From other perspectives, however, the distinction seemed irrelevant because Russia was in no position to give a negative answer. Her ministers agreed unanimously to accept the annexation—not least because Izvolsky’s nerve broke and he insisted to all and sundry that failure to comply meant immediate and hopeless war. But “[i]n two, three, or four years,” Stolypin declared privately, Russia “would be able to speak in European affairs with a very different voice from what was now the case.”12
Russian grievances at having her hand thus forced were assiduously nurtured by France and Britain. Neither power, however, was ready to take concrete risks to support Russian aggrandizement in the Middle East. In the context of the intensifying naval race with Germany, the British foreign office in particular wanted a general settlement taking reasonable account of intensifying Balkan nationalisms.13 This last was a significant point. Nationalism in the Balkan Peninsula was by now anything but an imported doctrine. It reflected the emergence of both strong popular elements and correspondingly strong local elites, intellectual and bureaucratic, able and willing to act independently in their own perceived interests, and requiring careful handling by any would-be ally or patron.14 In this context Bülow could and did reasonably claim that he had done Russia a favor, extracting her from an impasse that was as dangerous as it was embarrassing.
The German foreign office spent the rest of 1909 working to diminish the impression of compulsion left by the March note. Six months after the crisis Izvolsky proclaimed Russo-German relations as back to normal. By February, 1910, Pourtalès was describing a renewed stress in conversations on Russia’s “old traditional friendship” with Germany, but warned his government not to be deceived. The ambassador described recent Russian behavior as explainable only by the Slavic qualities of “sentimentality, passion, superficiality and illogic,” which excluded any sober judgment of realities. The press continued to present the German démarche as a series of peremptory threats, and spoke of a “coup de main” and a “diplomatic Tsushima.” Hintze too believed that whatever might be her temporary military weaknesses, Russia had psychological preparations for a war well under way. Even men like former war minister Alexi Kuropatkin, who described Russia as already large enough, needing rest after the revolutions of 1905, and wrong in her policies of reconciliation with Britain, had a way of punctuating their conversations with demands for the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The best way of countering this attitude, Hintze argued, was to make Germany seem an enemy too formidable to tackle, either alone or in company with allies. Above all, Russia must fear Germany more than Britain.15
As if to confirm Hintze’s position, the Russian army departed from precedent in using real states as “enemies” in its 1910 maneuvers. That year’s mock war was declared against Germany and Sweden. More was involved here than a simple lack of tact. The elder Moltke had always argued that even a great power could prepare and organize for no more than one war. For Russia, that increasingly seemed to be a war with Germany and Austria. The continued strength of Slavic rhetoric in Russian policy making owed much to a sense that Teutonic dismissal of lesser Balkan breeds without the law implied denial of Russia’s place among the truly civilized races. Though, Hintze argued, German policy makers might see no possible gains from a victory over Russia, war with Germany would be not only acceptable but popular in the tsar’s empire.16
What would war with Russia mean in military terms for Germany? Above all it entailed improving her Austrian connection. Helmuth von Moltke “the Younger,” nephew of the victor of 1866 and 1870, had succeeded Schlieffen as chief of the German general staff in 1906. He regarded the Austrian army as strong, its morale sound. But he was disturbed by the primary orientation of Austria’s current strategic plans against Italy and the Balkans rather than Russia. Prudence might temporarily suggest a cautious Russian foreign policy. Nevertheless the state of the Russian army by no means compelled inactivity, particularly should Russia’s entente partners join her in attacking the Central Powers. This seemed by far the most likely contingency, and by no means a pleasant one for a German army feeling itself so overcommitted it could not even provide troops to occupy Denmark should strategic or political decisions make it necessary.17
Even more than the army, the German navy at this period insisted on the necessity of worst-case planning. Its attitude was reinforced by its undeniable inferiority to its designated major opponent, the Royal Navy. Fleet spokesmen did not shrink from reminding the kaiser himself that the principle of seeking decisive battle at the first favorable opportunity must not become an endorsement of suicide against a stronger enemy. It might be desirable if continental states agreed to fight their wars only on land, leaving their fleets in reserve to face the enemy that threatened them all, Perfidious Albion! But since this was a Utopian proposal the navy instead offered in March, 1909, a plan for cooperation with the army in the context of a general war. Its commitments were minimal, and oriented to the British threat. In the eastern theater German cruisers could make appearances in front of Russian ports. They could disrupt attempts to move troops and supplies by sea. They could stage mock landings to pin down Russian formations that would otherwise be available for an invasion of Germany. But even something as systematic as a blockade of the Russian coast was impossible in view of German naval weakness combined with the fact that many ships engaging in the Baltic trade possessed, or could easily obtain, neutral papers.18
The navy did not stand alone in its pessimism. Even more than Schlieffen, Moltke was dubious about prospects of a major German offensive in the east. An increasing weight of intelligence information indicated that faced with such a deployment, Russian war plans provided for withdrawal from the exposed frontier. Even should the Russians prove obliging enough to stand and fight on the border, Moltke regarded a major German offensive against the swampy bottomlands and fortified crossings of the Niemen and Narew Rivers as folly. The Russians could easily compensate for any local defeat by continuing to withdraw eastward while building up their own forces for counterattack. Nor was Moltke’s reasoning based entirely on anxious readings of Caulaincourt. In 1904–05 the Russian army had blundered from disaster to disaster in Manchuria. But, Antaeuslike, it grew stronger with defeat. In terms of numbers and quality the Russians had arguably been more dangerous enemies after Mukden than before the Battle of the Yalu, particularly in the context of Japanese exhaustion. Foreign observers at the front, moreover, generally interpreted Russian deficiencies in terms of tactics, doctrine, and training—flaws that could be remedied with effort, as opposed to being inherent in the tsarist system.