Okay, that’s scary. I was just looking at this graphic on wikipedia a few hours ago.

The graphic includes some of the alliances that were not upheld in the end (Italy-Austria, or instance), but ignores the Three Emperor’s League, etc.

Or, as think I’ve suggested before, consult Gravity’s Rainbow for the story of WWI Brigadier Ernest Pudding:

“He was pensioned off around the beginning of the Great Depression… to go at a spot of combinatorial analysis, that favorite pastime of retired Army officers, with a rattling intense devotion.
It occurred to him to focus his hobby on the European balance of power… He started in on a mammoth work entitled ‘Things That Can Happen in European Politics.’ Begin, of course, with England. ‘First,’ he wrote, ‘Bereshith, as it were: Ramsay MacDonald can die.’ By the time he went through resulting party alignments and possible permutations of cabinet posts, Ramsay MacDonald had died. ‘Never make it,’ he found himself muttering at the beginning of each day’s work— ‘it’s changing out from under me. Oh, dodgy — very dodgy.’”

Clarification: to me, Pudding’s mania recalls, e.g., the egregious Kaplan’s “When North Korea Falls”

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200610/kaplan-korea

with its extended scenario of the “seven stages of collapse.” From Italy 1915 (and 1943) to Baghdad since 2003 to Nairobi and Islamabad next week to the clash of civilizations, I’d dearly love to see more humility in our games of “things that can happen.”

Curzon,

Please elaborate on your last graphic..
Are you suggesting Pakistan would – similar to the Balkans in WWI - be the location of the catalyst for war between the West+Japan vs our East Asian adversaries? I imagine India would be involved there too.. perhaps where Pakistan is now?

Well, Pakistan is the only country that comes to mind with massive US and Chinese aid, in various forms. There is no real deep meaning beyond that. Certainly if Pakistan were to implode, the reactions of the US, China and India do seem the most likely catalyst for a great power war in this century.