Do a bit of historical rewind and think you are back in 2000 again. Boy, was Europe optimistic back then. The new economy hadn’t crashed yet, and Dubya did not seem to stand a chance against Gore. Sure, noglobal protesters had emerged as spoilers of the party of monetarism and neoliberalism, and the cinders of the Balkans were still smouldering, but the West looked triumphant (check the economist’s millennial issue or any other piece of myopic self-celebration of neoliberal capitalism). The (...)