Stealing Horses to Great Applause, page 23
Some scholars have emphasised the sharp difference between the program Austria envisioned on June 24 and the one she chose after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The former called for a diplomatic-political campaign directed at Romania, designed to restore Austria’s position in the Balkans over the long term, involving no hint of the use of force and no overt challenge to any other great power. The latter envisioned an immediate punitive war to eliminate Serbia as a political factor, thus directly challenging Russia and entailing the high risk of a general war.27 Without denying that there were differences, I prefer to emphasize the essential continuity and logical connection between these two phases of the planned Austro-German offensive, and to contend that the assassination did not basically change Austrian strategy, but only rendered explicit and brought more quickly into play what was implicit in the earlier plan. First of all, the decision either to force Romania to become a publicly declared ally of Austria or, failing this, to consider her an enemy and to prepare for possible hostilities against her represents for Austria an admission of defeat, a declaration of diplomatic bankruptcy, just as much as the later ultimatum to Serbia did. For it constituted a tacit admission that without Romanian support or some adequate substitution for it, Austria was isolated in the Balkans, unable to play a great-power role there or to defend her vital interests. The need therefore somehow, by whatever means necessary, to regain a lost position of strength was as clear in the first plan as in the second.
The second and more conclusive point, however, is that the June 24 diplomatic offensive had no chance of success, as Austrian appraisals of the situation made clear. Romania could no longer be brought back into the Austro-German camp either by lures or threats. All the Austrian representatives had reported that anti-Austrian sentiment in the government, almost all parties, the army, and the public had gone too deep for this. What Austria proposed to offer Romania, a guarantee of her frontiers, Romania already effectively enjoyed through the support of France, Russia, Serbia, and Greece, and the sympathy of Germany and Great Britain. Even Bulgaria cared far less for the Dodrudja than for Macedonia. As for Austria’s promise to Romania to try once more for better relations with Serbia, not only was nothing likely to come of this, but also everyone knew, including the Austrians, that what Austria and Romania meant by good Austro-Serbian relations were two different things, and that what Serbia meant was yet another. Austria meant that she would extend a benevolent paternalist protection to a Serbia that resolved to live inoffensively under her protection. Romania meant that Austria must accept the independent nationalist Serbia Romania needed to keep Bulgaria in check. Serbia meant a period of normal relations and profitable trading during which Serbia would consolidate her gains and wait for the weakening and collapse of the Monarchy.
Thus the German powers had no effective lures to use with Romania; they equally had no efficacious threats. Treating Romania as an enemy and fortifying the Transylvanian frontier would only have driven her into Russia’s and France’s arms and promoted Romanian irredentism. As for an Austro-Bulgarian-Turkish alliance, not only was it doubtful that this could be achieved, but the Austrians, especially Berchtold, saw clearly that a weak, exhausted, unreliable Bulgaria and an equally decadent and unreliable Turkey provided no adequate substitute for Romania. Obviously, moreover, the attempt at such an alliance would merely have promoted the open anti-Austrian Balkan alliance headed by Romania which Austria most feared, leaving her position worse than before.
In short, the Austrian plan of June 24, even though it did not explicitly envision a resort to violence in order to regain a lost position of strength, paved the way for it and logically required it. Had the assassination not intervened, and had the Austro-German political offensive been tried, its failure would have quickly compelled the Central Powers to seek the sort of ground for preventive war that the assassination gave them.
If all this is accepted, it supports the contention that Romania’s defection from Austria and Germany was an important element in the political confrontation just before the beginning of World War I. It was not that Romania had come by 1914 to be as grave a threat to Austria as Serbia was, so that it was only a question of which enemy to strike first. The Serbian threat was clearly paramount for Austria—Serbian enmity more virulent, the South Slav question more acute, Serbian irredentism more dangerous, Serbian propaganda and subversion more persistent. The point is rather that the loss of Romania at once increased the danger from Serbia (the chief gravamen of Austria against Romania was that she had formed a de facto alliance with Serbia) and destroyed Austria’s ability to continue to live with the Serb problem and somehow to manage it. Whatever one thinks of Austrian policy, she had been living with the Serbian problem for over sixty years, had repeatedly been tempted to solve it by violence, and had always drawn back from the brink. As early as the Crimean War Austrian generals were advocating the same “solutions”—either absorbing Serbia, destroying her, or reducing her to impotence—which Conrad and others urged from 1908 on. It was the loss of Romania, more than the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, which made the decisive difference for Austria between further postponement, living with the Serbian challenge and hoping somehow to outlive it, and the determination to settle the problem once and for all, at all costs.
Before asking whether anything could have been done to stop Austria from thus committing suicide out of fear of death, one needs to review another side to Romania’s role in great-power diplomacy—the attitude and actions of the Entente powers. The Austrian thesis, of course, was that bribes, plotting, and pressure from Russia and France had produced Romania’s defection, and would ultimately bring her into a Russian-led Balkan League. How much truth was there to this contention?
Not a great deal. Of course Russian policy was as anti-Austrian at Bucharest as elsewhere, and the Russians had long been aware of the advantages that would accrue from luring Romania away from the Dual Alliance. Yet until the second Balkan War, Russia’s main aim was to preserve and control the Balkan League, in particular her Slav brothers in Bulgaria and Serbia. Her chief concern with Romania was to prevent her, as a supposed tool of Austro-German diplomacy, from breaking up the League and promoting a Bulgar-Serb war. This helps explain the negative attitude taken by Russia and her partners in the Triple Entente to most of Romania’s demands for compensation at Bulgaria’s expense. Only when the Tsar’s arbitration failed to prevent a Bulgarian-Serbian war in June 1913 did Russian policy come to concentrate on producing a Romanian break with Austria, so as to be able to use Romania to control Bulgaria and protect Serbia.28 With the success of this policy manifest after the Peace of Bucharest, Russia made every effort to woo and flatter Romania, to detach her still further from Austria, to try to get from her a promise of neutrality in case of an Austro-Russian war, and to pave the way for a full Balkan alliance under Romanian leadership and Russian patronage.29 Yet one should really not speak of a triumph of Russian diplomacy in Romania. Russia had not produced the Austro-Romanian break, only profited from a situation not of her making. Moreover, she had by no means achieved her final goal by July 1914. While Romania was willing to cooperate with Serbia and Greece to preserve the status quo and curb Bulgaria, she was not ready to break openly with the Dual Alliance (Germany still had considerable influence, if Austria did not) and still less ready to head a Russian-sponsored Balkan League. The Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov knew of the continued existence of the secret treaty with Austria, and though he became reasonably sure it was a dead letter, he could not be absolutely certain. Moreover, Romania’s realignment created problems as well as opportunities for Russia. Romania as well as Serbia and Greece opposed the concessions to Bulgaria which some Russians urged in order to bring Bulgaria back into the Russian fold. Russia’s efforts to reconcile Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania proved as ineffective as Austria’s in the other direction. An independent Romania, moreover, would hardly prove a docile instrument for solving the Straits Question in Russia’s interests. Russia could congratulate herself on Austria’s defeat and discomfiture, and claim rightly that what she had gained in Romania was more important than what she had lost in Bulgaria; but the fact remained that Austria’s defeat in 1912–14 did not necessarily represent Russian’s victory. Austria had lost the ability to play a great-power role in the Balkans and to defend her interests there by 1914; but Russia had not gained the ability to order events her way (the Balkan Wars had repeatedly proved this) and she was not likely to achieve it.30
Much the same verdict applies to France. That is, the French in 1913–14 did all they could to expand and exploit Romania’s break with Austria and to turn it to their purposes, but they were not responsible in any major way for producing it, nor were they able to achieve all they wanted out of it. The French minister at Bucharest, Blondel, had by his own admission been working steadily since 1908 to split Romania from Austria, but for a long time he had received little encouragement from his government, and numerous admonitions to prudence. Up to mid-1912, in fact, France generally acted more to restrain Russia in the Balkans than to push her forward. Though the Quai d’Orsay supported Russia in the Bosnian Crisis for the sake of the alliance, privately French statesmen were extremely critical of Izvolski’s blunders, and the way in which they threatened to drag France into a general war for Russian interests and prestige. Though ready to welcome and encourage the drawing away of Bulgaria and Romania from Austria toward Russia,31 France was not willing to encourage Russia in any adventures.
An important change came in mid-1912. The Premier, Poincaré, had already made clear that he no longer saw any use in preserving a special relationship with Austria as a means to restrain both Germany and Russia.32 Now he learned about the Balkan alliance system that Russia had helped to forge. Poincaré understood perfectly the import and anti-Austrian point of the whole arrangement, and the danger to European peace it represented. He also learned from his general staff, however, that Austria was very unlikely to react to it in a belligerent way, and that in case of war the prospects for the Entente were good. Hence he decided to support Russia in her Balkan policy for the sake of the alliance, come what may. From this time forward France represented a goad rather than a curb in Russia’s Balkan plans. This was part of Poincaré’s desire, for both domestic and foreign policy purposes, to display the solidarity and strength of the Triple Entente on every possible occasion.33
Initially this change in French policy meant no major change in her attitude toward Romania. In the interval between the Balkan Wars, Poincaré, like almost everyone, regarded Romania as a potential weapon in Austria’s hands, which therefore had to be neutralized.34 Up to the eve of the second Balkan War Blondel feared that Romania, under Austrian pressure, might sell her neutrality or even cobelligerence to Bulgaria.35 But Blondel worked tirelessly to promote a Romanian mobilization and intervention against Bulgaria, despite several cautionary instructions from the Foreign Minister Pichon.36 Some French diplomats, like the brothers Cambon and even the anti-Austrian ambassador at Vienna, Dumaine, saw how provocative the Tsar’s assumption of a patronage over the whole Slav world was to Austria, and were worried about overt French support for Russia.37 Nonetheless, Blondel was doubtless working in Poincaré’s directions, if not in Pichon’s, and his policy succeeded.
After the Peace of Bucharest, virtually all the pretense of neutrality in Balkan affairs which France had hitherto maintained was dropped. Blondel’s anti-Austrian activity became more indefatigable than ever, and where Pichon had endevored to rein him in and had rejected the French ambassador at Petersburg Delcassé’s proposals for joint Russo-French military and financial aid to Romania, Pichon’s successor Doumergue openly hailed and publicized the pro-Entente trend in Romanian politics. French economic policy in Romania, hitherto one of cooperation with Germany, now turned to open competition. The French followed the Hungarian-Romanian talks intently, and reacted to their collapse with relief and delight. The chargé of the French Consulate-General at Budapest even proposed that France support the Hungarian opposition independence party, in order further to weaken Austria-Hungary and the Dual Alliance. Yet in all this, France was exploiting Romania’s switch in policy rather than causing it. At times even Blondel, though delighted with the whole trend of events and convinced that it was irreversible, felt that Russia was unwise to force the peace and to try to exercise a tutelage over Romania, instead of simply taking advantage of her new independence and commanding position.38
Thus the Austrian charges about a Russo-French policy of encirclement were justified, as were her fears of its eventual success—but her belief that her predicament was due to Entente machinations was not.
As for the third member of the Triple Entente, Great Britain, not even the Austrians could consider her responsible in any causal sense for Austria’s defeat in the Balkans. Britain, in fact, was the one member of the opposing camp with whom Austria by 1914 still hoped to keep on good terms; Austrian diplomats frequently referred to the traditional friendship between the two nations and praised the loyalty and fair play of Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey in his mediation efforts during the Balkan Wars.39 Britain’s importance in regard to Romania lay not in any active role she played in the Balkans, for she had none. It lay rather in the special position she held within the Triple Entente, which, despite much pressure from France and Russia and considerable sentiment within the Foreign Office, she refused to turn into an alliance, and within the European balance, where Britain still retained far more than other great powers a free hand and ability for maneuver.
On Romania and the Balkans, one must distinguish between British policy and British opinions and reactions. British policy was simple. She would not become involved in any purely Balkan questions (as opposed to questions touching the Straits, Asiatic Turkey, and the Mediterranean, where her interests were important). Where she could not help becoming involved diplomatically in Balkan crises, her aims were twofold: to preserve the present alignment of powers (which meant keeping Russia at least reasonably happy), and try to keep Balkan conflicts from escalating. In practice, this made British mediation in Balkan disputes moderately anti-Austrian; though the British by and large had no real animus against Austria, she turned out regularly to be expected to pay the price for keeping Russia happy and preventing disputes from developing into general war. On the other hand, British policy in the Balkans was not anti-German; German economic and political penetration there was not resented as it was in Persia or Asiatic Turkey. In fact, the British government had so little concern for Balkan developments for their own sake that British comments on these events have almost the value of those of a neutral observer.
In the main, the British saw what others did, and reacted to it in similar, if much more detached, fashion. Until early 1913 they viewed Romania as safely in the Austrian camp and hoped that Romania’s influence would help restrain Austria from forceful intervention. They also expected that Austria and Russia would both be able to control their respective satellites and bring about a peaceful Romanian-Bulgarian settlement in the spring of 1913.40 They quickly recognized the switch in Romania’s position in mid-1913 and its disastrous results for Austria; insofar as they were interested in this development at all, they praised Romania’s new role as an independent power holding the balance and helping to preserve peace. But what emerged from the struggle between Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia was intrinsically unimportant in British eyes compared to the maintenance of Turkish rule in Asia; this might affect the loyalty of the Muslim population in India.41
The British took the Russo-Austrian struggle over the Balkans somewhat more seriously than they did inter-Balkan rivalries. On this question a good many British agents were openly anti-Austrian in sentiment, and either pro-Russian or in favor of the Balkan peoples against the Monarchy (a lingering echo, perhaps, of the Gladstonian tradition). Buchanan at Petersburg and Bax-Ironside at Sofia certainly encouraged Russian efforts to create a Balkan League against Austria, and may have made some small contribution to its realization in 1912 and to Russian efforts to re-establish it in 1913–14. While Ralph Paget, minister at Belgrade, was anti-Serb and Sir Francie Bertie, ambassador at Paris, was critical of the excessive Russophilia of Nicolson, no one of importance in the Foreign Office or diplomatic service, once Fairfax Cartwright had been removed from Vienna, could be called pro-Austria.42 Yet while there was undoubtedly a pro-Russian and anti-Austrian bias in the British view of the Russo-Austrian struggle over the Balkans, the British outlook was determined less by sympathies either for Russia or for the Balkan peoples (the Serbs were far from popular at London) than by the acceptance of what the British considered undeniable realities. The first of these realities was that for the sake of peace the present alignment of the great powers had to be maintained. The second was that by early 1914, if not before, Russia’s victory in the Balkan power struggle was already certain and Austria’s defeat sealed. Indeed, an early breakup of the Monarchy was very likely. It would obviously be utterly foolish for Britain to bet on a horse that had already lost, or to urge anyone else to do so.43 The third reality was that it was very useful to Britain that Russia occupy herself with consolidating her gains in the Balkans, for this would distract her from forward moves in Asia.44 The final, and most important, reality was that while there was a danger of a violent reaction by Austria and Germany to Austria’s defeat in the Balkans and her threatened demise,45 there was nothing at all Britain could do to stave off this violent Austro-German reaction other than to remain militarily prepared herself, to maintain her ententes, to urge prudence and moderation on all sides, and to encourage Germany to restrain her ally. Thus Britain, convinced of the impossibility and undesirability of any British intervention to control developments in the Balkans, tended even more than other powers, when she saw what was coming, deliberately to avert her eyes.
