OK here is an article on causes of WWI.... economic reasons are among a whole network of other causes.
The causes of World War I, which began in central Europe in late July 1914, included intertwined factors, such as the conflicts and hostility of the four decades leading up to the war. Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism played major roles in the conflict as well. The immediate origins of the war, however, lay in the decisions taken by statesmen and generals during the Crisis of 1914, casus belli for which was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by Gavrilo Princip, an irredentist Serb.
Here, Ardy, I think you make the best possible case for causes other than economic for war.
It is quite true that the
immediate causes of World War I were ghastly, idiotic mistakes by aristocratic twits in high places, mainly in Foreign and War Ministries. Moreover, these incompetent twits were unable to correct their mistakes due to the inflexible avalanche of military timetables.
National rivalries were certainly involved, but I think any sensible assessment would admit that these rivalries were at such a high pitch due, primarily, to the struggle for resources and markets.
However, World War I was a century ago, in another world and in a vanished social order. The aristocratic ruling orders were securely seated in power, with little to gain and much to lose by a major war
[and, essentially, WWI wiped them out].
In stable societies with secure ruling classes, there is little incentive to engage in serious warfare -- what the Nazis were pleased to call "Total War." It is the moderately wealthy and sociopaths on the make who are most attracted to getting big bucks and quick bucks through war.
Needless to say, World War I precipitated the collapse of civilization all over the world, and brought to birth the violent, savage world which it is our lot to endure. Nowhere are there stable societies and secure ruling classes, and a kaleidoscopic parade of criminal gangs rule in every country, all out for their share of the loot. In such a nasty, brutish world, war and the profits of war reign supreme.
"To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say, a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or to an authority on Danish place names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or the war [if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this barbaric age]." ---Robert Graves
