the bombing ended. In the 2000 edition of the book, Friedman argued that this exception proved the rule: the war ended quickly, he argued, partly because the Serbian population did not want to lose their place in a global system "symbolized by McDonald's". Critics have pointed to other conflicts as counterexamples, depending on what one considers "a war": The 1989 United States invasion of Panama In 1999, India and Pakistan fought a war over Kashmir, known as the Kargil War. Both countries had (and continue to have) McDonald's restaurants. Although the war was not fought in all possible theatres (such as the Rajasthan and Punjab borders), both countries mobilised their military all along their common borders and both countries made threats involving their nuclear capabilities. The 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, following hostilities ongoing since 1973, with South Lebanon occupied until May 2000. (McDonald's franchises were established in Israel and Lebanon in 1993 and 1998, respectively.) However, the Lebanese Armed Forces were not a party to the fighting, the Israel Defense Forces action being taken instead against the paramilitary group Hezbollah. The 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Both countries had McDonald's at the time (restaurants began in the two countries in 1990 and 1999, respectively). The 2014 Crimean Crisis and War in Donbass between Russia and Ukraine. Both countries had McDonald's at the time. McDonald's closed its restaurants in the Crimean peninsula following the annexation. In 2022, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, bombing several major cities, including its capital city, Kyiv. At the time, Russia had 847 McDonald's outlets while Ukraine had 108. McDonalds suspended operations in Russia on March 8, 2022. The war later prompted McDonald's to announce, on May 16, 2022, that it would permanently leave Russia. In the 2000 edition of the book, Friedman countered criticism of his theory as follows: I was both amazed and amused by how much the Golden Arches Theory had gotten around and how intensely certain people wanted to prove it wrong. They were mostly realists and out-of-work Cold Warriors who insisted that politics, and the never-ending struggle between nation-states, were the immutable defining feature of international affairs, and they were professionally and psychologically threatened by the idea that globalization and economic integration might actually influence geopolitics in some very new and fundamental ways. He also explains how globalization can cause "Brazilification" — the loss of the middle class and increase in