Le problème de la sécurité dans le Sud-Est Européen de l’entre-deux-guerres : à la recherche des origines du Pacte Balkanique de 1934

Abstract

Following the First World War, the system of treaties was newly and seriously questioned in the Balkans under the impact of the revisionist policies of Bulgaria on the one hand, and on the other of certain Great Powers, mainly the U.S.S.R., Italy and Germany later. The efforts of the Balkan States to safeguard their territorial security according to the methods of the League of
Nations were, however, to prove futile. This inability to put into effect the system of collective security obliged the states of South-Eastern Europe to search for a balance of power based on the traditional system of alignments and alliances; and though initially these states were satisfied with bilateral agreements, the general European crisis of 1933 contributed to their decision to form a broader coalition, which would enable them to neutralize the inter-Balkan revisionist tendencies as well as the pressures of the great Powers. The refusal of Bulgaria, however, to adhere to a pact that guaranteed the territoral status quo once more did not allow the formation of a general Balkan Pact on the model of Locarno. All the same, the rest of the Balkan States, that is Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia and Rumania, did not hesitate to sign the Pact of the Balkan Entente on 9 February, 1934, in Athens.