AH Challenge: Three Emperors League Survives

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the League of the Three Emperors survive into the 20th Century, with a POD after 1870. On a side note, if they did stay together, what sort of alternate alliances would've been made between the other powers?
 
This is tough; Austria and Russia are soon going to hate each other. I think your best bet is to immediately give them an enemy, so AH has a bigger threat than Russia. The most obvious candidate is Italy, which has claims on many Western parts of AH. Italy can't go alone against Germany, AH, and Russia, however. France, at least, would have to join Italy. So a good POD would be in the Franco-Prussian War-maybe France does better, and Napoleon III remains in power. As both Italy and France have disputes with the Three Emperors league, they drift into closer orbit. AH recognizes this, and decides to try and work out differences with Russia rather than having TWO enemies on her borders instead of one. Nevertheless, the Franco-Italian axis isn't enough to keep the League together since it isn't powerful enough to defeat them. However, if we add Britain to this mix, then we have a solid bloc. Adding the British isn't that hard, either. All we need is to have the 'Great Game' develop into something much nastier than OTL, which isn't too hard. A few boarder skirmishes would do it, or more pledged support for the Ottomans in 1877 War. Now we have Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia, all with enemies outside of the League. None of them are going to want to break-up the league because of this.
 
This is a pretty tough challenge. All three parties harbour varying degrees of resentment, hostility, or suspicion towards their fellows. Germany alone makes this a difficult proposition; Bismarck defined his foreign policy in part on not letting natural alliances tie him down, so sooner or later something (rising russian power, say) will encourage him to abrogate the treaty, or at least drift away. On the other hand, the act of balancing the Austro-Russian alliance probably cannot survive Bismarck's departure, especially under OTL's circumstances. Wilhelm is just too volatile a personality to make this work, methinks (keeping Frederich III alive also complicates matters).

Realistically, the only way that I can see this agreement working in the long term is if one can clamp down on Austro-Russian tensions. Germany can probably be buddies with either, but keeping them both on the same side will prove tricky. A good bet would be to focus both powers attentions on the Balkans. This drives the Ottomans firmly into the British camp, as a bulwark against their two old enemies. France and Britain I think also gravitate together; France needs allies in this scenario, and isn't likely to get them anywhere in the East, while the British are not likely to care much for the alliance forming on the continent. Italy may also wind up in alliance with Britain and France, due to a mix of territorial aspirations against austria and concerns about the reverse.
 
Two possibilities:

First, as others have noted, the situation in the balkans will have to change so that we get some kind of renewed Crimea coalition of the UK, France, Italy and the Ottomans.
Now, the OTL development of 1876 to 1878 left the Russians angry at A-H for spoiluing the Russian plans and at Germany for Bismarck letting it happen. Can we get an situation where Vienne is supportive of the treaty of San Stefano and mainly London opposes it? Probably not. Unless Russia commits firmly to Austrian goals beyond SE Europe., like, hm, helping Austria conquer Italy. But that is silly.

So we might have to derail it earlier - by making the 1877/78 war a crushing defeat for Russia, perhaps accompanied by cossacks commiting some atrocities that turn Western European opinion against Russia. So, the different Dabubian principalities stay Ottoman vassals, a somewhat stronger OE and the UK begin to patrol the Black Sea, France and Italy tag along. The Russian-Austrian rivalry is postponed, since the Sick Man doesn't look so sick in this TL.

But what is in this for Germany? Bismarck wanted the 3EL since it would help to isolated France, his main goal. The whole construction above does not help that much, since France isn't interested in the whole Ottoman situation that much by 1880 - well, in the Levant, but that agains is not Russias main interest.

Another possibiliy, much closer to home: another Polish insurrection during the 1880s. Keeping the Polish people down was a traditional pastime of Prussians, Russians and Austrians. A violent Polish uprising, perhaps with ties to secret French support, would help tie the 3 empires closer together and turn them against France. For that, we would need a much more adventurous French government.
 
Top