The Indo-Pak Peace: The McDonald's theory
Interview with Thomas L Friedman
September 13, 2004
******************

[ Thomas L Friedman, the legendary foreign affairs columnist of The
New York Times. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner for reporting
from and commentary on the Middle East, Friedman visited India some
months ago more convinced in 'The McDonald's theory for Indo-Pak
peace process- Moderation Team]

As he later told his audience at Pace University's Michael Schimmel
Centre for the Arts in downtown Manhattan, "Outsourcing is the
canary in the coal mine." Meaning: it is not the issue in itself,
but just the first warning of a larger issue.
---------------------------------------------

Part I: 'India has the innate ability to glocalize'

This was your second major trip to India in two years. What kind of
changes did you see from last time?

More, better, bigger. More of everything. I have been to Delhi and
Bangalore a couple of times; this time I was only in Bangalore, for
my own reporting and to film a documentary for The New York Times
and Discovery.

Is the film about outsourcing?

Not just outsourcing, but outsourcing from the Indian perspective.
We are looking at India and outsourcing. We are not going to start
with some software engineer in Silicon Valley who lost his job. It's
really about India and it's called The World Ate My Job.

As a leading international affairs and foreign policy analyst today,
how do you see India-Pakistan relations affecting trade and growth
in the region?

Well, I believe that we are seeing a rapprochement and the cricket
diplomacy is a reflection of this. I think this rapprochement is
driven very much by my McDonald's theory, only in the 3.0 form. In
2.0, I wrote that no two countries that have McDonald's have ever
fought a war since each got McDonald's. That was really an argument
about trade and integration.

Now we got to 3.0 and I have a variation on my McDonald's theory. In
my new theory, no two countries that are part of a global supply
chain will fight ever a war against each other as long as they are
each part of the supply chain. So it's a level deeper.

When you, India, become the backroom of American Express and General
Electric, you can't take a day off, you can't say, 'Sorry GE, we got
to take a week off to fight a war, a nuclear war on top of it,' and
GE says, 'Sorry India, we are now talking about trade. You are
running my credit card business, my healthcare business, my employee
retirement plan, you can't take a minute off, let alone a day or
week.'

I believe that reality which began in Bangalore and Chennai and
Hyderabad has percolated upwards and not just in the specific sense.
Every young person we met in the course of the documentary we asked
about Kashmir and Pakistan -- well, people are nationalists and they
believe in Kashmir in the Indian national sense that it's theirs and
whatnot -- but as far as fighting wars, the mood was, 'Oh come on,
I've got better things to do!'

And the government reflected that. When I was there, a quote from
Vajpayee said, 'We can't afford a war anymore.' Now, that's why I
want nothing more than for Pakistan to be part of the world of
Infosys because both India and Pakistan are part of the global
supply chains. Then we are really getting somewhere. The problem is
when one is and one isn't, because then I can really pull your
chain, you are almost more vulnerable, India. The other guys are,
like, Israel and Palestine, where one is hyper-connected and the
other has this mediæval form of suicide.

India has so much to gain because you have so much more to do, in a
world where you can do it. I hope it goes somewhere, for India's
sake and for Pakistan's sake because I think the more rapprochement,
the more context, the more Pakistanis are gonna come over for the
next NASSCOM conference in Mumbai and say, 'Hey, wait a minute, we
have got the same name, we look the same, we talk the same, we have
got the same DNA, there's only one thing missing and that's
governance.'

I think India has a powerful potential to influence Pakistan in a
positive way as much as Saudi Arabia influenced it in a negative
way. To me, it's a struggle. Is it going to be call centres or
madrassas? And Pakistan, that's the real battleground. Is it going
to be IITs for Pakistan or only Islamic universities that only teach
religion? I have no problem with Islamic universities, I just want
them to teach other things than just religion.

India and Pakistan are beginning to talk, India and the US are
strategic partners, but Pakistan has been designated a Major Non-
NATO Ally. There's been a lot of heartburn on the Indian side
regarding the manner of the announcement. Do you see that affecting
India-US or India-Pak relations?

If I had a choice between being designated a Major Non-NATO partner
or ally of the US and being part of the outsourcing of America's
defence, or I could have Infosys and Wipro and being part of the
outsourcing of the American economy, I would choose the latter. That
is to say, if I were India, I would just ignore this. I don't think
it's important at all because there is something deeply organic
about the Indian-American relationship that's evolving. It's built
on so many different levels, it's built on Indians coming here and
starting companies or working for companies and going back to India.
We are developing a symbiotic relationship.

The Pakistan-America relationship is currently entirely at the top.
Some might argue it's one man to one man. The India-America
relationship is built from the ground up, it's people to people, and
I hope the Pakistan-America relationship would become people to
people, I don't want it to be based on one man to one man.

But India has to show more self-confidence. Sometimes it gets a
little rattled. If I look at these relationships in terms of their
real weight -- and you measure the weight of a relationship people-
to-people, not man-to-man, leader-to-leader -- they are not even
close. It should be Pakistan that should be rattled. I would like
Pakistan and America to have a people-to-people relationship and
that's only possible when Pakistan's a democracy, when people can
choose.

What is driving the America-India relationship is that we have
voluntarily chosen to be partners in a very intimate way. You are
running the backroom of our companies. Who cares if we designate you
a big strategic NATO ally? It's meaningless, to me at least.
Sometimes I think India needs to calm down a little bit.

What about the US-India trade imbalance, which is heavily skewed in
India's favour? Also, India has taken the leading in opposing the US
on agricultural subsidies at the WTO rounds. How will that trade
deficit affect the India-US relationship?

I can't speak specifically on some of these issues because I'm not
up on them. But what I would simply say is that my strategy towards
India is not to complain about outsourcing. It would be to open
those sectors of the Indian economy that are still closed to what we
do best: insurance, finances, financial banking.

You know that I am against agricultural subsidies. I want farmers in
the developing world to develop and I want our farms to be used to
improve our environment.

Going back to Pakistan, what do you make of the 'nuclear WalMart',
as it has been described by some?

Honestly, I haven't followed it. It is very disturbing. Obviously, A
Q Khan was out of control.

But do you think it was possible for him to have acted alone?

I have no idea. As you know from my columns, I have not explored
that deeply and I have a bad habit of not commenting on things I
don't know about (laughs).

Besides ties with the US and Pakistan, India and Israel have been
growing closer, despite the fact that India has traditionally been a
supporter of the Palestinian cause, and later opposed the war on
Iraq.

The war on terrorism has clearly nudged India and Israel together;
they feel they share a common enemy. At the same time, globalization
has very naturally shoved them together, because they have this
enormous amount of business they can do, there's a lot of
comparative advantage between the two. Israel has its hi-tech
sector, very advanced, equivalent of Silicon Valley in some ways,
and they are particularly good in military technologies, so it's a
lot of comparative advantage. I think that's a good thing.

I'm glad it's happening, but I don't want it to happen against the
Muslim world. It will flourish, and only flourish, and reach its
full potential if there is some kind of peace arrangement where
India, which has a substantial Muslim population, doesn't have to do
this in secret. It's happening for some organic reasons, but there
needs to be some sort of peace context where India can feel totally
comfortable and totally good in forging ahead with this relationship
and not have to do it in secret.

India has the second largest Muslim population after Indonesia. But
the war on terror is largely seen as a war against Islam. How can
India counter that and what is your opinion on that perception?

I believe the war on terror is not a war with Islam, it's a war
within Islam. We as outsiders, whether India or the US, it's our job
to use our influence anywhere we can to help the good guys defeat
the bad guys, to help those who believe in tolerance and pluralism
and democracy defeat those who believe in intolerance, jihad,
authoritarianism, and terrorism. And if there is no war within
Islam, and the bad guys are allowed to set the agenda, then there
will be a war with Islam.

But I don't think we are there at all. Right now we are seeing the
war within Islam play out and we should do everything we can to make
sure the good guys win.

How do you see that playing out, the war within Islam, because a lot
of them are dictated to by religious clerics and leaders?

I supported the war on Iraq not for WMD. The only justification for
my argument was the regime. It is so important to create a space in
the heart of the Arab Muslim world where people who believe in
tolerance, pluralism, and modernism can stand up and speak out.

It's interesting, because the preachers were supposed to condemn
what happened [the killing of four US contractors in June], but
let's see what they said (reads from a news story on his
computer: 'They condemned the mutilation of the bodies, but did not
criticize the killings...').

Do you think the war in Iraq is going to be another Vietnam for the
US?

It's not Vietnam. It may end like Vietnam, but it's a totally
different context. And I believe that trying to fight the war of
ideas within the heart of the Arab-Muslim world by partnering with
the Iraqi people by trying to build a decent state in the heart of
their world is not only the right strategy, it's the only strategy.

It may be though that it's a fool's errand. It may turn out that the
politics and culture of that part of the world is just too encrusted
to break through. It may be, but from a national security point of
view, it wasn't just the right thing to do, it was the only thing to
do. And Lord knows I grieve for every soldier that's been killed
there and I don't say that lightly. But do I believe that their
being dispatched there was an unconscionable deployment of our
troops. From a national interest point of view, it was right and
rational.

Has this administration done it the best way they could? Absolutely
not. But if you think the status quo was benign or that the only
reckless thing here was doing something about it, was trying to
change it, then I tell you the status quo brought us 9/11, the
status quo brought us two Arab human development reports. So that's
my feeling, it may not work, we are right in the middle of this.

But I'm putting this at a national security level. But if you were
the mother or father of someone who was killed, your heart would
ache as someone who advocated this and it hasn't worked. So from a
personal point of view, I would apologize; but from a national
interest point of view, your son did not die in vain, did not die in
some ridiculous adventure, this is not Mogadishu, this is not even
Vietnam. There is a real, underlying logic to fighting the war on
ideas and doing it this way.

But it may be that we are just too radioactive and that part of the
world is just too encrusted for us to change, and at some point
here, we are going to make that calculation.

As a columnist, how does it feel to know that your column was picked
up by a Saudi prince as a peace proposal? How do you react to
something like that?

I'm thrilled! My motto as a columnist has always been: 'Do you want
to make a point or do you want to make a difference?' I'm not here
to beat my breast and make a point, I really want to make a
difference, not because I am a megalomaniac who wants to control the
world, but because I have children and I want them to grow up in a
better world than the one I grew up in, a less dangerous world than
the one they are growing up in now, and one that is as peaceful as
the one I grew up in! That's what motivates me, that I am a parent,
that's the key to what makes me tick.

I love my country, I think it's the greatest country in the world, I
am an unabashed American patriot, ok? And I want it to flourish and
thrive, for the sake of my kids and because I believe America is a
blessing for the world.

We do a lot of stupid things, and we have done a lot of stupid and
bad things in history, but very few good things happen in the world
without America somehow being involved. I believe a strong and
healthy America is essential for the progress of the world.

I like to think I am very independent and unpredictable because I
have got my eye on my own horizon, what I believe is good for
America and for the world, and I think people get that about me. So
if my peace proposal inspires the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, that
makes me feel really good.