Greetings! This is a rather good question, and it is becoming increasingly important in First World War historiography to understand exactly why these two Balkan Wars did not erupt into continental wars, whereas the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 did. This response will deal with Austria-Hungary’s policy at the outbreak of both wars separately. I have adapted this previous writeup on the First Balkan War with regards to Austro-Hungarian diplomacy for the first part. Let’s begin.

The First Balkan War

When war in the Balkans broke out in October 1912, the Austro-Hungarian government had been caught off guard. Their military attaches in Belgrade and Constantinople were off on holiday when hostilities started, and the Common Ministerial Council back in Vienna had been stalling on proposed increases in military expenditures. As soon as war did break out, they immediately approved funding for artillery pieces and fortifications. Meanwhile in the government, the Austro-Hungarian politicians were caught between a rock and a hard place. Their aims and actions in the Balkans were driven almost entirely by a desire to maintain the *status quo* of ensuring that the Ottoman Empire remained in Southeastern Europe, if only to stop the other Balkan powers from gaining too much territory and influence. Likewise, they had to assess the threat each member of the Balkan League posed, and how best to deal with that possibility. Remember as well that the Austro-Hungarians still had some (if limited) faith in the Concert of Europe, the system of continental diplomacy which by the early 1900s was beginning to crack. So what did the Habsburg Empire make of the combatant nations in the First Balkan War? Of all the members of the Balkan League, Serbia was the chief rival of the Austro-Hungarian politicians and war planners. Serbia's war aims in the First Balkan War included the Sanjak, a province which would give it a border with Montenegro, parts of Kosovo, and most critical of all: a window to the Adriatic. This access was what Austria-Hungary feared most above all. It already had to deal with Italy's threat to the Adriatic on its southwestern border, having to deal with Serbian possessions on the Adriatic on its southeastern border would be (at least it was predicted) catastrophic to the already declining influence of Vienna and Budapest in the region. Montenegro too, was also a threat to the Austro-Hungarians, for it already had a small portion of the Adriatic coast under its control, and those in Vienna wished for it to remain a small portion. Bulgaria on the other hand, if enlarged as a result of the war, was a result that the Austro-Hungarians were willing to accept (as that country had distanced itself from Russia in earlier years, and could potentially serve to check the future expansions of the other Balkan states). The existence of an independent Albania was also desirable, because the Habsburg economy already had considerable influence in the region, and its politicians believed that Albania would become an Austro-Hungarian client state.

Beyond the Balkans however, the Austro-Hungarians feared the indirect consequences of an enlarged Serbia (with its active Pan-Slavic nationalism) would invite Russia to hold greater sway over the Balkans, which would in turn lead to foreseeable dissent amongst the Slavic populations in the Empire's southern and eastern provinces. Russia had already ordered a trial mobilisation on September 30th, 1912, just days before the outbreak of the First Balkan War. The Austro-Hungarians in term, came alarmingly close to ordering their own mobilisation, placing troops in Bosnia and Dalmatia on war-readiness, alongside reinforcing the garrisons in Galicia, which bordered the Russian Empire. Interestingly, the Germans were far less escalatory in their own measures following the trial mobilisation, and an Austro-Hungarian delegation to Berlin was unable to secure firm German backing if Austria-Hungary initiated armed conflict against either Russia or the Balkan League (of note here is the fact that the head of that delegation, one Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had a more middle-grounded stance on the problem of Slavic nationalism). After British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey invited the various governments in the region to an international conference, the First Balkan War came to a close, and Austria-Hungary breathed a sigh of relief that its worst fear; a resurgent Serbia and Russian dominance in the region, were not realised by the resulting Treaty of London (1913).

Part 1 of 3