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Interesting you mention the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The theory that a mobilized army means war was certainly true in 1914. Once Austria-Hungary started mobilizing, Russia mobilized, in response, the Germans mobilized, in response the French mobilized. Because the mobilization orders were intricate and exact (especially, since the troops were moved by railroad, all the RR schedules had to align), once the order to mobilize was given, there was no simple way to stop the mobilization. If an army did try to stop it, they would be left hopelessly fouled up, and vulnerable to enemy invasion. So even though no one really wanted a war, there was no one to stop the slide once mobilization started.

Anyways, Barbara Tuchman wrote a book about all this in 1962 called "The Guns of August". The Cuban Missile Crisis arose a few months later and this book appears to have been on everyone's mind. JFK is quoted as saying he didn't want someone to some day write a book called "The Missiles of October" because he had blundered into a war.

So, that teacher is wrong. Our command structure is intentionally set up so that the president can change his mind at the last possible minute. So like JFK in "13 Days" (and like every skipper in every movie about the Navy), the president can yell "Belay That!" just before the balloon goes up.

I would agree at some level with you about WW I. But, I think the driving force there was not the mobilization factor, which I have heard taught, but the secret treaties and counter-treaties the entwined the whole of the European continent between the ruling houses of Europe, which are all basically related.

These treaties were what resulted in the inevitable march toward war. Hence, Washington's warning about entangling alliances.

In my opinion, WW I was simply a war to destory the monarchies of Europe, which were all basically swept from the continent in 4 short years. Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungary, Ottoman Turks, Benelux countries. All these monarchies were swept from the throne or stripped of power because of their treaty-making fiasco.