[FLT-bird]

Destroying the Hapsburg Empire was a huge mistake. It unleashed a lot of ethnic hatreds that the Hapsburgs had tamped down and it created an enormous power vacuum in Central Europe that would inevitably be filled by either Germany or Russia. There simply is not a single ethnic group in the region that is large enough to exert control. Therefore with lots of relatively smaller to medium sized countries, they were prime targets to be dominated by and feed the war machines of first the Nazis and then the Commies.

As with everything else done at Versailles, this was a huge blunder driven by French bitterness and envy toward Vienna as the cultural capital of Europe.

[Cronos]

The Hapsburg empire was going to die - either quickly or slowly. It could have been delayed if Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand wasn't assassinated -- he had an idea of a united states of central europe which would be a confederation like Switzerland

But even this had three fatal flaws --

1. The Poles had been divided for 123 years between the Austrians, the Germans (Prussians) and the Russians. Even if the southern part went to the confederation, the Prussians and Russians wouldn't like it. Even if Prussia and Russian parts were given independence, then the Poles would want that as a separate nation
   
2. The Romanians were divided between Romania and the federation - not a recipe for peace
   
3. The Serbs (especially those in Bujovina and Bosnia) were divided and wanted those lands -- this was the powderkeg that blew up

The Hapsburg and Ottoman empires were due to disintegrate - either in 1918 or in 1930s latest.