A US deadline for Belgrade to co-operate with the United Nations war crimes tribunal or face a possible aid cut-off pushed divided Serbian leaders towards the high-risk arrest of Mr Slobodan Milosevic.
Western governments breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday after the former dictator surrendered to police commandos following a 36-hour standoff at his suburban home, with exchanges of gunfire which could have ended in a bloodbath.
But self-congratulation in Western capitals at seeing behind bars at last the man blamed for a decade of Balkan wars - albeit on domestic charges for now - may be tempered by a realisation that it almost went horribly wrong.
If Mr Milosevic had chosen, as he had threatened, to die rather than be taken alive, his demise could have given birth to a new Serbian martyrdom legend, fuelling resentment for decades.
As it is, many Serbs may feel their new democratic leaders acted not so much to bring a tyrant to deserved justice as to ward off financial blackmail by the United States against an economically-shattered state.
The question now is whether Western governments will step up pressure for Mr Milosevic to be handed over swiftly to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, or whether they will allow Serbia to try him first for alleged abuses of power, corruption and election-rigging.
The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Ms Carla del Ponte, pressed yesterday for Mr Milosevic's quick transfer.
Some Balkan analysts question whether Western leaders are really keen to see Mr Milosevic in an international court at all.
Misha Glenny, a writer and historian on the region, told BBC Radio he was "not entirely convinced" that the US and other Western powers were really interested in seeing a man with whom they dealt for a decade until the 1999 Kosovo war using The Hague as a platform to try to embarrass them.
Some European governments had sensed danger in pressing Belgrade too soon to hand over Mr Milosevic, and had urged Washington privately or in public to go easy.
The French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, appealed to the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, last week not to risk destabilising Yugoslavia's fragile new democracy, just as it was trying to sweep away peacefully the remnants of Mr Milosevic's system.
But Mr Powell's hands were tied by Congress which, as so often, had used the blunt instrument of unilateral sanctions and US voting power in international financial institutions to try to force Belgrade's hand.
Even after the New York Times suggested on Thursday that Mr Powell would certify that Belgrade was doing enough to co-operate with the UN tribunal, the State Department continued to play tough in public.
The Yugoslav ambassador to the US had told Congress earlier in March that Mr Milosevic would be arrested by the end of the month.
Many analysts argue that Serbia will not be able to build a healthy European democracy until it comes to terms with the abuses committed by Serbs in a decade of wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Others contend that if outside powers force the Serbs to account for the past while their country is still economically shattered and facing further break-up because of Montenegro's and Kosovo's drive for independence, they could aggravate a deep-seated persecution complex.
They argue that it would be better to allow Serbia's democratic leaders to proceed at their own pace rather than be pushed into risky and controversial actions by outside pressure.