further openings will be a veritable whopper. It's just a matter of time.
In the end, wars are successful commercial enterprises. As a result, they are, progressively, becoming the foundation for the new American economy. Especially this is so as former jobs are not coming back to the American shores in that it's cheaper for transnational companies to outsource and offshore work.
In relation, the Second World War not only jump-started the American economy in the aftermath of the Great Depression, it provided lots of employment prospects for many subsequent years on account of the need to rebuild across whole continents and in their devastated cities like London, Dresden, Mukden (now Shenyang) and Ningbo. This is not the case this time around due to the heavy reliance on outside contractors, who more often than not don't reconstruct much well at all, as the U.S. soldier electrocutions on a base in Baghdad and the Task Force RIO poisonings clearly demonstrate. In other words, they often are potentially dangerous and largely useless.
Consequently, all that we can hope is that Russia and China will persist in making improvements in their own nations and the lives of their citizens. It's obvious that, if they were to mimic America's squandering of money in ever enlarging wars, the outcome wouldn't be good at all.
References
[1]"Caspian Oil and Gas: Production and Prospects", CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web, Bernard A. Gelb; Resources, Science, and Industry Division at Caspian Oil and Gas: Production and Prospects[http://italy.usembassy.gov/pdf/other/RS21190.pdf].
[2] FINANCE: U.S. Lawmakers Invested in Iraq, Afghanistan Wars - ...[http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41893].
[3]"In Context: US Military Spending Versus Rest of the World" and "The Billions for 'Defense' Jeopardize Our Safety",Center For Defense Information at World Military Spending -- Global Issues [http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending].
[4]Blackwater Dismissal Risks Hurting Iraq Relations - WSJ.com [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126229226969112429.html].
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