Remember reading about the Mc Donald's that opened in Moscow in the 80s, and how people queued all day to visit. Even that young I thought "how pathetic". They have so much, and they queue for hours for a lousy cheeseburger from a country that would quite happily blow them to smithereens with a nuke.
When I first started teaching English in Moscow -- late August 1993 -- I felt exactly the same way about the McDonalds: "How pathetic!" As you say, McDonalds cheeseburgers really are rather lousy (I feel sorry for anyone whose only conception of a hamburger is based on McDonalds crap!).

But by Christmas-time or so, I finally snapped and went to one of the Moscow McDonalds -- because the floors were so clean, and the people at the cash register didn't growl and yell at you. Plus, there was fresh lettuce -- real, actual lettuce, although in very tiny pieces -- on the Big Macs. These small things -- clean floors, smiling staff, a green vegetable that didn't come from a can -- were very, very welcome after a few months in 1990s Moscow, when I was earning not-very-much-money as an English tutor.

Which is not to say that I made a habit of McDonalds -- you can't eat clean floors and smiles, and the actual food at McDonalds sucks. I nearly always cooked my own food at home to save money, but if I was very hungry and in a hurry, I preferred to buy something from a street vendor if I happened to pass one who was selling hot snacks -- пирожки "с котятами" tasted better than a McDonalds burger, and was a lot cheaper. Even the street-vendor пицца, although not very good back in those days*, was slightly better than a Big Mac.

* Tomato sauce was always too bland, the cheese was usually something Havarti-like, not even close to mozzarella, and there wasn't enough of either the sauce or the cheese -- it was mostly bread.

PS. But I don't agree that the US "would've quite happily blown them to smithereens with a nuke." Nukes are tremendously expensive, my dear, and the whole point of building them is TO NOT USE THEM. Actually delivering the warheads to their destinations -- namely, a kilometer or so above Moscow and other Soviet cities -- would have been, therefore, good money thrown away.

There's a reason, you know, that the airborne nuclear command center of the US during the Cold War was called Operation Looking Glass. (Note that in US English, a зеркало is invariably called a "mirror"; the only time we Merkins ever use the phrase "looking glass" is when we intend it as a reference to Lewis Carroll.)