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When you have that many protagonists, you probably have that number, squared, of motives. An arms race? Certainly. Face and prestige? Indubitably. A staring match determined not to blink first? Absolutely.
The first thing is that the trigger could have been almost anything.
The first step for an aggressive Germany must be to secure its rear, which means securing France. In WWI, the Germans ran into an aggressive admonition from the French at the start in the Battle of the Frontiers, which when backed with defense in depth back to the Paris-Marne area would have been a costly attack. The weak spot was Belgium and Flanders-Normandy, which would have cut the UK off and opened the way into the heart of France and Paris from behind. However, Moltke's execution of the von Schieffen deployment plan underestimated the determination of the Belgians, and the Belgian King above all, not to surrender to them, and their supply lines through the primitive Ardennes overextended at the same time as their insufficient forces failed to break the Nieupoort-Furnes line quickly enough to stop the flooding of the Yser when King Albert had the Nieuwpoort sluices blown. This completed the block of the German Army plan and reduced the options to the Germans of a withdrawal, which would have been politically impossible, or a series of feints, which is what the next three and a half years became. The determining factors were the demolition of the drainage system, which reduced the frontier area into the mudbath it is known as when the rains could not drain, aand the refusal of the French to cede an in of La Belle France to suck the Germans in and pinch them off. What was unacceptable is that those options were considered in the French Plans XVI and XVII, so it is clear those decisions were political and not military. Thereafter almost everything was reactive and not directive, to the extent that attack was only ever seen as head-on by both sides: I have explained elsewhere the exploitation of a counter-attack salient to break out of the flanks and finesse the breakthrough, which is what eventually happened in 1918, but more by chance than planning, and that shows a lack of lnowledge on both High Commands.
Consequently, there is nothing in the preparation and initial phases of WWI which gives any clue to what was to come, and looking at it from that angle does not create any explication or understanding of that. The Germans initially fought clear of a static battle, looking to outflank the French line and stopped only by their over-ambition or under-strength, depending on which way you look at it. They were every bit as underprepared for the resulting trench warfare and if anything had the greater problem, as they were on the outside of the curve of fighting lines between the Channel and Switzerland, and the more they advanced, the easier it got for the French - until, for example, Paris became the railhead in the final Battle of the Marne.

And that comes right back to what we've been talking about here, piss poor planning and an utter lack of proper preparation provoking pathetic performance. The High Command were entitled to that in the first couple of months while shaking themselves out and recognising what kind of war they had seetled into, but lacking the problems off landing on a defended coast they should have been able to execute a serious plan to defeat the Germans in 1915, when their forces were double stretched on the Russian Front. It took two years, 1942 and 1943, to prepare D-Day, a far more complicated effort as it required a seaborne invasion. The symptom we've been discussing, the homicidal killing of the troops, was only part of the problem. Kipling talks about "because you took the bank holiday off", which points out a far greater dissociation between the understanding of the Front in the UK than might be exoected. All of this "We Don't Want To Lose You, But We Think You Ought To Go" corroboraates a lack of deep determination - if it was serious, it would have been we're all going and we're all going as soon as we can, men, women and children. A nation determined to kill is formidable, as Israel is discovering. But instead, it was "Your Nation Needs You", "Dulci et Decorum est", a sense of chivalrous warfare - we got rid of that idea early in 1940 in WWII, but it does tend to cling on. This is what Germany does not understand about the UK, we became genocidal about them the second time around when we could well have been invaded in 1941 and everyone would have fought with everything we have. The UK doesn't have the option of fleeing as refugees, our backs are always to the sea and we learned from the Clearances that German mercenaries are not open to negotiation. I don't think we've got it out of our systems yet, it's part of the UKIP mentality.
That being said, it's the last line of determination: if we are to go, then we'll take an honour guard of the enemy with us. Far better is to act intelligently and find peace before it comes to that, peace not through a surrender but through adult behaviour, through building not the detente of fear, which is a Mexican standoff, but through the confidence of mutual strength. It's Putin's failure, his paranoia leading to a reversion to childhood in his accusations, straight out of the 1960s.
And that is why we must stop this throwback behaviour, of those who are still living in the last century somewhere. We have found a better way, I and the circle who held the peace for seventy years now, an entire generation which has not faced a major war, by applyig jaw-jaw rather than war-war. Yes, we must not forget, there is enough minor trouble to ensure that, but we must not wallow in it either.
Henry Ford said History is bunk, not because it is, but because living in it is. It must inform us, lest we have to learn its lessons again, but it must not not govern us, and living in it is a particular risk when working in traditional arts as we do here. Teribus lives there because he is too old to come with us, but this art must be for the future, and he now understands that every generation writes its own new pages. In time I will be past, but I'm not so far past yet as to have no vslid views on where we are now.
Keith, by contrast, may have lost it completely. His answer is to simplify and find beauty. I do.
How does this affect the future? We face extremists who have not learned that lesson, and we may have to revert in that last line of determination. It was that line among the Belgians in 1914 which led to that terrible war. They should not force us there. It was that line in the British in the summer of 1940, which might yet lead to the collapse of Europe if the UK pulls out. Angela Merkel has seen her dream come true in her dying Eastern Germany being allowed back into the integrated modern Germany, and she cannot believe that anyone would want otherwise. She did not understand just how alone and how determined the UK was then, in the 18 months between Dunkirk and Pearl Harbour, albeit with its Commonwealth allies: they did not face the reality of invasion within any two hours. It left too many buttons which can be pushed, and maybe we should push some as performers to ease that pressure. What is good that dialogue is essential: but there remain many in positions of power who abuse it, and are primitively abusers of the lowest order who should not be in those positions of power, because they are unworthy of them.