I always wonder if just ONE leader of the time, I am thinking most effective would have been Nicholas II or Herbert Asquith - had just stood up and said: “we are NOT mobilizing. Europe is going to destroy itself for the next century, and everyone needs to stand-down.”
Would everyone have come to their senses??
You raise an interesting thing to ponder. Leadership BEFORE the crisis might have been possible. Once the crisis was at hand, I can’t see it as a workable strategy. Nicholas II was a weak man, and defending the Motherland successfully was imperative to justify his rule. Cousin Willie peltered Nicholas with patronizing “advice” and arrogated personal seniority if not outright superiority. Then there is the problem that if your foe mobilizes and you don’t, your military will not be able to catch up — your goose is cooked (someone above mentioned that Wilhelm pushed Nicholas to stop mobilizing — as if that would not have completely derailed archaic Russia’s ability to get back on track). The Russian military, on which Nicholas depended to stay in power, would have ousted him rather than take such a risk. (For how unilaterally not mobilizing works in practice, see Trotsky’s “No War, No Peace” gimmick after Revolutionary Russia declared it was leaving the war — the German Army ate Russian territory like candy).
Asquith and Britain did not have the personal dynamics, but the geopolitical calculus would have been: if Britain does not enter the war, France and Russia will be quickly defeated and collapse, leaving Germany to turn its wolfish eye, and all Europe’s resources, on Britain. Even without an invasion, Britain’s economic and political standing would plummet.
Had the Russians alone not mobilized, there would have been no war.