“The British post-war division of the former Ottoman Empire’s Middle Eastern possessions is what directly lead to our modern problems in that region, of course.”
Yup—WW I was a disaster on so many levels—it seems like everybody was worse off after it than before it—if not immediately—then soon enough with another war on the horizon.
Nobody seemed smart enough to figure out the second and third order effects...
True. As Axel Oxenstjerna, the Swedish chancellor in the 17th century, said, there would be amazement if it were known how little wisdom were among the rulers of the earth.
The Great War was no exception.
What’s really screwed up is that the Europeans had observers in the US Civil War where it devolved to trench warfare and machine guns had showed up to start industrialized killing - Gatlings - yet they didn’t see that ever happening in their wars. The Spanish learned from this, having been on the receiving end of it again in the Spanish American War and that was one reason they stayed out of WW1 - but none of the other powers did. They weren’t even smart enough to figure out the first order effects - and that there wasn’t going to be any Short, Victorious War at the current tech level.