# The Sleepwalkers  ## Metadata - Author: [[Christopher Clark]] - Full Title: The Sleepwalkers - Category: #WWI #causes-of-war ## Highlights - The First World War was the Third Balkan War before it became the First World War. ([Location 5114](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5114)) - In the autumn of 1911, Italy launched a war of conquest on an African province of the Ottoman Empire, triggering a chain of opportunist assaults on Ottoman territories across the Balkans. ([Location 5117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5117)) - This was the first war to see aerial bombardments. In February 1912, an Ottoman retreat between the Zanzur oasis and Gargaresch to the south-east of Tripoli became a rout when the Italian dirigible P3 dropped bombs among the retiring troops. ([Location 5137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5137)) - The totally unprovoked Italian attack on these last Ottoman African possessions ‘broke the ice’, as one contemporary British observer put it, for the Balkan states.5 There had been talk for some years of a joint campaign to drive the Turks out of the Balkans, but nothing in the way of practical measures. Only after Italy’s assault were the Balkan states emboldened to take up arms. ([Location 5153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5153)) - access to the Turkish Straits.8 Selling a policy of invasion and annexation to the politically active part of the Italian public was not difficult. Colonialism was on the march in Italy, as it was elsewhere, and the ‘memory’ of Roman Africa, when Libya had been the bread basket of the empire, assured Tripolitania a central place on the kingdom’s colonial horizons. ([Location 5168](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5168)) - The Libyan struggle against the Italian occupation was one of the crucial early catalysts in the emergence of modern Arab nationalism. ([Location 5268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5268)) - The repeated warnings from Austria and Berlin that Italy’s action would unsettle the entire Balkan peninsula in dangerous and unpredictable ways were ignored. Italy, it seemed, was an ally in name only. ([Location 5273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5273)) - A transition of profound significance was taking place: Britain was gradually withdrawing from its century-long commitment to bottle the Russians into the Black Sea by sustaining the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. To be sure, British suspicion of Russia was still too intense to permit a complete relaxation of vigilance on the Straits. ([Location 5293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5293)) - The question of the Turkish Straits, which had once helped to unify the European concert, was now ever more deeply implicated in the antagonisms of a bipolar system. ([Location 5313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5313)) - By the time the Ottomans sued for peace with Italy in the autumn of 1912, the preparations for a major Balkan conflict were already well underway. ([Location 5315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5315)) - Almost as soon as the Italian declaration of war became known in October 1911, arrangements were put in train for a meeting between representatives of the Serbian and Bulgarian governments to discuss a joint military venture.36 ([Location 5318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5318)) - The Serbo-Bulgarian accords were focused mainly on military objectives against Ottoman south-eastern Europe, but they also foresaw the possibility of combined action against Austria-Hungary. ([Location 5322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5322)) - The war that broke out in the Balkans in October 1912 had been foreseen by nearly everyone. What astonished contemporary observers was the swiftness and scope of the victories secured by the Balkan League states. ([Location 5330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5330)) - From the beginning of the conflict, the Greeks had focused their attention single-mindedly on securing Salonika, the largest city of Macedonia and the key strategic port of the region. Leaving the Macedonian strongholds on their left flank to the Serbs and Bulgarians, the Greek Army of Thessaly marched to the north-east, overrunning Ottoman positions on the Sarantaporos pass and Yannitsa on 22 October and 2 November. ([Location 5355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5355)) - From the commander came the forlorn reply: ‘I have only one Thessaloniki, which I have already surrendered’ – the Greeks had got there first. Having initially refused the Bulgarians entry, the Greek command eventually agreed to let 15,000 Bulgarians co-occupy the city with 25,000 Greek troops. ([Location 5361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5361)) - As the squabbling over Salonika suggests, the First Balkan War contained the seeds of a second conflict over the territorial spoils from the first. ([Location 5370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5370)) - Northern Macedonia, including the important town of Skopje, was assigned to a ‘disputed zone’ – if the two parties failed to reach an agreement, they both undertook to accept the arbitration of the Russian Tsar. The Bulgarians were pleased with this agreement – especially as they expected the Russians to rule in their favour.40 ([Location 5373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5373)) - A few months later, in July 1912, Milovanović died unexpectedly, removing one of the chief exponents of moderation in Serbian foreign policy. Six weeks after his death, the ardent nationalist Pašić took office as prime minister and minister for foreign affairs. ([Location 5381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5381)) - As soon as it became clear, however, that Austria-Hungary had no intention of allowing the Serbs to acquire a swathe of Albania and the prospect of an Adriatic port receded from view, the leaders in Belgrade began to broach publicly the idea of revising the terms of the treaty with Bulgaria in Serbia’s favour. ([Location 5390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5390)) - On 30 June, Pašić was once again before the Skupština, defending his Macedonia policy against extreme nationalist deputies who argued that Serbia should simply have seized the captured provinces outright. Just as the debate was warming up, a messenger arrived to inform the prime minister that Bulgarian forces had attacked Serbian positions in the contested areas at two o’clock that morning. There had been no declaration of war. The Skupština erupted in uproar and Pašić left the session to coordinate the government’s preparations for a counter-offensive. In the Inter-Allied War that followed, Serbia, Greece, Turkey and Romania joined forces to tear chunks of territory out of the flanks of Bulgaria. ([Location 5416](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5416)) - His motives in sponsoring the formation of the Serbo-Bulgarian alliance treaty of March 1912 were both anti-Austrian and anti-Turkish. The treaty stated that the signatories would ‘come to each other’s assistance with all of their forces’ in the event of ‘any Great Power attempting to annex, occupy or temporarily to invade’ any formerly Turkish Balkan territory – a clear, if implicit, reference to Austria, which was suspected of harbouring designs on the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. ([Location 5499](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5499)) - A secret protocol stipulated that the signatories were to advise Russia in advance of their intention to wage war; if the two states disagreed on whether or when to commence an attack (on Turkey), a Russian veto would be binding. If an agreement over the partitioning of conquered territory proved elusive, the issue must be submitted to arbitration by Russia: the decision of Russia was binding for both parties to the treaty. ([Location 5506](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5506)) - Yet the fact remains that during the winter crisis of 1912–13, Sazonov supported a policy of confrontation with Austria, a policy ensuring that the Russo-Austrian frontier remained ‘at the diplomatic storm centre’. ([Location 5629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5629)) - There was one strategic choice that Sazonov and his colleagues would eventually be forced to confront. Should Russia support Bulgaria or Serbia? Of the two countries, Bulgaria was clearly the more strategically important. ([Location 5717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5717)) - The Balkan states were, as Tsar Nicholas put it, like ‘well-behaved youngsters’ who had ‘grown up to become stubborn hooligans’. ([Location 5768](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5768)) - What was happening in the Balkans was nothing less than the reversal of the old pattern of allegiances. In the past Russia had backed Bulgaria, while Austria-Hungary looked to Belgrade and Bucharest. By 1914, this arrangement had been turned inside out. Romania, too, was part of this process. By the early summer of 1913, Sazonov was inviting the government in Bucharest to help itself to a piece of Bulgaria in the event of a Serbo-Bulgarian war. ([Location 5832](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5832)) - Russia’s commitment to Serbia was driven by power-politics, not by the diffuse energies of pan-Slavism. It created a dangerous asymmetry in relations between the two Balkan great powers, for Austria-Hungary possessed no comparable salient on the periphery of the Russian Empire. ([Location 5866](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=5866)) - The terms of the Franco-Russian military convention of 1893–4 were ambiguous on this point. Article 2 stipulated that in the event of a general mobilization by any one of the powers of the Triple Alliance, France and Russia would simultaneously and immediately mobilize the totality of their forces and deploy as quickly as possible to their frontiers, without the need for any prior agreement. ([Location 6146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6146)) - For Russia, the central concern was Austria-Hungary – try as they might, the French negotiators were unable to persuade their Russian counterparts to renounce the link asserted in Article 2 between an Austro-Hungarian and a French general mobilization. And this, in turn, effectively placed a trigger in the hands of the Russians, who – on paper at least – were free at any time to instigate a continental war in support of their Balkan objectives.178 ([Location 6158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6158)) - In 1912, this trend was suddenly thrown into reverse, in what would prove one of the most important policy adjustments of the pre-war. Having sought for some years to insulate France from the consequences of Balkan shocks, the government in Paris now extended the French commitment to include the possibility of an armed intervention in a purely Balkan crisis. ([Location 6173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6173)) - In a conversation with the Italian ambassador in Paris only a few days later, Poincaré confirmed that ‘should the Austro-Serbian conflict lead to a general war, Russia could count entirely on the armed support of France’.202 In his memoirs, Poincaré vehemently denied having made these assurances. ([Location 6273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6273)) - ‘General Castelnau,’ Ignatiev reported, ‘twice told me that he personally is ready for war and even that he would like a war.’ Indeed, the French government as a whole was ‘in full readiness to support us against Austria and Germany, not only by diplomatic means but, if needed, by force of arms’. The reason for this readiness lay, Ignatiev believed, in French confidence that a Balkan war would produce the most advantageous starting point for a broader conflict, since it would oblige Germany to focus its military measures on Russia, ‘leaving the French in the rear’. ([Location 6355](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6355)) - The question of how fast and how many men Russia would mobilize in the event of the casus foederis, and in what direction it would deploy them, dominated the Franco-Russian inter-staff discussions in the summers of 1912 and 1913. ([Location 6397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6397)) - In the conversations of July 1912, the French CGS, Joseph Joffre, requested that the Russians double-track all their railway lines to the East Prussian and Galician frontiers. ([Location 6398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6398)) - But Joffre insisted that the ‘destruction of Germany’s forces’ – l’anéantissement des forces de l’Allemagne – would in effect resolve all the other problems facing the alliance; it was essential to concentrate on this objective ‘at any price’.221 A note prepared afterwards by the General Staff summarizing the result of the discussions duly recorded that ‘the Russian command recognises Germany as the principal adversary’. ([Location 6411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6411)) - At every opportunity, Poincaré helped to step up the pressure on the Russians to re-arm.226 ([Location 6431](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6431)) - There were also intense discussions with the English military commanders, and especially with Henry Wilson. Joffre was the first French strategist to integrate the British Expeditionary Force into his dispositions – his revisions to Plan XVI included detailed stipulations on the concentration of British troops along the Belgian border. ([Location 6440](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6440)) - On 21 February 1912, when Poincaré, newly installed as premier, convened an informal meeting at the Quai d’Orsay to review French defence arrangements, Joffre advocated a pre-emptive strike through Belgian territory. ([Location 6446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6446)) - With Delcassé in St Petersburg and Izvolsky in Paris, both parties to the alliance were represented by ambassadors with a strong personal animus against Germany. Delcassé had grown even more Germanophobic in recent years – when he met with Jules Cambon on his way to the east via Berlin, it was noted that he refused to step out of his train so that he could avoid touching German soil with the sole of his shoe. ([Location 6460](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6460)) - Guillaume observed in January 1914, ‘who invented and pursued the nationalist, jingoistic and chauvinist politics’ whose renaissance was now such a marked feature of public life in France. He saw in this ‘the greatest peril for peace in today’s Europe’. ([Location 6500](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6500)) - ‘Since I have been at the Foreign Office,’ Arthur Nicolson wrote early in May 1914, ‘I have not seen such calm waters.’1 Nicolson’s remark draws our attention to one of the most curious features of the last two pre-war years, namely that even as the stockpiling of arms continued to gain momentum and the attitudes of some military and civilian leaders grew more militant, the European international system as a whole displayed a surprising capacity for crisis management and détente. ([Location 6601](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6601)) - after the first lunch on board the Tsar’s yacht Standart, the Kaiser drew Sazonov apart and spoke to him (‘at him’ might be a more appropriate locution) for over an hour in detail about his relationship with his parents, who, he claimed, had never loved him. Sazonov saw this as a shocking illustration of the German Emperor’s ‘marked tendency to overshoot the boundaries of the reserve and dignity’ that one would expect of someone in such an elevated position. ([Location 6637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6637)) - his bursts of enthusiasm tended to be as short as they were intense. No wonder the German Kaiser was a figure of terror on the royal circuit. ([Location 6655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6655)) - Bethmann made use of a non-state go-between, the Hamburg-based shipping magnate Albert Ballin, who played a crucial role in opening up a channel of communication. Like many senior figures in the commercial and banking sector, Ballin believed utterly in the civilizational value of international trade and the criminal stupidity of a European war. Through his contacts with the British banker Sir Ernest Cassel, Ballin was able to bring to Berlin a message conveying British interest in principle in seeking a bilateral understanding on issues arising from naval armaments and colonial questions. ([Location 6687](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6687)) - The real sticking-point was Berlin’s insistence on something tangible in return, namely an undertaking of British neutrality in the event of a war between Germany and another continental power. ([Location 6695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6695)) - The true reason for British reticence lay rather in an understandable disinclination to give away something for nothing: Britain was winning the naval arms race hands down and enjoyed unchallenged superiority. Bethmann and Wilhelm wanted a neutrality agreement in exchange for recognizing that superiority as a permanent state of affairs. But why should Britain trade for an asset it already possessed?14 In sum: it was not ships as such that prevented an agreement, but rather the irreconcilability of perceived interests on both sides. ([Location 6701](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6701)) - Foreign Secretary Jagow, who picked up the policy thread when Kiderlen died suddenly in December 1912, hoped that continued Balkan collaboration would counteract British dependence on the Entente powers by opening London’s eyes to the aggressiveness of Russian policy in the region. Grey hoped that the Germans would continue reining in the Austrians and thereby prevent Balkan regional conflicts from threatening European peace. ([Location 6741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6741)) - We might thus say that the potential for détente was circumscribed by the resilience of the alliance blocs.This is true enough, except insomuch as it implies that the alliance blocs were solid and immovable fixtures of the international system. But it is worth noting how fragile and flux-prone many of the key decision-makers felt the alliance system was. ([Location 6747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6747)) - for the evidence suggests that Germany’s policy of restraint vis-à-vis Vienna over the period 1910–13 merely emboldened the Russians in the Balkans without yielding an offsetting security benefit. ([Location 6751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6751)) - In the minds of some of the key policy-makers in London, the Russian threat still eclipsed that posed by Germany. ([Location 6799](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6799)) - Moreover, détente in one part of the European international system could also produce a hardening of commitments in another. Thus, for example, uncertainties about London – fuelled by Anglo-German collaboration in the Balkans – affected French relations with St Petersburg. ‘The French government,’ wrote the Belgian minister to Paris in April 1913, ‘seeks to tighten more and more its alliance with Russia, for it is aware that the friendship of England is less and less solid and effective.’ ([Location 6829](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6829)) - From the standpoint of the most influential German military commanders, it seemed blindingly obvious that the geopolitical situation was shifting rapidly to Germany’s disadvantage. Helmuth von Moltke, Schlieffen’s successor (from January 1906) as chief of the General Staff adopted an unswervingly bleak and bellicose view of Germany’s international situation. His outlook can be reduced to two axiomatic assumptions. The first was that a war between the two alliance blocs was inevitable over the longer term. The second was that time was not on Germany’s side. With each advancing year, Germany’s prospective enemies, and Russia in particular with its swiftly expanding economy and virtually infinite manpower, would grow in military prowess until they enjoyed an unchallengeable superiority that would permit them to select the moment for a conflict to be fought and decided on their own terms. ([Location 6864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6864)) - Historians disagree about the significance of this ‘war council’, as it was ironically dubbed by Bethmann, who was not invited. Some have argued that the war council of December 1912 not only revealed the continuing centrality of the Kaiser to the decision-making process, but also set the scene for a comprehensive war-plan that involved placing the navy, the army, the German economy and German public opinion on a war footing in preparation for the unleashing of a premeditated conflict. ([Location 6915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6915)) - Others have seen the meeting as a reflex response to an international crisis, rejecting the notion that the German military and political leadership henceforth began the countdown to a pre-planned European war. ([Location 6919](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6919)) - The roots of the army bill of 1913 lay in anxiety over Germany’s deteriorating security position, compounded by alarm at Russia’s handling of the Balkan crisis. ([Location 6933](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6933)) - The French already enjoyed superiority in strategic railways and mobilization and deployment times – whereas the Germans possessed thirteen through railway lines to the common border in 1913, France had sixteen, all of which were double-tracked, with junction lines to bypass loops, stations and intersections. ([Location 6942](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6942)) - In 1904, the combined strength of the Franco-Russian military had exceeded the Austro-German by 260,982. By 1914, the gap was estimated at around 1 million and it was widening fast. ([Location 6964](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6964)) - Obsessed with the dangers looming from east and west and convinced that time was running out, Moltke became the eloquent exponent of a ‘preventive war’ that would enable the German Empire to resolve the coming conflict on terms advantageous to itself. ([Location 6973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=6973)) - As for the Kaiser, though prone to outbursts of belligerent rhetoric, he panicked and counselled caution whenever a real conflict seemed likely, to the endless frustration of the generals. ([Location 7010](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7010)) - Given the very limited options available to Germany in the global imperial arena, and the relatively closed situation in the Europe of the alliance blocs, one region above all attracted the attention of statesmen interested in a ‘world policy without war’: the Ottoman Empire. ([Location 7037](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7037)) - By investing in the Ottoman lands – especially in crucial infrastructural projects – the Germans hoped to stabilize the Ottoman Empire in the face of the threat posed to it by the other imperial powers, most importantly Russia. And should the collapse of the Ottoman Empire open the door to a territorial partition among the world empires, they wanted to be sure of a seat at the table where the spoils were divided. ([Location 7048](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7048)) - The project, which in theory would one day make it possible to travel by train directly from Berlin to Baghdad, met with suspicion and obstruction from the other imperial powers. The British were concerned at the prospect of the Germans acquiring privileged access to the oil fields of Ottoman Iraq, whose importance was growing at a time when the British navy was planning the transition from coal- to oil-fired ships. ([Location 7070](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7070)) - In the years 1903–12, 37 per cent of Russian exports passed through the Dardanelles; the figure for wheat and rye exports, both vital to Russia’s cash-hungry industrializing economy, was much higher, at around 75–80 per cent. ([Location 7140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7140)) - In November 1912, it was the Bulgarians who seemed close to seizing Constantinople. At that time, Sazonov had instructed Izvolsky to warn Poincaré that if the city were captured, the Russians would be obliged to deploy the entire Black Sea Fleet there immediately. ([Location 7150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7150)) - The Turks had already ordered one dreadnought battleship, which was currently under construction in Britain, and two more were ordered in 1912–14, though none had arrived by the time war broke out. Nevertheless, the prospect of local Turkish superiority over Russian naval strength filled the navalists in St Petersburg with a foreboding that was in part no more than the inversion of their own imperial designs. ([Location 7169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7169)) - Then there was the fact that there was already a British naval mission operating on the Bosphorus, the scope of which had been extended by the arrival in 1912 of Admiral Arthur Limpus, whose contract of employment stated that he was ‘commandant de la flotte’.111 In addition to overseeing improvements to the training and supply of the Ottoman navy, Limpus coordinated the deployment of torpedo boats and the laying of mines in the Turkish Straits, one of the most important means by which access was denied to foreign warships. ([Location 7191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7191)) - When the Second Balkan War broke out over the territorial spoils of the first, the Russians recognized that the League policy was now obsolete and chose, after some prevarication, to adopt Serbia as the principal client, to the detriment of Bulgaria, which quickly drifted into the financial and (later) political orbit of the central powers. The deepening commitment to Serbia tied Russia into a posture of direct confrontation with Austria-Hungary, as the events of December 1912–January 1913 had shown. ([Location 7386](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7386)) - We need to draw an important distinction: at no point did the French or the Russian strategists involved plan to launch a war of aggression against the central powers. We are dealing here with scenarios, not plans as such. ([Location 7407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7407)) - Were the British aware of the risks posed by the Balkanization of Entente security policy? British policy-makers saw clearly enough that the drift in European geopolitics had created a mechanism that might, if triggered in the right way, transform a Balkan quarrel into a European war. ([Location 7416](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7416)) - And this, Grey implied, would oblige Britain at some point to intervene on the side of France. Grey may have felt discomfort – he certainly expressed it intermittently – about the prospect of ‘fighting for Serbia’, but he had understood and legitimized the Balkan inception scenario and absorbed it into his thinking. ([Location 7459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7459)) - We see it in the letters, speeches and memoirs of the key protagonists, who are quick to emphasize that there was no alternative to the path taken, that the war was ‘inevitable’ and thus beyond the power of anyone to prevent. These narratives of inevitability take many different forms – they may merely attribute responsibility to other states or actors, they may ascribe to the system itself a propensity to generate war, independently of the will of individual actors, or they may appeal to the impersonal forces of History or Fate. ([Location 7591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7591)) - The future was still open – just. For all the hardening of the fronts in both of Europe’s armed camps, there were signs that the moment for a major confrontation might be passing. The Anglo-Russian alliance was under serious strain – it looked unlikely to survive the scheduled date for renewal in 1915. And there were even signs of a change of heart among the British policy-makers, who had recently been sampling the fruits of détente with Germany in the Balkans. It is far from obvious or certain that Poincaré could have sustained his security policy over the longer term. ([Location 7621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7621)) - And had the trigger not been pulled, the future that became history in 1914 would have made way for a different future, one in which, conceivably, the Triple Entente might not have survived the resolution of the Balkan crisis and the Anglo-German détente might have hardened into something more substantial. ([Location 7636](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7636)) - by making a continental war appear to recede to the horizons of probability, they encouraged key decision-makers to underrate the risks attending their interventions. ([Location 7641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008B1BL4E&location=7641))