Thus The Guardian today. “Norway has been named the most prosperous country in the world for the sixth year in a row,” elaborates the newspaper, “and European countries dominate the top thirty of the annual prosperity index.” The think-tank behind it is the Legatum Institute from Britain, and it covers one-hundred and forty-two countries. The index rates them on how well they perform in areas such as economics, health, education, and freedom. America is placed tenth, and the main problem there is personal freedom. At sixty-eighth place, Russia is doing pretty badly. As I usually do, though, I focused on the Balkan countries, few of which appear to have anything to do with Europe. Slovenia is topmost in the twenty-fourth place. Bulgaria is forty-eighth, Croatia fiftieth, Greece fifty-ninth, Romania sixtieth, Montenegro sixty-fifth, Macedonia sixty-ninth, Serbia seventy-seventh, Albania eighty-forth, and Bosnia and Herzegovina is ninety-first. For some reason, Kosovo is not listed. The very last place in the ranking is taken by the Central African Republic. But the spread of the Balkan countries is quite stunning. Turned upside down, the prosperity index provides a good proxy for the risk of war either in the country itself or between the country and one or more of its neighbors on the peninsula. Of course, the article skips such unhappy prospects. Prosperity is a happy subject, after all.