For decades, Europe's south-eastern corner, which goes by the name of the Balkans, remained the continent's blighted region. Its nations were forgotten by a Europe which raced ahead in economic and social terms, preferring not to think too much about that area, which always seemed too difficult to understand, and too expensive to fix.

No longer, however. Recently, the United States-led Nato went to great lengths and took considerable effort to include Montenegro, a Balkan nation of merely half a million people and an economy 50 times smaller than that of Singapore.