The closest clear ally to provide force was Italy, who agreed to cede neutrality in exchange for
key territory on the Dalmatian Coast and the Western Balkans. In addition, they required that
the Serbs would lose any seaports they had acquired from the Western Balkans.
8
As the
Serbs lacked any valuable challenge to this decision by allied powers, their greatest hope for
retaining territory or power in the region was to cooperate with the Croats and Slovenes. In
addition, allied efforts to attract Romanian and Bulgarian support required that lands
belonging to or desired by the Serbs would be handed over to the new Balkan ally. While
Bulgaria sided with the Central powers, and were instrumental in the final push of the Serbs
out of Balkan lands, the Romanians had agreed to side with the allies in order to gain valuable
land.
9
While neither of these territories proved to be great powers, they were indeed a
credible threat to Serbian interests. The difficulty in tying the threat to the balancing literature
occurs when one tries to establish the origin of the threat. On the one hand, Romania and
Italy proved a possible, but not overwhelmingly powerful threat to Serb interests. One could
view their acquisition of Serb lands as possible without violent threat or physical violence. In
such a case, is the threat in question the existence of neighbor states with territorial interests,
or the threat of settlement decision-making by the allied powers?
One way to answer this question is to identify the third pillar of Serbian motivation for
unification.
I believe that the third motivation for the Serbs was indeed the fear of the ability
and freedom of allied power to determine the peace settlement outcome regardless of Serb
favor. In the absence of any real power or continued contribution to the conflict, Serbia
lacked a credible claim for allied consideration. Indeed, if it was the allies that gained the
8
Lederer, Ivo. Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference: A Study in Frontier-making. Yale
University Press, 196316-20.
9
ibid, 18-24.
Convention