100 Years Ago
With Washington and Moscow caught in a deteriorating relationship, is conflict inevitable?
BY
James Stavridis
Since
the end of the Cold War, the Balkan Peninsula has seen some of the
fiercest armed conflictin Europe. The breakup of Yugoslavia and the
separation of Kosovo from Serbia pitted NATO and European Union states
in diplomatic struggles against the Russian Federation while the Balkan
peoples fought on the ground. The backing Russia gave to the Serbian
government constituted another chapter in a long history of engagement
in the region. Given the ethnic, religious, and historical links between
Serbia and Russia, Moscow has appeared to use Serbia as a proxy that
helps Russia maintain influence in a region of strategic and economic
interest. But in our time, Russia chose not to take up arms in the wars
of southeastern Europe, and looking back one hundred years to the Balkan
Wars of 1912-1913 can aid in explaining why, as well as identify the
regional dynamics that will likely continue to shape decision-making on
all sides.
A
century ago, much as recently, Russia sought to protect its proxy
states in the region with its diplomatic might, but refused to commit to
an armed intervention on their behalf when such intervention would
likely draw Moscow into a larger war in which it saw little reason to
hope for success, and worked assiduously to deter competition in the
Turkish Straits. Ultimately, Russia would not sacrifice its own vital
interests or jeopardize its security for the sake of its proxy states.
The
Balkan Wars took place in the context of uncertainty created by the
decline of the Ottoman Empire, the management of which dominated
European international relations in the century before the First World
War. Known as the Eastern Question, this uncertainty ultimately drew in
all of the great powers of Europe – the United Kingdom, France, Austria,
and Russia, as well as Prussia/Germany and Piedmont/Italy.
Russia
and Austria-Hungary, as it had been reformed from 1867, felt most
directly affected by the growing vacuum along their borderlands. Both
states sought to expand their influence over peoples and new states on
the Balkan Peninsula while limiting the success of the other.
Maintaining
influence over events in the Balkans also served another Russian
interest – protection of its position at the Turkish Straits. Since the
1820s, Russian rulers had accepted relatively weak Ottoman control over
the Straits, backed by international agreements that assured Russian
commerce through the Bosporus and Dardanelles while denying non-Ottoman
warships passage in times of peace. Russia’s southern trade was
comprised largely of exports, which were a crucial source of the foreign
currency needed to sustain its modernization efforts. Russia’s mediocre
warships on the Black Sea were more than a match for those of the
Ottoman navy, but would have been outclassed by outside fleets. If the
Sultan were no longer able to hold this waterway, Russia assumed that it
would need to take control to ensure its national security and economic
vitality. To achieve its goals, Russia not only worked to limit the
influence of Austria-Hungary and other interlopers in the region, but
also employed proxy states to achieve the same objectives.
One
of those proxies was Serbia, the first of the Balkan Slavic states to
throw off Ottoman control, although true sovereignty took generations
for Serbia to achieve as it moved from autonomy within the Ottoman
Empire to full independence. Serbia wobbled between Austrophile and
Russophile loyalties until 1903, when a palace coup in Belgrade put a
regime quite hostile to Vienna in power. Austro-Hungarian economic
sanctions then pushed Belgrade even closer to St. Petersburg. Through
1908, Russia and Austria-Hungary agreed to maintain the status quo in
the region as the great powers pushed the Ottoman Empire to reform its
rule in its remaining territories on the Balkan Peninsula. But the
Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09 saw Austria-Hungary annex Bosnia-Herzegovina
without considering compensation for Russia or Serbia, with St.
Petersburg forced to accept the move under the threat of a German
ultimatum. After this humiliation, substantive Russian cooperation with
Austria-Hungary ceased, and Serbia became more valuable in Russian eyes.
The
second proxy state of note was Bulgaria. Russian victories in the
1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War brought wide autonomy to this Slavic,
Orthodox nation. Russia had at first forced the Ottoman Empire to
concede a large Bulgaria in the Treaty of San Stefano. The other great
powers of Europe feared the influence such a state would give Russia in
the region, so they reduced Bulgaria’s size after negotiations at the
1878 Congress of Berlin. Tsar Alexander III disliked the policies
adopted by the new ruler of Bulgaria, Alexander of Battenberg,
especially Bulgaria’s 1885 annexation of Eastern Rumelia, which reduced
St. Petersburg’s influence over Sofia. Russia therefore heavy-handedly
engineered the prince’s removal in 1886. His replacement, Ferdinand of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, however, was even less to Russia’s liking, but St.
Petersburg was unable to remove him. Ferdinand aspired even more
vehemently than Alexander to gain those lands that Bulgaria had been
denied at Berlin, particularly after declaring Bulgaria’s full
independence at the start of the Bosnian Crisis in October 1908.
Complicating Balkan relations, both Bulgaria and Serbia sought to annex
Macedonia, large sections of which had been promised to Bulgaria in the
defunct Treaty of San Stefano. The area, which remained under Ottoman
control after the Congress of Berlin, contained a mixed but largely
Slavic population, which Belgrade and Sofia both claimed was made up
primarily of their ethnic brethren.
Russia,
in its efforts to contain Austria-Hungary after 1909, hoped to overcome
these divisions and see Serbia, Bulgaria, and other Balkan states bound
together in a league that would help the Russian government control the
pace of events. Getting Belgrade and Sofia to agree took several years,
but in March 1912, the Russian Foreign Ministry, with the agreement of
the tsar and the encouragement of Pan-Slavs in Russian society, brokered
an agreement between the two that was soon joined by Greece and
Montenegro. The Russian leadership believed it had at last fashioned a
bulwark against the further spread of Austro-Hungarian influence. St.
Petersburg hoped that despite its long rivalry with Vienna, the prospect
of facing a united Serbia and Bulgaria would deter Austria-Hungary from
further advance. Furthermore, St. Petersburg believed it now held the
key to developments on the peninsula. The foreign minister, Sergei D.
Sazonov, was confident that the Balkan states would take no action
without permission from Russia. Balkan armies would do the heavy lifting
of containing Austria-Hungary while Russia’s influence and strategic
position improved.
The
Balkan states, however, had other plans for their new alliance. While
the Ottoman Empire languished through the attritive 1911-12 war against
Italy for control of Libya, the Balkan League saw an opportunity to push
the Ottomans out of Europe and gain land for each member in the
process. In two areas, the Balkan allies’ goals specifically challenged
Russian interests, forcing St. Petersburg to adopt a course aimed at
frustrating its proxies’ aspirations while protecting its own position
in the region and in the European great-power system.
In
the Serbian case, the clash of interests was over Belgrade’s drive to
obtain an outlet to the Adriatic Sea through territory predominantly
populated by Albanian people. Austria-Hungary strongly opposed such an
expansion of Serbian territory and economic strength, which could only
translate into more trouble for the Habsburg monarchy later. Italy too
opposed the attempt, wary of another rival on the Adriatic or more
obstacles to its own aspirations on the Dalmatian coast.
In
the Conference of Great Power Ambassadors that met under the leadership
of British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, the Austro-Hungarians
made their opposition to the Serbian move clear, while the Russians
tried hard to support their client state. Serious tension arose between
the two great eastern monarchies, both of which significantly
strengthened their armed forces as the dispute simmered. Try as it
might, the Russian government could find no formula that would allow
Serbian egress to the Adriatic, and it ultimately had to negotiate for
the most advantageous inland border between Serbia and a newly
independent Albania that it could manage. This result was an
embarrassment relative to Serbia’s earlier demands, but Austria-Hungary
had repeatedly mobilized its army to force Serbia to withdraw, and
Russia refused to consider a European war over this question. Russia
still needed peace more than any foreseeable advantage offered by
Serbian expansion, so it supported only limited Serbian gains.
Bulgarian
aspirations appeared even more tangibly threatening to Russian
interests. During the First Balkan War, as Serbian forces pushed toward
the Adriatic and swept through Macedonia, the Bulgarian army pressed
toward the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, the capture of which would
have quickly elevated both Bulgaria’s cultural and political stature.
In October-November 1912 and then again during a renewed campaign in the
spring of 1913, Bulgarian forces appeared close to storming the
Chatalja lines, the last obstacle before Constantinople itself. Russia
panicked for two reasons. First, for reasons of cultural dominance, the
Russian regime feared the prospect of Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand riding
into a conquered Constantinople and re-Christianizing the former Hagia
Sofia Cathedral. This was not an idle concern – the Russians knew
Ferdinand had a Byzantine-style outfit (obtained from a theater company)
ready to wear if the opportunity arose. The Tsar of All the Russias,
whose old capital, Moscow, was thought of as the Third Rome in
nationalist ideology, could brook no competition for glory within the
faith. Second, the Russian government feared even more the consequences
of a Bulgarian presence on the shores of the Turkish Straits. As noted
above, the Russian leadership considered this waterway to be absolutely
vital to Russian security, and it would tolerate only weak Ottoman rule
as an alternative to direct control. A resurgent Bulgaria interfering in
Russian affairs could thus never be allowed.
While
the Bulgarians seemed poised for a strike on Constantinople, Russia
sought to prevent it. The Russians first tried persuasion, dangling
territorial concessions and financial incentives before Sofia. These
failed to dissuade, so Russia began to consider more forceful measures,
including the dispatch of warships and troops to the area. Warships were
prepared, several thousand soldiers were concentrated, and transports
found to move them. Remarkable on its own, this mobilization of forces
is even more important because it marks the first time since the
humiliation of the Russo-Japanese war that Russia prepared to employ
armed force to back up its diplomacy. Ultimately, the failure of the
Bulgarian army to storm the Chatalja lines meant that Russia did not
have to go to war to rein in its proxy. But the danger had not
completely passed. With the failure of the winter armistice, in
March-April 1913 the Bulgarians renewed their offensive and again
pressed toward the Chatalja works. As the prospect of Bulgarian entry
into Constantinople loomed once more, the Russians sought to repeat the
tactics of the previous autumn. Hampered by a lack of transport ships
this time, the Russian foreign ministry widened its diplomatic efforts
to restrain Sofia, while also seeking the acquiescence of France and
Great Britain to Russian action at Constantinople. The British agreed
not to oppose Russia, but the French displayed great discomfort at the
prospect of Russia installed in the Ottoman capital. Cholera in the
Bulgarian army, however, ended the chances of an advance, obviating the
need for direct measures.
The
split between Russia and Bulgaria was revealed in full during the
Second Balkan War, which began when Bulgaria attacked its former ally,
Serbia, in the hopes of dislodging Serbian occupation forces from that
part of Macedonian territory which Sofia felt it had been promised in
pre-war talks. Bulgaria soon found itself under attack from not only its
former allies, but also the Ottoman Empire and Romania, which entered
the fray hoping to fulfill its own territorial ambitions. While Russia
complained about the possibility of Christian territory in Thrace and
Adrianople returning to Muslim control, it quietly relished the humbling
of Bulgaria that ensued. Bulgaria’s defeat meant that Russia’s
interests at the Straits and Constantinople would no longer be subject
to the imminent threat posed during the Bulgarian campaigns in the First
Balkan War.
What
this review of the Balkan Wars at the start of the twentieth century
shows is that Russia was willing to sacrifice the interests of its
proxies, Serbia and Bulgaria, when those states exposed Russia to
unwelcome risk, setting a pattern of behavior that extended into the
late twentieth century. Whether this peril manifested itself in the
threat of direct Austro-Hungarian involvement in the war to keep Serbia
from gaining a port on the Adriatic, potentially widening the war to
include the great powers, or in Bulgarian occupation of Constantinople,
which would have undermined Russian strategic interests there and at the
Turkish Straits, Russia had little patience for its proxies’ pursuit of
their interests at the expense of its own. Russian encouragement and
protection of its proxies lasted only so long as they did not compromise
their patron’s broader goals.
Rising tensions
in the relationship between the United States and Russia are beginning to cause
a "Cool War" -- a sort of Cold War-lite -- that threatens both Washington and
the entire global geopolitical system. Without a functioning relationship between Washington and Moscow, the
chances of solving major challenges -- from Iran to Syria, the Arctic to
Afghanistan -- decreases dramatically. Rather than accept the arc of a
deteriorating relationship, the United States should actively seek every
possible zone of cooperation we can find with Russia, despite the frustrations
and setbacks.
