EUROPEAN DIARY: From the medieval tower of Ljubljana Castle, now home to a virtual museum, you can see the entire Slovenian capital nestling quietly in a leafy valley.
It is a picture of prosperity and contentment, although the city is eerily silent on this Sunday afternoon as all good Slovenes go home to their families for lunch.
As Bosnia this week remembered the 10th anniversary of Slobodan Milosevic's war against it, Slovenes were reminded that they have been the most fortunate of the former Yugoslav nations. After just a week of fighting with Belgrade in 1991, this tiny state of two million people settled quickly into political stability and set out on a path towards economic success.
Already more prosperous than Greece and Portugal, Slovenia is the leading candidate to join the European Union in 2004. With its elegant restaurants, smart shops and fashionably dressed citizens, Ljubljana could be a city in Austria or Italy but it has no equivalent in neighbouring Croatia or even in Hungary.
Slovenes are no longer in awe of the EU but they are broadly in favour of membership and a referendum on joining should be approved without difficulty. But Mr Janez Drnovsek's centre-left government is feeling jittery about its other big foreign policy ambition - taking Slovenia into NATO.
Mr Drnovsek hopes that NATO will invite Slovenia to join - along with more than half-a-dozen other central and eastern European states - when the organisation meets in Prague in November. But as the deadline approaches, Slovenes are beginning to question whether joining the alliance is necessary, worthwhile and worth the money it will cost.
The foreign minister, Mr Dimitrij Rupel, has accused the Slovene news media of orchestrating a campaign against NATO membership. And government officials fear that, if popular opposition to membership appears too great, NATO might have second thoughts about inviting Slovenia to join.
The government argues that joining NATO will provide a security guarantee and will confirm Slovenia's place among the democratic states of western Europe. It also claims that rejecting NATO would be interpreted in Washington as a rejection of the US and would damage relations with the world's only superpower.
Opponents of NATO membership point to the cost of joining - Slovenia's defence spending would have to increase from its present level of 1.5 per cent of GDP to 2 per cent. And they fear that Slovene soldiers could be obliged to take part in military operations in such places as Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some Slovenes are looking to Ireland as an example of a small country that has been a successful member of the EU without joining NATO. And Ireland's success in attracting US investment appears to undermine the argument that NATO membership is a prerequisite for good relations with Washington.
Other opponents of Slovenia joining NATO suggest that the alliance is increasingly irrelevant, pointing to its role as a sideline cheerleader since September 11th last year. They believe that the EU's emerging security identity represents the future of European defence and they point out that small states play a greater decision-making role within the EU structure than in NATO.
The EU's Rapid Reaction Force is still at an early stage of development and the EU will depend on NATO military assets for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, some Slovene defence analysts believe that joining NATO is the only way to reform their hopelessly inefficient army, to abolish conscription and create a fully professional force.
"Even if it means spending more on defence, at least we'll get something for the money we're spending. At the moment, we're throwing money away on a completely useless, wasteful organisation," one analyst said.
Despite the government's misgivings, Slovenia's lively media is determined to have a full debate about the issues involved in NATO membership. The government acknowledges that any decision about joining would have to be put to voters in a referendum.
