I haven’t been there in 15 years, granted, but even back then they had all the markers of what you expect from a developed society (Mexican restaurants, cocktail bars, giant Bill Clinton statutes, etc). I think I probably agree with you that NATO intervention was ill-considered - while still necessary in Bosnia - but from the perspective of the Albanian Kosovars, independence has largely been a huge success. I don’t think there was any future in which Kosovo remained happily a part of Serbia.

Plus, it’s not even like Kosovo, with its 1.6m population, is egregiously small for the region. Macedonia is slightly larger with 1.8m people and Monetengro only has around 600k.