What if Tsar Alexander II's Russia gave a hard pass to the Russo-Turkish war of 1877?

[raharris1973]

There are much cleaner PODs.

The cleanest is that the Ottomans are able to keep much more of a lid on the Balkans ITTL, so there are no Balkan revolts in the first place or they don't get international attention. This is actually a huge POD by itself, since if they continue to have success here, it butterflies away the 1912-13 Balkan wars and also the Great War, at least the OTL version.

A less clean version is that the British, after the Crimean War, take more step than to demonstrate that they will check Russian expansion against the Ottomans and in the Black Sea.

Nevertheless, I fully recognize that these PoDs would have done a bang up job of killing the incentives for Russia to go to war at that time, or deterring Russia from going to war if it were contemplating it. So I certainly see them as *effective* PoDs for keeping Ottoman territorial integrity and restraining Russia.

 

[lynxpt]

Look, all other European states had been cool with what OE was doing. Why would this be Russian business? Anyway, talking about the humanitarian reasons (which was the official spiel that made AII a laughingstock of Europe) is not very convincing for the regime that conducted genocide in the Caucasus and conquered the CA. As a pure imperialism it was foolish as well: the worst ROI. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich described Russian diplomacy as “historically idiotic” and I quite agree with him.

What is "ROI"?

 

[HunterX]

What is "ROI"?

return on investment