Both powers were concerned to reassure Germany that their improved relationship was not aimed at her. In his annual reports for 1906 and 1907 Ambassador Sir Arthur Nicolson was impressed by the “intimate and cordial” relations between Russia and Germany’s courts and governments—relations he ascribed both to the unusual skill with which Germany managed her Russian affairs, and by the absence of direct points of friction between the empires. In the European field, he declared, “there is a desire on the part of the Russian Government to live on the best possible terms with Germany.”72 Nevertheless, no interpretation of the entente as a “warning,” a structure aimed at containing a provocative and insatiable German diplomacy, can deny the objective reality of encirclement. Even Fritz Fischer concedes that Germany after 1907 “lived permanently under the threat of a war on two fronts.” The continued failure to negotiate a naval limitation treaty with Britain set the seal on Germany’s isolation. The Bosnian Crisis of 1908 demonstrated its consequences.73
2
The Center Fails to Hold
I
Russo-Austrian cooperation in the Balkans was always more a matter of interest than principle. When Count Alois Aehrenthal became foreign minister of Austria-Hungary in 1906, he was concerned with what he considered the empire’s negative approach to foreign policy. Austria, Aehrenthal argued, must begin to act instead of reacting—not least to maintain its credibility with her German ally and her Russian collaborator. Aehrenthal even entertained hopes of reviving the Three Emperors’ League, this time with Austria as its pivot. His dreams, however, were fettered by Austria’s economic and military weaknesses. Lacking the resources to back an overt forward policy, Aehrenthal sought instead an opportunity to achieve a triumph through negotiations. The most likely field for such negotiations appeared to involve confronting the Balkan problem, specifically, the increasingly hostile attitude of Serbia. The newly established Russophilic dynasty in Serbia was combining with increasingly vocal Slavic movements in Macedonia and Austria-Hungary itself to generate increasing concern for the Habsburg Empire’s viability.
Russia could not ignore the fate of what had become the principal Slav state, and certainly the noisiest one, in the Balkans. Neoslavism, with its emphasis on creating a league of independent Slavic states under Russian protection, was at the peak of its short-lived influence in Russian liberal circles. Conservatives and patriots were hostile by reflex to anything that might extend Habsburg influence in southeast Europe. Realists were influenced by the fact that Russia’s western and southern frontiers were overwhelmingly populated by non-Russians whose disaffection had been made all too plain in the revolts of 1905. From Finland to the Caucasus, this unstable border correspondingly encouraged the formation of buffer zones and client relationships wherever possible. And the tsar’s new foreign minister, Baron A. P. Izvolsky, also appointed in 1906, was just the man to bring the kettle to a boil.
Izvolsky was a gambler. From his first days in office he favored a policy of diagonals: keeping Russia balanced between the German-Austrian and the Anglo-French ententes. He regarded neither partnership as inherently friendly to Russia’s interests, and was correspondingly suspected of insincerity, if not duplicity, by everyone else. It was scarcely surprising that Izvolsky found attractive the prospects of a knight’s move in the Balkans. It might put relations with Austria on a firmer, more positive basis. It could fix Izvolsky’s place in history. And it would show the rest of Europe that Russia was not to be despised. It was Izvolsky who on July 2, 1908, suggested to Aehmenthal an exchange of favors. Russia would support Austria’s direct annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, provinces she had ruled de facto since 1879. Austria would support Russia’s claim to move her warships freely through the Dardanelles. This right, enjoyed by no other nation, would be useful in itself and was a potential stepping stone to further pressures on the Ottoman Empire. Executed over Serbia’s head, the agreement would also demonstrate the will of the great powers most directly involved in the Balkans to control that situation themselves, and not resign it to secondary actprs.
The negotiations incorporated an essential imbalance: territory against a promise, provinces against words. Aehrenthal was able to make the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina a fait accompli, while Izvolsky roamed the chanceries of Europe, vainly seeking international consent to a Russian move that had been unacceptable since before the Crimean War. Nor did he find support at home. From left to right, Russian public opinion interpreted the Bosnian annexation as a disaster. Izvolsky’s aim of acquiring free passage through the straits by diplomacy was ridiculed in the newly created Duma by deputies of all political stripes indignant over the apparent betrayal of the racial cause involved in abandoning two Slavic-inhabited provinces to Teuton rule. Professors, editors, and generals seethed with indignation. Students in Moscow and St. Petersburg took to the streets in protest—a shock to authorities used to seeing them on the other side. Premier P. A. Stolypin, the man on whose shoulders rested the entire fragile framework of domestic reforms that was tsarism’s response to the disasters of 1905, threatened openly to resign unless Nicholas denounced Izvolsky’s bargain. To make matters worse, Serbia denounced the agreement, spoke openly of war unless somehow compensated for the annexation, and turned to Russia demanding support for this policy.
Much of the domestic criticism of Izvolsky reflected the Aesopian politics characteristic of Russia long after 1917, with parties and pressure groups using questions of foreign policy as lead-ins or stalking horses for the domestic issues that were their real concerns. Nevertheless, particularly in its weakened state, the autocracy could not afford to ignore entirely the legitimations conferred by public opinion. On the other hand, Russia in the aftermath of her defeat by Japan was militarily in no shape to confront anyone—even Austria. Faced with paying lost bets from an empty pocket, the best Izvolsky could do was to try to placate the Serbs on one hand while on the other demanding a European conference to discuss the entire issue.1
Then Germany moved into the driver’s seat. The eruption of the long-quiet Balkans was anything but welcome in the context of her increasing economic and political involvement in southeastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Bismarck had been able to present himself as a disinterested mediator with at least some credibility. Wilhelmian Weltpolitik had led to an increasing suspicion of German intentions in the Near East by Austria as well as Russia. Germany was developing a different set of friends and enemies, encouraging an Italian connection Austria found increasingly unpalatable, fostering an arms race that Austria could not sustain, and competing with Austria for economic influence in the Near East. In rejecting Izvolsky’s call for a conference, Aehrenthal was simultaneously challenging the German government’s commitment to its Austrian alliance.2
From Austria’s perspective, the results were positive—almost too positive. Fatalism, an acceptance of what Wolfgang Mommsen calls the topos of inevitable war, was an increasingly important rhetorical flourish among German policymakers. Yet it was less a faith than an attitude, a mixture of Weltschmerz and fin de siècle posturing. It might be fashionable in diaries and drawing rooms. It might be given a retrospective edge through postwar hindsight. But despair hardly dominated the working days of men who remained too completely the children of an age of progress to wait for disaster. Instead they did their best to avert the worst.3