[LINK] What's up with Serbia?

[rfmcdonald]

Could people better informed than me about Serbia and the West Balkans please tell me whether Roger Cohen's article in the International Herald Tribune, "Years after Milosevic, Serbia's illusions persist" is grounded in fact? The description of post-Communist Serbia as occupying the same sort of place that Austria did in the 1920s--impoverished, hit hard by wars, cut off from its old provinces--but with the addition of sanctions past and possibly future is rather depressing. If only Yugoslavia had somehow been able to manage the transition from Tito, at all; the entire country likely would have joined the European Union on fairly advantageous terms.