Factors...factors...factors of World War One...

In "The Armaggeddon Waltz," an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday, Frederic Morton describes a financially strapped and politically volatile world of 1913 Vienna. He makes the point that this was a place where Stalin and Trotsky (separately) planned for a communist revolution, where Hitler attended art school, and the archduke Franz Ferdinand met with the Austro-Hungarian emperor, his uncle, in an attempt to convince him to cease the military activities in Albania that were only further provoking the already angry Serbians; the seeds of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and even World War II could be traced back to this city. I found this quite interesting (although not Morton's final analysis that America could somehow be similar). There were so many infinitesimally minuscule factors that shaped the course of history leading up to the first World War that I think the conclusion that the war was an inevitable occurrence is an enormous oversimplification. For instance, there had already been numerous instance of imperial sabre-rattling, even when the alliance that existed in WWI were already in place, such as during the Second Moroccan Crisis. With WWI, it was just that no country backed down. What would have happened if Franz Ferdinand had convinced his uncle to pursue a less belligerent policy in the Balkans. Maybe a conflict similar to WWI would have occurred at a later date, maybe it would have never occurred, but there is no certainty about either option.