Perhaps a long-range view that is still serviceable is precisely the one derived from old-fashioned analysis of the balance-of-power system, forgotten amid the debates over national or class responsibility. This view, suggested by Paul Schroeder in 1972, asks not why war broke out in 1914 but why not before? What snapped in 1914? The answer, he argued, is that the keystone of European balance, the element of stability that allowed the other powers to chase imperial moonbeams at will, was Austria-Hungary itself. The heedless policies of the other powers, however, gradually undermined the Habsburg monarchy until it was faced with a mortal choice. At that point, the most stable member of the system became the most disruptive, the girders of security—the alliances—generated destructive pressures of their own, and the European system collapsed. To be sure, Austria-Hungary was threatened with her own nationality problem, aggravated by Serbia. It could better have met that threat, however, if the great powers had worked to ameliorate pressures on it, just as they had carried the declining Ottoman Empire for a full century. Instead, the ambitions of Russia, France, and Britain, and the stifling friendship of Germany, only served to push Austria-Hungary to the brink. This was not their intention, but it was the effect.

The central fact of global politics from 1890 to 1914 was Britain’s relative decline. This occurred naturally, as industrial power diffused, but was aggravated by the particular challenge of Germany. Overextended, the British sought partners to share the burdens of a world empire and were obliged in return to look kindly on those partners’ ambitions. But the resulting Triple Entente was not the cause of Germany’s frustrations in the conduct of Weltpolitik. Rather it was the inability of Germany to pursue an imperial policy à outrance. Situated in the middle of Europe, with hostile armies on two sides, and committed to the defense of Austria-Hungary, Germany was unable to make headway in the overseas world despite her strength. By contrast, relatively weak France or hopelessly ramshackle Russia could engage in adventures at will, suffer setbacks, and return to the fray in a few years. Schroeder concluded: “The contradiction between what Germany wanted to do and what she dared to do and was obliged to do accounts in turn for the erratic, uncoordinated character of German world policy, its inability to settle on clear goals and carry them through, the constant initiatives leading nowhere, the frequent changes in mid-course.” All Germany could do was bluff and hope to be paid for doing nothing: for remaining neutral in the Russo-Japanese War, for not building more dreadnoughts, for letting the French into Morocco, for not penetrating Persia. Of course, Germany could have launched an imperialist war in 1905 or 1911 under more favourable circumstances. It chose not to do so, and German might was such that prior to 1914 the other powers never considered a passage of arms with Germany.

Instead, Triple Entente diplomacy served to undermine Austria-Hungary. Everyone recognized that it was the “sick man of Europe” and that its demise would be inconvenient at very best and would almost certainly expose the ethnic mare’s nest of southeastern Europe to civil war or Russian or German domination. Yet no one did anything about it. France could scarcely afford to—its security was too tightly bound to Russia’s—but France’s policy of wooing Italy out of the Triple Alliance was a grave setback, not for Germany but for Austria-Hungary. Russia brazenly pushed the Slavic nationalities forward, thinking to make gains but never realizing that tsarism was as dependent on Habsburg survival as Austria-Hungary had been on Ottoman survival. Only Britain had the capacity to maneuver, to restrain the likes of Serbia and Russia and take some of the Austro-Hungarian burden off Germany’s shoulders. And indeed it had done so before—in 1815–22, 1878, and 1888. But now the British chose vaguely to encourage Russia in the Balkans, letting Austria-Hungary, as it were, pay the price for distracting Russia from the frontiers of India. So by 1914 Austria was encircled and Germany was left with the choice of watching her only ally collapse or risking a war against all Europe. Having chosen the risk, and lost, it is no surprise that the Germans (as well as the other powers) gave vent to all their prewar bitterness and pursued a thorough revision of world politics in their own favour.