Economic colonialism: KFC in Khartoum

As Eisenhower said, before World War II America had no standing war arms industry. Sure, we had industries making weapons, some of them venerated globally like Colt and Winchester, but their output was not part of a war preparation and what we later renamed as defense industries. Weapons, as tools, have little to do with weapons mass-produced as part of a war campaign. And not all weapons are designed to kill.

A friend sent me a picture, a decade or more ago, of the pyramids at Giza. There, as part of the tourist complex, was a KFC. Also, in Nairobi, Dar-ed-Salam, Kinshasa, Capetown and even Khartoum you can find franchises of the Colonel’s chicken. When you stare at a multi-millennial-old pyramid, do you really want a neon KFC sign staking claim? On the Champs Elysees do you really want a Burger King illuminated sign? Okay, you think, so what? The “what” is harder to understand, but much more dangerous to our national security than you may think: It comes down to control, exerted from a corporate desk affecting whole nations and causing unrest globally. 

In order for McDonald’s to have sufficient chicken for their nuggets in, say, Russia, they did the correct capitalist thing of reaching out and empowering chicken farmers there to expand their production, improve sanitation, use modern methods of production and slaughter. The goal was to have production of chickens in Russia match the standards we have here. And why not, since McDonald’s does have standards, standards as a business and standards of hygiene and nutrition? But the problem is that the standards and the quantity McDonald’s required cornered the market and forced many other traditional businesses to collapse. They could not get chickens. And they could not afford the prices the new farmers required to maintain the supply standards McDonald’s imposed.

Now, you may say, that’s because McDonald’s standards are better. Well, yes, they are for chicken being chopped up, pre-cooked, breaded, fried weeks later and then sold at a huge markup per pound. But Russia had a thriving chicken fast-food kiosk business, street food, where open-air-raised chickens were fresh killed in the morning and consumed by lunch. Similarly, in Khartoum, Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi the open air markets no longer have live chickens for sale. The populace can’t afford them when farmers get a higher price selling to KFC’s buyers, which drives the populace to go to KFC where they pay 650 percent more per pound for chicken than they did when they bought a live one and cooked it for dinner.

In the end, multi-national conglomerates control the chicken market, a major part of the food chain. Repeat that with eggs, (mono-culture) wheat, (GMO) soy and corn, rice, beverages, agrichemicals, fuel, computer chips, light bulbs, cars, tires, insurance and banking, and you control — and change — whole populations and countries. And that control comes because the people who prefer traditional products are forced to buy what is commercially available — and that often comes on the back of sophisticated marketing campaigns that prey on innocence and superior technology proffered as a cure to an individual’s lower station. Drink Pepsi and become a better person, a happier, more lively person. Buy Monsanto GMO corn and grow healthier corn. Inject cows with patented BST hormones to make them produce more milk.

The more a market is cornered, the more you can be sure the marketplace is turned into a virtual monopoly for those enterprises already established. And monopolies are all about exerting control.

Capitalism and competition are, as one would expect, efficient and forward-thinking, dependent on innovative processes and ideas for expansion. The problem arises when these corporations get too large and competition stops. Then they begin to adversely affect the balance of socio-economic power globally. As Teddy Roosevelt understood, trust-busting wasn’t only about money, nor about supposed evil (as people are accusing Amazon), it is about a balance of power, allowing free-micro-enterprise growth, avoiding the growth of an industry leader to overbalance the structure of society, stifling the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. 

More importantly, do populations really want one supply of chickens in Russia, Tanzania, Sudan, Kenya, South Africa, etc.? Putting all the eggs in one basket is dangerous. And increasingly, populations, especially the lower-economic levels of populations, see the recognizable name brands of this capitalist expansion as just another form of colonialism, colonialism meant to control populations and their output. As Americans we should understand the dangers of colonialism better than most, or are we so far removed from the founding reasons for our nation to have become exactly like our masters of old — acting as they once did on a global scale? It doesn’t take a British Navy anymore to control the world when you can stifle competition and create monocultures in your corporate image. When that monoculture becomes oppressive, people will revolt and our national security will be at risk not because of drones or fighting terrorists in foreign lands, but because we will have failed to recognize the insidious dangers of our rampant global economic expansion.

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.