At the verge of war, the German government was practically forced to justify the declaration of war due to their unalterable mobilization plans. Although the alliances were constantly changing and evidently did not guarantee support and co-operation in all circumstances, the fact of their existence led other countries to frame their own policies in accordance with what seemed to be the permanent alignments with which they might be confronted in a war. Thus both political expectations and military plans were conditioned by the existence of the alliance system and strengthened the divisions the alliances themselves tended to produce. The decisions of the general staffs often committed them to irreversible military actions if war threatened, and consequently in a crisis the freedom of action of the ministers was often more restricted than they themselves realized. Seemingly, the diplomats had been bereaved the control of affairs by the generals. The military plans and hypothetical discussions that had accompanied the treaties of alliance had suddenly become the crucial elements, and not the treaties themselves. The allies had already decided how best to combine and mobilize their forces, in order to conquer the expected attacks of the most likely enemies, and the generals proved unwilling to alter their plans although a major war could possibly have been avoided.
In fact, there was nothing formally binding about the treaties, and as Italy came to prove in 1914 it was possible to avoid war within its terms. However, when the alliances did not provide the immediate diplomatic support for which the governments were hoping the participants were sometimes all the more anxious to ensure that the alliance would function more effectively next time in order to be preserved. An important motive for the German decisions of July 1914, was the realization that Austria-Hungary was her only reliable ally and that she must be supported at all cost in any policies which the Austrians thought essential for the survival of the Habsburg state, due to the Austrian belief that Germany had not supported her sufficiently in the previous year. Russia saw the need to consolidate their alliance with France and tighten up the agreements with Britain by negotiating for naval co-operation. Moreover, a Great Power could have its policies to some extent determined by the need to retain the friendship of a small power and to keep it within its diplomatic system. As the Balkan countries showed their capacity for initiative, the Great Powers were anxious to recruit them into their respective alliance systems; but the price was a promise of support for the local ambitions of the small states. The Russian government knew in July 1914 that they had failed to support Serbia in the previous year as eagerly as the Serbs had hoped; and failure to support Serbia again, the Russians thought, would mean the end of Russian prestige in the Balkans. With the alignment of two rival alliance systems, the winning of an additional state to their side was of great importance for the governments.
To conclude, it cannot be said that the alliance systems themselves magnified the war by involving the nations since no nation had to declare war merely because of the treaties. However, they indeed encouraged war by offering military support and co-operation, and provided the framework for the creation of rigid mobilization plans, as they conditioned expectations about the form a war would take if it broke out, and about who were likely to be friends and who enemies. Lastly, the Great Powers were more or less forced into the war with their respective allies in order to maintain their diplomatic relations and prestige. By these reasons, the alliance systems in Europe constituted a major indirect cause of the First World War.
