I don't think pretty much everyone agrees. I went on a WWI reading binge earlier this year, and of the 4 books on the war written in this millennium, none descr

I don't think pretty much everyone agrees. I went on a WWI reading binge earlier this year, and of the 4 books on the war written in this millennium, none described a general European war as unavoidable. There had been major crises in the previous few years that didn't lead to one. And while the trend had been for increased polarization, there was good reason to believe that the tide was turning. France was a month away from getting a pacifist government that was looking to patch things up with Germany (and would've had one by the time of crisis, except for by a freak occurence in the form of the Caillaux affair). Russia was losing their shot on Constantinople at the end of that summer, when the Turkish Dreadnaughts would've been delivered. In Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand was the main driver for peace, and the main warmonger (Conrad )was about to be sacked. England was likely to detach itself from Russia when the next round of treaty negotiations over Persia came up. Germans were convinced that a war against Russia would be unwinnable in a couple of years. So there's some reason to believe that the time window for a general European war was fairly short, and it was only by bad luck that something sufficiently serious happened in that window.