After 13 blood-soaked years, Yugoslavia has thrown off the yoke of Slobodan Milosevic. The coming year sees the federation headed by a genuine democrat, President Vojislav Kostunica, and by a newly-elected federal government after a September poll and October revolution.
October brought elections in Kosovo; November saw ballot boxes out again in the neighbouring former Yugoslav state of Bosnia Herzegovina; and finally, Serbia went to the polls on December 23rd for the republic elections. These will ensure a strong mandate for anti-Milosevic forces, which are expected to win a landslide against Milosevic's socialists.
But all this election activity does not signal an end to troubles in the region, although under Mr Kostunica it does seem likely both Montenegro's relationship with Serbia and Serbia's relationship with Kosovo - indeed the whole nature, shape and function of what is now known as Yugoslavia - can probably be resolved without another Balkan war. The new Foreign Minister in Yugoslavia, a young lawyer called Goran Svilavovic, has signalled the country's intent to use international institutions and laws and politics and diplomacy rather than the gun.
But the New Year will bring plenty of problems for Yugoslavia and for the international community: 2001 will be a year of reckoning.
Many policy-makers, at home and abroad, saw the region's biggest problem before in two words: Slobodan Milosevic. Now the policy challenge is to adapt and change because he is finished. The irony of his departure is that many in the region are suddenly realising that the man they loved to hate was in an odd way their best ally.
The relationships of Pristina to Belgrade, and Podgorica to Belgrade were simple when Milosevic was in power. The West certainly did not stamp on independence aspirations in either entity and, in the case of Montenegro, financial and other aid to the anti-Milosevic government of president Milo Djukanovic fuelled separatist ambition.
Despite a lack of economic reform and democratic practice, Mr Djukanovic received millions of pounds in Western aid for his role as a bulwark against Milosevic. He does not now want to cede to Mr Kostunica the power and status he gained during the past two years of the Milosevic era. His coalition - and its supporters - boycotted the federal elections that provided the impetus to sweep Milosevic from power in the autumn with only the pro-Milosevic party, the Socialist People's Party (SNP), taking part in the poll.
This leaves Mr Kostunica - who was directly elected - in the extraordinary situation of having a federal government that has a mandate from only a small percentage of the people in Montenegro and consists solely of members of the party that, for years, provided a home for pro-Milosevic political stooges.
Mr Kostunica has pledged a referendum on Montenegro's status in both republics and says that if the majority of Montenegrins want independence he will respect their wishes. But he is by nature a federalist and he will seek to bind the sister state back to Serbia within the context of a new federal constitution.
But there is yet another factor that could alter the Montenegrin equation and that is the nature of the new Serbian government under prime minister-designate Zoran Djindjic. The prime minister is not the most powerful figure in Serbia; that position is occupied by the directly-elected Serbian president. However, this post is held by indicted war criminal and former Milosevic crony Milan Milutinovic, who is sitting quiet and compliant and is likely to stay that way until his position comes up for re-election in the middle of 2001.
This leaves plenty of time for Mr Djindjic - a skilled, street-smart politician with a touch of Machiavelli in his blood - to begin to accumulate power in the premiership and to change the style of government to one modelled on the German system, with a symbolic president and powerful chancellor.
If he, as a powerful Serbian premier, allies himself with Mr Djukanovic - a strong Montenegrin president - the two could seek to negotiate the status of Montenegro at a state-to-state level rather than within the confines of federal structures that Montenegro already rejects. That would benefit Mr Djindjic and Mr Djukanovic, but risks leaving Mr Kostunica without a role and with no federation to be president of.
What then of all the work that Mr Kostunica has done linking Yugoslavia into the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the United Nations and the Council of Europe? All of it is meaningless if Yugoslavia ceases to exist.
And what of Kosovo? Even before December 23rd, Western policy-makers faced the dilemma: should Kosovo participate in Serbia's elections? If the province does participate, it honours the UN Security Council resolution that says Kosovo is part of sovereign Yugoslavia. That reinforces Serbia's claim to future jurisdiction over the province.
But Kosovo is also looking to have its own provincial elections in the spring to enable separate civic structures to be developed. Albanian leaders, such as Adam Demaci and Hasim Thaci, argue there is no way Kosovo Albanians will submit to domination or even the loosest administration of the province by Belgrade after the slaughter of 1999, when thousands of Albanians were killed by Serb forces and hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes in a forced expulsion, reversed only after the NATO bombing.
But the West argued at the time of the war that it was seeking to reverse a humanitarian catastrophe not give birth to an independent Kosovo - or even a greater Albania. The US appears more drawn toward independence as a solution than the Europeans. All agree that the issue of final status is a tricky one, but the general policy still appears to be one of muddle-through and fudge.
The increased tension on the Kosovo-Serbia administrative border toward the end of 2000 may, some analysts say, be merely a bid by Kosovan armed extremists to grab Serbian territory with which they can negotiate when the shape of the independent Kosovo is finally decided. Spring next year may see more action here.
The one dream that is utterly illusory for Kosovo is that of a peaceful, multiethnic province. The estimated 200,000 Serbs who were driven from their homes in Kosovo once the Kosovar Albanians returned have said they want to go back to their homes and Mr Kostunica will press for that to happen. But it will either create a peacekeeping nightmare for the NATO-led peaceforce Kfor or, more likely, simply lead to large Serb settlements in the north of the province close to Serbia and protected by the peace force.
Those who would seek to see multi-ethnicity in battle-scarred Yugoslavia can take no cheer from the five-year peace of Bosnia Herzegovina. Here, the few people returning from the Bosnian Serb side (Republika Srpska) and the Muslim Croat federation to their respective homes are almost exclusively the old who are going home to die.
In November elections, the nationalist parties still showed they held considerable sway and, despite the presence of 20,000 NATO troops and the millions of pounds of international aid that has poured into the country since the end of the war in 1995, corruption remains endemic. Joint civil institutions only function under the whip of the diplomatic community and, instead of growing its own institutions, the country remains a protectorate that fails to provide key politicians - Muslim, Croat and Serb - with the necessary experience of political concession and practical governance.
The future of former Yugoslavia, as European leaders made clear at the Zagreb Balkan summit in November, lies in Europe. The dismembered parts of the federation may well answer their problems through absorption into the EU in many years to come. But the condition set at Zagreb was that the countries come to Europe as a "job lot". That means - at least partially - resolving issues among themselves. And that is not so easy, as the last decade has shown.