Peak Europe turns 25: Why June 1999 marked the continent’s zenith
livemint.comapparatchiks in Beijing had seemingly not realised that the ensuing prosperity would turn their society into a liberal democracy, given time. Newly democratic Russia was also headed beyond history: it was planning an underwater gas pipeline to Germany, the home of Wandel durch Handel (change through trade). Even the head of its security service at the time of Kosovo, one Vladimir Putin, would denounce communism as “a blind alley".
Things turned out a little differently. In 2001, 9/11 ended the end of history; the war in Iraq knocked the stuffing out of liberal interventionism. Economically, 1999 is now remembered as the year cheap credit in places like Spain and Greece started to fuel a bubble that would lead to the euro-zone crisis a decade later.
There are still no European Googles or Amazons, and only around 200 of the world’s top firms are now from Europe. China’s leaders worked out how to get rich yet stay autocratic. By the end of 1999, Mr Putin was in power; the Nord Stream pipeline today is a rusting wreck in the depths of the Baltic.
In Europe what were once seen as transformational trade ties are today seen as dangerous vulnerabilities to the whims of foreign foes. The process of EU integration took a hit when Dutch and French voters nixed plans for an EU constitution in 2005, before Britain left altogether. A quarter-century on, an international force must still keep the peace in Kosovo.
Remembering the optimism that pervaded Europe at the time of Milosevic’s humbling, Charlemagne recently sat down with Jamie Shea, who served as NATO’s spokesman at the time. Had 1999 in fact been Europe’s defining geopolitical moment? Perhaps not entirely. “We were lucky in Kosovo," he says.
Read more on livemint.com
