Dynasty, Generals, Diplomats: the Instruments of Habsburg Foreign Policy

Abstract

The state, regardless of its political structure, exists in part to protect its citizens and their property, to defend their interests abroad and to pursue a foreign policy that achieves these goals. Diplomatic service, military and naval forces, economic and propaganda activities all facilitate the state’s execution of its responsibilities.¹ The Austro-Hungarian state constituted a special case, for foreign policy provided the essential raison d’être of the Dual Monarchy. This foreign policy function had impelled two increasingly quasi-independent states to share a common monarch, a common army and navy and a common foreign policy after 1867. Beyond the monarchy’s sheer survival, it existed to fulfil a set of familiar foreign policy functions in central and southern Europe. If it achieved those tasks, the multinational, dynastic enterprise might endure despite its anomalous status during an age of nationalism. Failure to fulfil those tasks would almost certainly ensure the monarchy’s decline, if not demise.²