Martin Feldstein, the renowned Harvard economist, once predicted that the euro could lead to renewed conflict in Europe, raising the risk of US intervention to prevent “more serious confrontations”. His article in Foreign Affairs, published a year before the launch of the single currency in 1999, triggered a furore in Europe where officials indignantly rejected the idea of a third world war on the continent.

More than 15 years on, Professor Feldstein’s forecast has proved to be more accurate than many of his critics expected. The euro may not have unleashed hostilities in the old war theatres east and west of the Rhine, but the sovereign debt crisis following the financial crisis created extraordinary confrontation and recrimination among Europe’s leaders – as described in this week’s in-depth series in the Financial Times.

The series featured shouting French presidents, manoeuvres to unseat the prime ministers of Greece and Italy, and even a tearful Angela Merkel, German chancellor and the leading actor in Europe’s political psychodrama. And yet, in the end, these conflicts – perhaps the most intense since the Treaty of Rome was signed six decades ago – were settled not on the battlefield but in the conference room.