Since 1912, Austria’s Serbian policy had been steadily militarized—and not merely, as Samuel Williamson suggests, because mailed-fist diplomacy worked on specific occasions.47 The Habsburg Empire was increasingly perceived, by its small neighbors and its own generals alike, as unable to assert itself militarily in the Balkan Peninsula without a significant effort. In April, 1914, the ambassador to Bucharest told his German colleague that in case of a European war, twelve of Austria’s sixteen corps would be pinned in the Balkans to counter the combined armies of Rumania and Serbia. Four only would remain to stand by the side of the Second Reich.48 These figures, though exaggerated, nevertheless reflected the Balkan states’ development into formidable enemies on their home ground, able and willing to mobilize armies a quarter-million strong and larger in pursuit of their national interests. They were correspondingly unlikely to modify or abandon those interests for the sake of words alone.49
From an Austrian perspective Serbia in particular seemed responsive to nothing but force. Whatever the long-term limits to her economic development, in recent decades Serbia’s rate of growth had been close to Europe’s average. She no longer depended on Austrian credit or Austrian trading connections.50 Economic sanctions had proved futile in the Pig War of 1906–09. Economic concessions in the commercial treaty of 1909 had brought no better result. Repeated pledges from Belgrade to end subversive propaganda had been shown to be so many scraps of paper. Great-power diplomacy as advocated by the Germans since 1912 appeared an even deader end. What remained to discuss with an adversary whose ultimate goal was nothing less than the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire itself? In November, 1913, Bechtold had moodily expressed belief that the solution to the Serbian problem would either leave only remnants of the present Serbian state or would shake Austria to its foundations. Eight months later it represented no obvious surrender to militarism to decide that Austria’s hawks were being proved right by the course of events, that it was the conciliators, the peace advocates, the internationalists, who inhabited the airy empire of dreams.51
Austria’s relative delay in acting against Serbia reflected neither domestic discords nor dependance on German behavior. It was rather a product of calculation based on experience. Had the Dual Monarchy moved promptly in the aftermath of the assassination, demanding redress, moving troops to the frontier, occupying Belgrade, would not an outraged chorus have been raised against trigger-happy Habsburgs endangering the common good by overreacting to what was, after all, an isolated incident whose ultiimate responsibility was uncertain? In England, for example, the virulently Austrophobic Wickham Steed of the London Times insisted from the beginning that all was not as it seemed, that the Habsburg warmongers might well use Sarajevo as a pretext to destroy Serbia, that perhaps the assassination itself might have been stage-managed.52
Better by far to take pains. Not until July 23 did Austria present its ultimatum to Serbia. There can be no questioning the nature of that document. Sir Edward Grey’s characterization of it as “the most formidable… I had ever seen addressed from one State to another that was independent”53 indicated the clarity of Austria’s intentions: to establish beyond any chance of misunderstanding the difference between a great state and a minor one, almost certainly through force of arms. Yet by the summer of 1914 Austria had increasingly moved away from a great-power mentality and begun adopting de facto the position and attitude of a regional power.54 If during the July Crisis Austria’s policy makers acted virtually as if Russia did not exist, this reflected a fact too uncomfortable to be considered, let alone acknowledged: Austria could no longer function autonomously in an European context. She could no longer afford the luxury of balancing local sacrifices against maintaining a general order benefitting all the larger states in the European system. The Serbian boil must be lanced. The consequences of that action were tacitly accepted as being beyond Vienna’s control. Russia’s army had become as irrelevant as Germany’s blank check.
The Serbian government was initially thrown into confusion by Austria’s ultimatum. Coming a month after the assassination, from a state that for years had seemed able to do nothing but bluster, it seemed not merely anticlimactic but unfair. Pašić was away from Belgrade when the note was delivered. With his return tentative support for accepting Austria’s demands in their entirety for the sake of peace faded. Serbia’s final reply, delivered on July 25, was a model of injured dignity and studied moderation. Generally conciliatory, it nevertheless insisted that participation of Austro-Hungarian officials in the investigation of Franz Ferdinand’s murder was incompatible with Serbia’s position as a sovereign state. Since Austria had demanded complete acceptance, her ambassador to Belgrade declared the answer unsatisfactory and left for Vienna at 6:30 p.m. the same evening.
Serbia’s hard-line attitude was a product less of confidence in Russia than of her history as an independent state. Since at least the 1840s Serbian foreign policy had been characterized by a strong irredentist streak. Whether as a Slavic Piedmont, as the nucleus of a Greater Serbia, or the matrix of a Yugoslav kingdom, Serbia’s future transcended existing boundaries. Now Serbia’s hour of destiny was upon her. The wine was drawn and must be drunk. It is no accident that the dates on the tomb of Yugoslavia’s unknown soldier are 1912 and 1918; for Serbia World War I at least began as the Third Balkan War.55
Nor did Serbia’s coming election encourage moderation. After so many years of uninterrupted nationalist enthusiasm, what politician wished to face his constituents with a record of showing the white feather to Austria’s challenge? Pushing forward into the unknown offered grave risks but corresponding opportunities.
Rejection of Austria’s demand to participate in the investigation was encouraged, finally, by a general sense of anxiety about what the foreigners might find. The tracks of the archduke’s killers did not lead directly to Belgrade. A Serbian government exhausted by war and preoccupied with absorbing its newly acquired territories had no interest in specifically provoking any kind of quarrel with Austria in the summer of 1914, to say nothing of giving such spectacular offense as murdering the heir to its throne. The exact nature and extent of Serbian involvement in the assassination vanished in the labyrinth of intrigue and counterintrigue that marked the government’s relationship with its intelligence service. There is evidence that some officials were aware before the Sarejevo murders that something involving clandestine operations in the Habsburg Empire was in the wind. Pašić himself sent a vaguely-worded caution to Vienna, which promptly got lost in the Habsburg bureaucracy. But confrontation, to say nothing of disclosure, had obvious risks. Given Serbia’s long history of conspiratorial politics, could any cabinet minister or parliamentary deputy be sure exactly what all of his colleagues were doing? Might not an excessively rigorous inquiry into the activity of one’s associates prove physically as well as politically dangerous? The patriotic secret societies had proved their ruthlessness time and time again. It seemed by far the better part of valor and prudence alike to play the role of innocence outraged, and hope for the best.56