It is truly both. Like I said, with the aging up of the millennials, get ready for a lot of 90s nostalgia not unlike when boomers drove the swing revival of the '90s. Cyclical cultural trends based on generation.

But at the same time, the '90s do seem rather exceptional as a time in between conflicts- the Cold War, which in some ways is an outgrowth of the end of WWII, itself an outgrowth of WWI, was over. The anxieties of living in a post-bipolar world, of dealing with dangerous non-state actors or multipolar rivals to the American order, had not formalized yet. If anything, most of the world seemed to be getting along under the capitalist liberal democratic framework that Fukuyama called the End of History. So from a security standpoint it certainly seemed peaceful.