NicolasG I hope you will not mind I quote your posts, you made me go and read more on that historic period I find the most interesting. Obviously being Greek myself I find it hard to see things from the perspective of people from outside of the Balkans, and I believe it's hard for anyone outside the Balkans realise how we in this region feel about history of our countries.
I object to the use of "excuse" to describe the reaction of Austria to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. A team of murderers is trained by the Serbian army, provided with weapons by the Serbian army, smuggled across the border by Serbian border guards and hidden in safe houses following the plan of senior Serbian officers, including the head of the Serbian Intelligence service, Dragutin Dmitrijevich, "Apis". The Serbian government knows about it, but fails to do anything to avert it or to give a clear warning to the Austrian authorities.
I also would have used the word ''excuse'' only to imply that Austria had already decided they wanted war and the only thing they were thinking of was how to declare one. As to inform the Austrian authorities, I believe I have read something about diplomats who later said they had, but that was not a good moment for diplomacy, of either side.
''Immediately following the assassinations, the Serbian ambassador to France, Milenko Vesnić, and the Serbian ambassador to Russia, Spalaiković, put out statements claiming that Serbia had warned Austria-Hungary of the impending assassination. Serbia soon thereafter denied making warnings and denied knowledge of the plot. Prime Minister Nikola Pašić himself made these denials to Az Est on 7 July 1914, and to the Paris Edition of the New York Herald on 20 July 1914. During the war, the former Serbian Military Attaché to Vienna, Colonel Lesanin, claimed that Prime Minister Pašić had ordered the Serbian ambassador to Vienna, Jovanović, to warn Austria-Hungary of the plot, but Jovanović carried out his instructions poorly''
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Crisis)
Regarding St. Vitus' day, Franz Ferdinand travelled to Bosnia to inspect military exercises that routinely took place in summer. It was not for the Austrian army to coordinate its calendar with Serbian mythology. The predatory intentions of Austria towards Slav countries in the Balkans in Serbian or Russian history books are just a projection of Serbian intentions, their Greater Serbia project. Austria did NOT want to annex Serbia and the Hungarians, who had a say on that matter, even less so. Franz Ferdinand is quoted as saying that annexing Serbia would only add "one more pile of thieves, murderers and rascals, plus a few plum trees" to the Empire.
Serbia was a bomb ticking across the border. The Austrians did not want to take it home. They wanted it deactivated. They would have been glad to see the Bulgarians (other Slavs) or Albania taking part of the land Serbia had acquired after the Balkan wars of 1912-13 and was busy getting ethnic-cleansed.
I wonder why were Bosnian territories more appealing to Austria, since they annexed them and by so acting they came closer to the Balkans and to Serbia. There must have been good reasons for expanding south taking risks.
''At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Andrássy obtained the occupation and administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and he also obtained the right to station garrisons in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, which remained under Ottoman administration. The Sanjak preserved the separation of Serbia and Montenegro, and the Austro-Hungarian garrisons there would open the way for a dash to Salonika that "would bring the western half of the Balkans under permanent Austrian influence." "High [Austro-Hungarian] military authorities desired [an...] immediate major expedition with Salonika as its objective."
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnia_and_Herzegovina)
Austria sent an ultimatum with several points, some of which would have allowed the presence of Austrian troops in Serbia. It was not different to what NATO requested in 1999 to avoid a repetition of the Bosnian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
This reminds us that all empires think they can dictate and decide on other countries but they rarely resolve the problems they use as an excuse to invade.
Of course, the NATO ultimatum, as the Austrian one, supposed a limitation of Serbian national sovereignity, but that is the consequence of being a rogue state, as Serbia was, in 1999 and in 1914.
So you made me search the definition of a rogue state:
As early as July 1985, President Reagan had asserted that "we are not going to tolerate … attacks from outlaw states by the strangest collection of misfits, loony tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich," but it fell to the Clinton administration to elaborate this concept. In the 1994 issue of Foreign Affairs, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake claimed "the reality of recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to remain outside the family [of democratic nations] but also assault its basic values. Lake labeled five regimes as "rogue states": North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and Libya. In theory, at least, to be classified as a rogue, a state had to commit
four transgressions: pursue weapons of mass destruction, support terrorism, severely abuse its own citizens, and stridently criticize the United States. While four of the listed rogue states met all these transgressions, Cuba, though still known for severely abusing its citizens and its strident criticism of the United States, no longer met all the transgressions required for a rogue state and was put on the list solely because of the political influence of the American Cuban community and specifically that of the Cuban American National Foundation. Syria and Pakistan, two nations which were hardly regarded by the United States as paragons of rectitude, avoided being added to the list because the United States hoped that Damascus could play a constructive role in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and because Washington had long maintained close relations with Islamabad—a vestige of the Cold War''
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_state)
Is there a similar definition of failed empires? Because I think at that point we had on one hand the Balkans that were full of countries that were new and with inexperienced adminitrations and on the other empires so old that were very close to their ends, even if they prefered to ignore the signs. In the July crisis I personally would expect more from Austria not only because they were the stronger but mainly because they should be the wiser and more experienced. Sadly they decided for war and we all know how it ended.
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