The Kaiser was building ac enormous navy to rival the size of the Royal Navy despite having no Empire to speak of and concentrated almost entirely in the North Sea. Germany was Hell bent on making itself a dangerous rival, and he was being get belligerent about it.
Ach dumkopf! What about:
Africa:
Togo,
Cameroun,
Namibia,
Tanganyika
Ruanda-Burundi
Pacific:
German New Guinea
Marshall Islands,
Caroline Islands,
The Marianas
China:
The Tsingtao Concession
So of course the Kaiserreich needed a navy to protect and serve this far flung empire and their merchant marine. They did it with beautiful, fast light cruisers. The bigger German surface units were reserved for their Home Fleet, in an attempt to match the British in the Atlantic and North Atlantic. Didn't work. They went to submarine warfare, sinking four British Cruisers in one day .... but eventually that didn't work out for them either.
I must confess I subscribe to the latest Buchanan Theory: that we fought WWI to preserve the British Empire, which wasn't any more democratic than the German Empire. It's just that the British thought no one else should have one! After the war, the Brits took over all the German Colonies in Africa, the Japs, all their Pacific colonies, except their part of New Guinea, which went to the Aussies.
The Kaiser? Maybe not such a bad guy after all? Lot nicer than Adolf, the true legacy of WWI!
So the worst possible outcome is that perhaps England and Germany sit down and divy up the spoils between them. Beat the alternative.