Serbia and Kosovo are still mired in an endless cycle of violence and poverty, but at least in one corner of the former Yugoslavia there is now hope for a better future.
The swearing-in of Mr Stipe Mesic as Croatia's new president later this week will be the final act in a remarkable transformation. In three peaceful and fair elections over less than two months, the people of Croatia have removed all their former nationalist leaders.
The country is now pledged to apply European standards of human rights, forge peace with its neighbours and even allow the return of ethnic Serbs who were evicted from Croatia during the last decade.
The catalyst for this transformation was the death in December of Franjo Tudjman, the country's undisputed leader.
Although initially popular, Tudjman was the archetypal Balkan rabble-rouser, a man adept at mobilising his people with promises of a glorious future based on nothing more than reminiscences of a supposedly glorious and often fabricated past. He led Croatia to independence in 1991, but condemned the country to five years of war.
He promised a Western-style government, but delivered the traditional Balkan mixture of geriatric rule, corruption and nepotism, all covered up with the trappings, but none of the substance, of democracy. His acolytes divided up the economy between them and, whenever an opposition politician dared to become too popular, he was quickly brought to his senses by Croatia's secret police, commanded by the president's son.
Unlike Mr Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav dictator whom he so resembled, Tudjman knew how to make himself useful to the West and derive maximum benefit from every twist of the Yugoslav tragedy. He initially supported the carve-up of Bosnia by supplying ethnic Croats in that republic with weapons, just as Mr Milosevic did with his ethnic Serbs.
But he then switched sides and, with the West's secret connivance, threw out Yugoslav troops from Croat territory.
Mr Milosevic spoke about creating an ethnically pure Serbia but never achieved it. Tudjman, on the other hand, paid lip service to a multi-ethnic Croatia, but managed to evict most ethnic Serbs from his country, almost a fifth of the population, before the war.
Mr Milosevic remains the war criminal who brought ethnic cleansing to the Balkans, yet Tudjman, the most successful follower of this technique, was never indicted by an international tribunal. NATO pursued a war in order to allow ethnic Albanians to return to Kosovo, but nobody has ever asked Croatia to allow the return of its ethnic Serbs.
Nevertheless, Croatia paid a price for its behaviour. Although they found Tudjman useful, western governments were increasingly embarrassed by their association with such a leader. Croatia was never subjected to economic sanctions, but some of its military commanders were indicted as war criminals and the country's application to become a member of both NATO and the EU were ignored. His chief international sponsors, the US and Germany, increasingly regarded Tudjman as part of the problem of the Balkans. Starved of investment and credits, the country's economy never recovered from the war.
The operetta-style uniforms which Tudjman designed for his armed forces looked magnificent, the shop windows less so.
Just about the best service Tudjman performed for his country was to die at the appropriate time. The moment he disappeared his entire political structure evaporated. His son in the secret police resigned over the weekend, supposedly in protest at how the "revered memory" of his father is now "besmirched".
The new government and president are promising to right all previous wrongs. A rapid privatisation of the country's economy is on the cards, the press is already much freer, human rights are going to be protected and even the possibility of allowing ethnic Serbs to return is being touted.
As always in the Balkans, such promises are easy to make.
The country's new leaders are not exactly new: Mr Ivica Racan, Croatia's prime minister, once ran the local communist party, while Mr Mesic was Yugoslavia's last head of state in 1991. Although both were sidelined by Tudjman for almost a decade, they were originally part of a political system which was hardly either democratic or tolerant.
They deserve the benefit of the doubt but little more. It is questionable whether the government would be able to deliver its indicted war criminals to the international court in The Hague or eliminate corruption at home. And the idea that ethnic Serbs could return in large numbers will probably remain a dream - unless reversed immediately (as was the case in Kosovo) ethnic cleansing is usually irreversible. Nevertheless, the changes in Croatia do bode well for the region. The new government is unlikely to support separatist ethnic Croats in Bosnia. They will be encouraged to co-operate with the local Muslims and Serbs. For the first time since the Dayton peace accord stopped the fighting in 1995, Bosnia has a realistic chance of functioning as a state.
Nor would Croatia's leaders be tempted into any deals with Mr Milosevic. The isolation of Serbia's dictator is thereby reinforced.
Even if they fail in many of the reforms, Croatia's leaders will succeed in dismantling the machinery of internal control which Tudjman created.
That in itself is an achievement, an indication for other neighbouring nations that no dictatorship can last forever, and that democracy can take roots even in the most supposedly inauspicious parts of the Balkans.
The author is Director of Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London