This was an attitude hardly calculated to inspire confidence in an ally. French generals, increasingly regarding a prompt and massive attack from the east as the Third Republic’s only salvation against superior German numbers, responded by encouraging an increased orientation of tsarist strategy directly against Germany and Austria, with the implied threat of financial and diplomatic sanctions in case of refusal. At the same time, from a Russian perspective, the war ministry and the general staff of a great power could not indefinitely proclaim the impotence of their armed forces to their closest ally. The Franco-Russian alliance incorporated significant elements of interdependence, but was not quite a relationship of equals. The growing Russian acceptance of a necessity for putting early pressure on Germany was a useful way of reassuring the French, while at the same time meeting Russian perceptions of the current strategic situation.33
Even minimal compliance with French wishes forced Russia’s Balkan and Caucasian frontiers to make do with leftovers. The Caucasus in particular tended to be a dumping ground for guards officers who had made Petersburg or Warsaw too hot to hold them. As a German observer put it, the Russians and the natives copied each others’ bad habits; wine, women, and debts were the order of the day. On the other hand, in the aftermath of the 1908 Young Turk Rebellion Turkey had begun a significant overhaul of her long-moribund military establishment. German training missions and German arms salesmen had long been fixtures in Constantinople. In 1910 the Germans went a step farther by selling the Turks two old battleships. The next year the Turkish government contracted for two more warships, state-of-the-art superdreadnoughts, to be built in Britain. French and American promoters were negotiating the construction of railways in Asia Minor that if completed would significantly expedite the movement of troops along the Black Sea littoral, and to the Russian frontier. Should even some of these improvements succeed Russia’s ability to exercise direct presssure on her southern neighbor would be significantly limited—so limited that good relations with the Slavic states of the Balkans seemed not desirable, but necessary from a military viewpoint.34
The destabilizing effects of these local power shifts on Europe as a whole became even plainer when, in the spring of 1911, France moved to consolidate its position in Morocco. The German government responded by forcing the issue. Domestic pressure played a role—pressure from Pan-Germans, industrialists, and assorted imperialists convinced either that Morocco represented too great an economic prize to abandon, or that it was a potential key to a future African empire. At the same time the foreign office desired to make a show of German power to a France that seemed all too confident of the strength of its alliances. Offensive diplomacy thus concealed a defensive stand. German policy did not take seriously the prospects of a conflict over North Africa. Neither the naval nor the military commands were consulted on anything more than a formal basis. At the height of the crisis the annual maneuvers, which made mobilization impossible for three weeks, were conducted as usual, and the reservists were discharged at their close.35
Some results of this policy of unsupported bluster were predictable. Britain and France drew even more closely together, congratulating each other on their solidarity in face of a threat that had proved ephemeral. Russia became correspondingly reluctant to risk becoming the odd state out in an entente. Far more serious, however, was an unexpected side effect. On December 16, 1900, France and Italy had agreed that should France extend her influence in Morocco, Italy could occupy Libya. At the time, it seemed to be one of those dead-letter, hypothetical-situation documents that clog the files of nineteenth-century foreign offices. But over the years Italy had sought and secured affirmation from Germany and Austria, her alliance partners. She had obtained Russian assent as well. Her way thus cleared, Italy went to war with the Ottoman Empire in September, 1911. The great powers, their hands tied by their own actions, stood by.36
This collective inaction during an overt attack on Turkey was carefully noted in the Balkan capitals. Since the Bosnian Crisis, St. Petersburg had been under pressure to affirm its Slavic identity with more than words. Sazonov’s hopes of a half-million Slav bayonets forever barring the Teuton from southeast Europe combined with his personal indecisiveness to encourage an increasing number of contradictory, mutually exclusive assurances to his Balkan negotiating partners. Russia’s best and most forceful ambassador in the region, Nicholas Hartwig in Belgrade, was a committed Panslav and Austrophobe whose success in improving Serbo-Bulgarian relations made it correspondingly difficult for Sazonov to strike a balance between the Balkan states on one hand and the Dual Alliance on the other—not that Hartwig particularly cared. Ministers come and go, he was alleged to have said. Serbia should rely instead on a Russia that loved her, would always love her, and would not leave her in the lurch.37
By 1912 the Balkan tail was beginning to wag the Russian and European dogs. The network of alliances constituting the Balkan League, concluded between March and October, were negotiated independently of Russian ambassadors and the Russian foreign office. To Sazonov’s anxious inquiry whether things were still as they had been in 1910 at Potsdam, Bethmann replied that Germany was as little interested as ever in encouraging a forward policy in the Balkans from any quarter. But when the Balkan League went to war with Turkey on October 17, Russia faced a choice that was no choice at all.38
As states in whose welfare she had expressed constant interest won victory after victory, Russia could not very well deny her approval. Yet from the war’s first days Serbia’s determination to secure an Adriatic outlet clashed with Austria’s fear that a Serbian port might soon become a Russian one, and with Austria’s determination to maintain her Balkan position in the face of the League’s unexpected ascendancy. During a visit to Berlin a few days before the war’s outbreak, Sazonov had suggested that if Austria were only patient she might eventually act as the powers’ executor in limiting Serbian gains in the peninsula.39 But in October, 1912, the Russian general staff ordered a practice call-up of reserves in Russian Poland. On November 10 the war ministry authorized the temporary retention with the colors of 400,000 men whose terms of active service were expiring. Since the entire Austro-Hungarian army had no more than 350,000 men under arms on a normal peace footing, the gesture could hardly be ignored in Vienna. Reinforcements were dispatched to the major eastern garrisons: Cracow, Lemberg, Przemsyl. The formations stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia were also put on a full war footing.40
Russia’s decisions contrasted sharply with Germany’s behavior during the Agadir crisis the previous year. Yet the entire process initially had a certain air of unreality as far as Germany was concerned. Reservist call-ups were common practice for all of Europe’s conscript armies. This one was accompanied by reports of discontent and indiscipline amounting to mutiny in some cases—reservists allegedly assaulting officers and declaring that in case of a war they would know whom to shoot first.41 When the Austrian chief of staff made a quick trip to Berlin to consult his colleague, it was without the knowledge of the German government, which instructed its ambassador in Vienna to make it clear that post facto reports of such conferences were highly inappropriate.42 In mid-November Pourtalès could still quote the Austrian military attaché in St. Petersburg as believing that Russia was not planning a mobilization. A “high general staff officer” expressed his preference for dealing with Austria in two years, but this was familiar rhetoric. The Austrians were even wondering whether they were not ahead of Russia in preparations for an eventual war. Then on November 22, Tsar Nicholas approved the ordering of mobilization in the military districts of Kiev, Odessa, and Warsaw.43