raharris1973
Well-known member
This what if reaches a culminating point during the July 1914 crisis after the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand that I have a vision of using to discuss how it unfolds with the powers still chain-ganged to rival alliances diplomatically but less pressured by time-tables of mobilization and counter-mobilization on both sides.
The path to get there is not long in duration, just a bit over a year, but is a bit complex.
To review OTL the simplest way to describe the escalation from the July diplomatic crisis to the invasions of WWI is that:
Austria-Hungary wanted to defeat/crush Serbia based on its hostile ambitions/activities and to do so by war, accordingly it issued demands for puppetization of the country it expect Serbia to reject, to politically justify the invasion. A practical constraint on the timing of the Austrian attack was they needed to collect much of the harvest first.
Russia, seeing Serbia as a client, saw Serbia being crushed or puppetized under threat of war as unacceptable, so it needed to press Austria to back off its anti-Serb pressure. The OTL solution it came up with was to mobilize on the Austrian border, to at a minimum, force the Austrians to divide their forces and reduce the size of any pressure or attack on Serbia in order to react the *possibility* of a Russian into Austria, or an actual invasion. For Russia, mobilization meant they *could* go to war, but did not *mandate* it. However, because of German-Austrian ties, it sure increases the *risk* of Russo-German war as well so added urgency to preparations for the possibility of fighting Germany too, which in turn added urgency to ensuring military coordination and cooperation with France on the other side of Germany. With Russia going for a general war mobilization against Austria alone, the so-called ‘partial mobilization’ was of such a scale and involved such forces that it was difficult to separate from or disruptive of pre-war plans for general mobilization on the western border against both Austria and Germany.
This affected Germany. Dealing with a mobilizing Russia to the east, Germany needed to mobilize in reaction. It is important to note though, that Germany was no stranger to this overall diplomatic crisis. Austria had consulted Germany from the beginning, and Russia and France were thinking about it from the start as well. Austria asked for Germany’s support if the expected conflict with Serbia caused conflict with Russia, and Germany assured Austria that she would have unqualified German support, the so-called ‘blank check’. Getting back to Germany’s need to react to Russia’s mobilization. Germany subjectively believed that mobilization without deploying and going to war was not possible, at least without leaving itself critically advantaged by allowing its opponents in Russia and France to top up their standing militaries and ready reserves.
Germany’s plans were fixed to use military force most efficiently, in a consecutive manner, first in the west, against France, and then in the east, against Russia.
Austrian artillery drew first blood when fired into Serbia along with the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia in the last days of July. Russia raised concerns but I am not remembering how many days or hours it took for Russia to declare war on Austria or to begin any assaults on the Austrian border.
The Germans followed the France first scheme of maneuver, through neutral Luxemburg and Belgium, as I described above, while the Russians and French, as part of managing some of their own national goals and maintaining confidence in each other as allies, pretty much attacked German territory and crossed the border at the same time with respective invasions of German East Prussia and Alsace-Lorraine.
So much for OTL, on to the ATL:
In this ATL, we expand on Russia’s OTL sensitivity to any other power taking Constantinople and the straits, and its threats to intervene against anyone else who did, primarily Bulgaria. OTL Russia threatened to intervene against Bulgaria in 1912 when it looked like they might take the city. The Russians started to diplomatically work the angles to get the right to march troops through Romania to Bulgaria and talked about offering support to Romanian territorial claims in return.
This all unfolds like OTL. A new intervening factor though occurs in the spring of 1913 however. King Carol I of Romania dies that spring, roughly a year earlier than OTL. His heir, Ferdinand takes the throne, and promises, as in OTL, to rule as a good Romanian. The significance of the comment is that he lacked his father’s sentimental attachment (reinforced by Hohenzollern family ties) to the Germanic powers and the Triple Alliance, and goes with the increasingly pro-Russian and especially Francophile and Austrophobic views of Romania’s leading politicians.
This becomes relevant when Bulgaria in the summer kicks off the Second Balkan War by attacking its erstwhile Balkan allies, Serbia and Greece, in Macedonia. This outrages the latter two, who rally to defend themselves. It also outrages the Russians to see the Bulgarians attack other Orthodox Slavs.
Seeing the Serbs and Greeks resist the Bulgarians, while the Bulgarians commit the whole of their army’s maneuver units to Macedonia, spurs the Romanians and Turks to independently consider going to war against Bulgaria, in the case of Romania, to push their territorial claim to northern Dobruja, and in the case of Turkey, to recover Adrianople. With the Bulgarians failing to win in the first 48 hours, intervention becomes pretty certain.
However, Russia, its patience worn out, offers to join Romania in declaring war and prepares to send forces across the border and to bombard Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. Russia’s goal is to end the war quickly but to also insert itself two steps closer to the Ottoman border in Europe and Constantinople for future leverage.
Romania, seeking war anyway, is really in no position to refuse Russia’s help with it, and by agreeing, also guarantees Russian, and by extension, French, backing against hypothetical Austro-Hungarian counter-moves.
The military course of the Second Balkan War is nearly identical to OTL, with the difference of the participation of the Russian Black Sea fleet bombarding Varna, and small Russian forces (likely Cossacks) attacking through Romania into Bulgarian Dobruja.
The territorial changes at the end of the war, causing Bulgaria to cede particular lands to Romania, Serbia, Greece, and Turkey, are also identical to OTL’s.
However, the diplomatic situation and postwar deployments are different due to Russia’s participation. As part of its involvement in the war, Russia negotiated a three-year military cooperation and transit agreement with Russia, permitting Russian forces to use Romanian rail and motor roads to deal with developments ‘threatening the peace of Europe’.
Russia, as part of the price of settlement, also established a naval anchorage and shore facility on the Bulgarian coast at Varna for a five year term, ‘to keep the Bulgarian down, and the Turks out’ – and unspokenly, to keep the fleet close to the Bosporus. Lastly, ‘to help maintain the new peace treaty’, Russia distributes a regimental size unit’s components on districts in Bulgaria bordering sensitive points Bulgaria has just been made to cede to Serbia.
This new Russian forward posture is very alarming to the Central Powers, and not really welcomed by the British, and not even viewed with full approval by the French.
Some in Austria-Hungary, including Hotzendorff – possibly some German Generalstab officers also, had viewed the 2nd Balkan War, the crushing of Bulgaria, and the Russian intervention with such alarm that they advocated war on Bulgaria’s opponents (in the case of Austria) and by extension, France (for Germany).
But Franz-Joseph and his Ministers and Wilhelm and his Ministers never took the plunge. They just did not feel they had a sellable enough casus belli for the home audience, because Bulgaria started the war that all its neighbors were waging upon it. Also, Italy was completely cold to the idea of escalation. If the Serbs and Greeks had been intransigent about swallowing Albania, as it looked for a time, it might have been a different story, but that had been settled a couple months earlier. And beyond the probable absence of a domestically suitable casus belli and Italy’s probable non-support, the prospects for raising the Second Balkan War to continent-wide coalition warfare didn’t look great to Vienna or Berlin.
Attacking Romania and Serbia could at best preserve Bulgaria as a third ally, for the moment, but Germany and Austria would have to deal not only with them and the Franco-Russian dual alliance (and possibly Britain), but Bulgaria would still be beleaguered by Greece and especially the Ottoman Empire fighting on the opposite, wrong, Entente side.
Disastrous as the Balkan Wars had been for Vienna and Berlin strategically, escalating right into war at the moment would be worse. Better to end the war with Bulgaria as intact as possible, and to cultivate ties with the Ottomans, see if Russian advances could be used to wedge apart Britain from its continental Entente partners, and if alliance relations with Italy could be repaired. Indeed, perhaps the Russians might quickly wear out their Balkan welcome, as they did in the 1880s, and the Austro-German strategic position might recover.
…and so it goes for the next 9 months, as the Germans indeed work on their relations with the Ottomans, sparking the Liman von Sanders affair, causing Russian protests, but no real crisis of mobilization.
Then in 1914 in Sarajevo the Black Hand assassinates the Austrian Archduke on St. Vitus Day. Austro-Hungarian leadership judges that Serbia must be crushed and the moment for a showdown has arrived. Vienna checks with Berlin and receives its unqualified support, the ‘blank check’.
Berlin and Vienna work together to dodge any attempt at a pan-European conference to resolve Austro-Serbian issues, suspecting they’d be outvoted.
Vienna issues its ultimatum to Serbia, designed to be unacceptable. The Germans reassure the Austrians of their support, and the French reassure the Russians of their support in this, so far, diplomatic crisis, that they acknowledge could go military.
The Russian countermove to the Austrian threat is not obvious. There are advocates of mobilization to exert deterrent pressure against Austria on the mutual border. Knowing that this is considered a provocative step internationally, that would likely provoke Austrian and German counter-reactions and possibly declarations of war, some advocate instead a ‘partial mobilization’ against Austria alone, to try to keep the affair more localized on Balkan affairs and clarify a lack of any hostile intent toward Germany.
Meanwhile, on the Central Powers side, Austria wants its war to crush Serbia, and unless Russia appears ready to completely give way, the Germans accept with equanimity it means it is time for a showdown with Russia, and now would be better than later. And by extension and per plan, any showdown with Russia means a knockout of France first.
From the French side, at least from President Poincare and Paleologue, the Russians get reassurance they will have French support in this crisis, pretty much wherever it leads. These leaders aren’t saying they want to go to war, but they are giving Russia a free hand to handle the confrontation by mobilizing to intimidate Austria, promise to back Russia and follow military conventions for mutual offensive military support should this lead to Germany going to war with Russia. For Poincare, there is even a little bit of a paranoid, irrational, 'better war now than later' concept in his head, because he judges power is shifting in the alliance as Russia strengthens, France is still relevant now and therefore has more leverage, but in the future a stronger Russia could decide all war and peace questions without reference to French interests.
For the Russians, while it is reassuring to hear that the French President is ready to jump off the bridge them, it does not do a lot to make a war with the Germans, especially a war with the Germans *now*, especially as opposed to several years from now, more attractive. So, there is appetite for a third course of action besides the highly risky and provocative mobilization and partial mobilization gambits to resolve the Austro-Serb crisis. Some unsentimental realists, some of quite reactionary views, favor avoidance of war at all costs even at the sacrifice of Serbia. That cannot work for the Tsar, Tsarina and PM, who want to derail Austrian aggression with diplomacy, not war.
So the option that becomes most attractive to them is no mobilization for great power war at all, but for a limited deployment of a small Russian force, patently incapable of offensive action against Austria, to Serbia to interpose itself in the way of an Austrian invasion. The troops are immediately available from the Serbo-Bulgarian border regiment, and can be supplied and reinforced from the Bessarabian and west Ukrainian military districts through Romania, without undertaking a full-dress mobilization on the Austrian and German borders.
Some professional military men are disgusted by a plan that rests on small force inadequate to defend Serbia against Austria’s full might and that does not throw Russia’s full might into the pressure campaign. But the proponents argue that the Austrians and Germans can’t fail to recognize that an Austrian invasion of Serbia that engages Russia troops and kills any, would make general war inevitable, imminent, and in the eyes of the world, Austria’s responsibility. What it gives up in military efficiency it gains back in diplomatic and PR strength, internationally and domestically, and in causing a diplomatic and political dilemma for the Austrians. By using or relying on the Romanian/Bulgarian supply line, it also reminds Vienna that the front of full-scale war would probably be wider than just Serbia and even Russia, but would likely include Romania as well.
This option cannot be employed, or even announced, until Serbia shows every attempt at cooperating with Austria’s reasonable demands. So it would have to be announced and begin only after the Serbs reply, as in OTL, to the Austrian ultimatum accepting all Austrian demands except the one demanding unlimited Austrian police powers in Serbia.
With the Russians making this fait accompli and announcing their presence at forward positions at the Serbian bank of the Danube and Serb fortresses, what happens next?
The path to get there is not long in duration, just a bit over a year, but is a bit complex.
To review OTL the simplest way to describe the escalation from the July diplomatic crisis to the invasions of WWI is that:
Austria-Hungary wanted to defeat/crush Serbia based on its hostile ambitions/activities and to do so by war, accordingly it issued demands for puppetization of the country it expect Serbia to reject, to politically justify the invasion. A practical constraint on the timing of the Austrian attack was they needed to collect much of the harvest first.
Russia, seeing Serbia as a client, saw Serbia being crushed or puppetized under threat of war as unacceptable, so it needed to press Austria to back off its anti-Serb pressure. The OTL solution it came up with was to mobilize on the Austrian border, to at a minimum, force the Austrians to divide their forces and reduce the size of any pressure or attack on Serbia in order to react the *possibility* of a Russian into Austria, or an actual invasion. For Russia, mobilization meant they *could* go to war, but did not *mandate* it. However, because of German-Austrian ties, it sure increases the *risk* of Russo-German war as well so added urgency to preparations for the possibility of fighting Germany too, which in turn added urgency to ensuring military coordination and cooperation with France on the other side of Germany. With Russia going for a general war mobilization against Austria alone, the so-called ‘partial mobilization’ was of such a scale and involved such forces that it was difficult to separate from or disruptive of pre-war plans for general mobilization on the western border against both Austria and Germany.
This affected Germany. Dealing with a mobilizing Russia to the east, Germany needed to mobilize in reaction. It is important to note though, that Germany was no stranger to this overall diplomatic crisis. Austria had consulted Germany from the beginning, and Russia and France were thinking about it from the start as well. Austria asked for Germany’s support if the expected conflict with Serbia caused conflict with Russia, and Germany assured Austria that she would have unqualified German support, the so-called ‘blank check’. Getting back to Germany’s need to react to Russia’s mobilization. Germany subjectively believed that mobilization without deploying and going to war was not possible, at least without leaving itself critically advantaged by allowing its opponents in Russia and France to top up their standing militaries and ready reserves.
Germany’s plans were fixed to use military force most efficiently, in a consecutive manner, first in the west, against France, and then in the east, against Russia.
Austrian artillery drew first blood when fired into Serbia along with the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia in the last days of July. Russia raised concerns but I am not remembering how many days or hours it took for Russia to declare war on Austria or to begin any assaults on the Austrian border.
The Germans followed the France first scheme of maneuver, through neutral Luxemburg and Belgium, as I described above, while the Russians and French, as part of managing some of their own national goals and maintaining confidence in each other as allies, pretty much attacked German territory and crossed the border at the same time with respective invasions of German East Prussia and Alsace-Lorraine.
So much for OTL, on to the ATL:
In this ATL, we expand on Russia’s OTL sensitivity to any other power taking Constantinople and the straits, and its threats to intervene against anyone else who did, primarily Bulgaria. OTL Russia threatened to intervene against Bulgaria in 1912 when it looked like they might take the city. The Russians started to diplomatically work the angles to get the right to march troops through Romania to Bulgaria and talked about offering support to Romanian territorial claims in return.
This all unfolds like OTL. A new intervening factor though occurs in the spring of 1913 however. King Carol I of Romania dies that spring, roughly a year earlier than OTL. His heir, Ferdinand takes the throne, and promises, as in OTL, to rule as a good Romanian. The significance of the comment is that he lacked his father’s sentimental attachment (reinforced by Hohenzollern family ties) to the Germanic powers and the Triple Alliance, and goes with the increasingly pro-Russian and especially Francophile and Austrophobic views of Romania’s leading politicians.
This becomes relevant when Bulgaria in the summer kicks off the Second Balkan War by attacking its erstwhile Balkan allies, Serbia and Greece, in Macedonia. This outrages the latter two, who rally to defend themselves. It also outrages the Russians to see the Bulgarians attack other Orthodox Slavs.
Seeing the Serbs and Greeks resist the Bulgarians, while the Bulgarians commit the whole of their army’s maneuver units to Macedonia, spurs the Romanians and Turks to independently consider going to war against Bulgaria, in the case of Romania, to push their territorial claim to northern Dobruja, and in the case of Turkey, to recover Adrianople. With the Bulgarians failing to win in the first 48 hours, intervention becomes pretty certain.
However, Russia, its patience worn out, offers to join Romania in declaring war and prepares to send forces across the border and to bombard Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. Russia’s goal is to end the war quickly but to also insert itself two steps closer to the Ottoman border in Europe and Constantinople for future leverage.
Romania, seeking war anyway, is really in no position to refuse Russia’s help with it, and by agreeing, also guarantees Russian, and by extension, French, backing against hypothetical Austro-Hungarian counter-moves.
The military course of the Second Balkan War is nearly identical to OTL, with the difference of the participation of the Russian Black Sea fleet bombarding Varna, and small Russian forces (likely Cossacks) attacking through Romania into Bulgarian Dobruja.
The territorial changes at the end of the war, causing Bulgaria to cede particular lands to Romania, Serbia, Greece, and Turkey, are also identical to OTL’s.
However, the diplomatic situation and postwar deployments are different due to Russia’s participation. As part of its involvement in the war, Russia negotiated a three-year military cooperation and transit agreement with Russia, permitting Russian forces to use Romanian rail and motor roads to deal with developments ‘threatening the peace of Europe’.
Russia, as part of the price of settlement, also established a naval anchorage and shore facility on the Bulgarian coast at Varna for a five year term, ‘to keep the Bulgarian down, and the Turks out’ – and unspokenly, to keep the fleet close to the Bosporus. Lastly, ‘to help maintain the new peace treaty’, Russia distributes a regimental size unit’s components on districts in Bulgaria bordering sensitive points Bulgaria has just been made to cede to Serbia.
This new Russian forward posture is very alarming to the Central Powers, and not really welcomed by the British, and not even viewed with full approval by the French.
Some in Austria-Hungary, including Hotzendorff – possibly some German Generalstab officers also, had viewed the 2nd Balkan War, the crushing of Bulgaria, and the Russian intervention with such alarm that they advocated war on Bulgaria’s opponents (in the case of Austria) and by extension, France (for Germany).
But Franz-Joseph and his Ministers and Wilhelm and his Ministers never took the plunge. They just did not feel they had a sellable enough casus belli for the home audience, because Bulgaria started the war that all its neighbors were waging upon it. Also, Italy was completely cold to the idea of escalation. If the Serbs and Greeks had been intransigent about swallowing Albania, as it looked for a time, it might have been a different story, but that had been settled a couple months earlier. And beyond the probable absence of a domestically suitable casus belli and Italy’s probable non-support, the prospects for raising the Second Balkan War to continent-wide coalition warfare didn’t look great to Vienna or Berlin.
Attacking Romania and Serbia could at best preserve Bulgaria as a third ally, for the moment, but Germany and Austria would have to deal not only with them and the Franco-Russian dual alliance (and possibly Britain), but Bulgaria would still be beleaguered by Greece and especially the Ottoman Empire fighting on the opposite, wrong, Entente side.
Disastrous as the Balkan Wars had been for Vienna and Berlin strategically, escalating right into war at the moment would be worse. Better to end the war with Bulgaria as intact as possible, and to cultivate ties with the Ottomans, see if Russian advances could be used to wedge apart Britain from its continental Entente partners, and if alliance relations with Italy could be repaired. Indeed, perhaps the Russians might quickly wear out their Balkan welcome, as they did in the 1880s, and the Austro-German strategic position might recover.
…and so it goes for the next 9 months, as the Germans indeed work on their relations with the Ottomans, sparking the Liman von Sanders affair, causing Russian protests, but no real crisis of mobilization.
Then in 1914 in Sarajevo the Black Hand assassinates the Austrian Archduke on St. Vitus Day. Austro-Hungarian leadership judges that Serbia must be crushed and the moment for a showdown has arrived. Vienna checks with Berlin and receives its unqualified support, the ‘blank check’.
Berlin and Vienna work together to dodge any attempt at a pan-European conference to resolve Austro-Serbian issues, suspecting they’d be outvoted.
Vienna issues its ultimatum to Serbia, designed to be unacceptable. The Germans reassure the Austrians of their support, and the French reassure the Russians of their support in this, so far, diplomatic crisis, that they acknowledge could go military.
The Russian countermove to the Austrian threat is not obvious. There are advocates of mobilization to exert deterrent pressure against Austria on the mutual border. Knowing that this is considered a provocative step internationally, that would likely provoke Austrian and German counter-reactions and possibly declarations of war, some advocate instead a ‘partial mobilization’ against Austria alone, to try to keep the affair more localized on Balkan affairs and clarify a lack of any hostile intent toward Germany.
Meanwhile, on the Central Powers side, Austria wants its war to crush Serbia, and unless Russia appears ready to completely give way, the Germans accept with equanimity it means it is time for a showdown with Russia, and now would be better than later. And by extension and per plan, any showdown with Russia means a knockout of France first.
From the French side, at least from President Poincare and Paleologue, the Russians get reassurance they will have French support in this crisis, pretty much wherever it leads. These leaders aren’t saying they want to go to war, but they are giving Russia a free hand to handle the confrontation by mobilizing to intimidate Austria, promise to back Russia and follow military conventions for mutual offensive military support should this lead to Germany going to war with Russia. For Poincare, there is even a little bit of a paranoid, irrational, 'better war now than later' concept in his head, because he judges power is shifting in the alliance as Russia strengthens, France is still relevant now and therefore has more leverage, but in the future a stronger Russia could decide all war and peace questions without reference to French interests.
For the Russians, while it is reassuring to hear that the French President is ready to jump off the bridge them, it does not do a lot to make a war with the Germans, especially a war with the Germans *now*, especially as opposed to several years from now, more attractive. So, there is appetite for a third course of action besides the highly risky and provocative mobilization and partial mobilization gambits to resolve the Austro-Serb crisis. Some unsentimental realists, some of quite reactionary views, favor avoidance of war at all costs even at the sacrifice of Serbia. That cannot work for the Tsar, Tsarina and PM, who want to derail Austrian aggression with diplomacy, not war.
So the option that becomes most attractive to them is no mobilization for great power war at all, but for a limited deployment of a small Russian force, patently incapable of offensive action against Austria, to Serbia to interpose itself in the way of an Austrian invasion. The troops are immediately available from the Serbo-Bulgarian border regiment, and can be supplied and reinforced from the Bessarabian and west Ukrainian military districts through Romania, without undertaking a full-dress mobilization on the Austrian and German borders.
Some professional military men are disgusted by a plan that rests on small force inadequate to defend Serbia against Austria’s full might and that does not throw Russia’s full might into the pressure campaign. But the proponents argue that the Austrians and Germans can’t fail to recognize that an Austrian invasion of Serbia that engages Russia troops and kills any, would make general war inevitable, imminent, and in the eyes of the world, Austria’s responsibility. What it gives up in military efficiency it gains back in diplomatic and PR strength, internationally and domestically, and in causing a diplomatic and political dilemma for the Austrians. By using or relying on the Romanian/Bulgarian supply line, it also reminds Vienna that the front of full-scale war would probably be wider than just Serbia and even Russia, but would likely include Romania as well.
This option cannot be employed, or even announced, until Serbia shows every attempt at cooperating with Austria’s reasonable demands. So it would have to be announced and begin only after the Serbs reply, as in OTL, to the Austrian ultimatum accepting all Austrian demands except the one demanding unlimited Austrian police powers in Serbia.
With the Russians making this fait accompli and announcing their presence at forward positions at the Serbian bank of the Danube and Serb fortresses, what happens next?
- Do the Austrians declare war on the Serbs like OTL, while Germans and Austrians give a short ultimatum to the Russians to quit Serbia, leading in less than 24 hours to Austrian and German DoWs on Russia, and German implementation of the Schlieffen Plan in the west?
- -If so, does Russia’s slowness to mobilize, since it does not start until after the German and Austrian declarations of war and its troops are under attack in Serbia, while Austria and Germany mobilize on schedule provide the Central Powers with initial and compounding advantages on the East Prussian, Galician, and possibly Serbian and western fronts that make Russia’s politically and diplomatically influenced strategy turn into a catastrophic war-loser for the Entente?
- -Or is the mobilization time lost by the Russians compared to the CP not enough to make a notable difference in 1914 or after? Or is it compensated for by earlier Austrian steps to guard against the Romanian threat and likely fight against an early Romanian belligerency in 1914 and inability of Bulgaria to successfully participate in the war
- Do the Austrians restrain themselves from attacking, unwilling to go over the brink?
- -If so, do Germany and Austria condemn Russia for shielding criminals continue to develop a siege mentality, building up their ground forces and seeking allies. Trying to build ties with the Ottomans and possibly supplying a Bulgarian insurgency against Russian troops in Bulgaria?
- -Or, checkmated, do they seek rapprochement with Entente powers and easing of tensions?
- - Or would the Austrians have never contemplated a ‘crush Serbia’ campaign in 1914 like this in the first place, if Russia had previously gotten the foothold in the eastern Balkans in 1913 prior to the Sarajevo assassination, because they’d deem it impractical?
- -Or would the Russians, having gone out on a limb in fighting the Bulgarians, occupying part of their land, and eyeing the Turkish straits immediately to the south, have considered the Austro-Serb conflict an unwanted distraction and given Austria a pass to crush Serbia while Russia made its own moves to hold down Bulgaria, and possibly start something against Turkey?