Peak Europe turns 25: Why June 1999 marked the continent’s zenith

To better grasp Europe’s prospects, it pays to consider when it might have reached its zenith. Look too far back, before America took over as global hegemon after the second world war, and Europe’s geopolitical heft comes at the cost of widespread poverty and endless wars. The late 1960s? Fun in swinging London and bohemian Paris, less of it in communist East Berlin or repressive Lisbon. Pick too recent a time and it will be clear the rot had already set in. An anniversary this week caused Charlemagne to ponder his continent’s position 25 years ago. On June 10th 1999 Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia’s strongman, was humiliated into ending his murderous rampage in Kosovo. The short campaign and happy outcome chimed with a period of European political ambition, economic vigour and global clout. It may not have felt like it at the time, but was Peak Europe achieved in June 1999?

It is not that France, Britain or others can take all the credit for having pushed Milosevic into retreat. The 11-week NATO bombing campaign was largely run by America, then as now the backbone of the alliance. But the brief conflict seemed to point to a world heading not just in the direction of the West, but specifically of Europe. Since time immemorial geopolitics had been a case of might-makes-right. Kosovo showed principles mattered at least as much: the aim of the bombing was to prevent genocide, not to conquer territory. As the cold war had ended, “The End of History" seemed nigh, a world of liberal democracy at home paired with growing interdependence abroad. The purveyor of the theory, Francis Fukuyama, is American, but for him it was the European Union that was closest to the final destination we would all reach. America still had the power, but Europe, which had already figured out how to replace war with interminable summits about fish quotas, instinctively knew how to navigate the soon-to-arrive placid international order. One book explained “Why Europe Will Run The 21st Century".

Europe seemed like a pioneer in other ways. “Third Way" politicians such as Tony Blair had sussed out how to get stuff done beyond left and right. Grands projects abounded: the euro in 1999, shortly after internal borders had been scrapped and the single market created. The economy was in fine fettle, apart from Germany, then as now the “sick man of Europe". Of the world’s top 1,000 listed companies, 300 were from Europe. Some noted that new American firms with funny names like Amazon and Google seemed to be doing well. But Europe would surely soon come up with its own tech giants to take them on.

Formerly communist countries such as Poland were past their harsh economic reforms and on their way into the EU. Autocracy was on the blink farther afield, too. The cheap, easy intervention in Kosovo had set a new template for how to avoid the kinds of horrors seen in Rwanda a few years earlier. For other repressive regimes, commerce would do the trick. In 1999 agreement was reached to bring China into the World Trade Organisation. The poor apparatchiks 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".

Party like it’s 1999

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. Milosevic was isolated; a short aerial war prevented fatigue; Russia decided to play a helpful role. In Washington, the short war showed the extent to which Europe wasn’t pulling its weight, a familiar refrain these days. Perhaps Europe peaked in 1999. Or perhaps it merely failed to see that it was already in decline.

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