I would like to throw in a few things here. Prior to about 1900, Britain saw its main enemies as France and Russia, and it was a colonial rivalry, not a continental one. This was still the era of splendid isolation of the British government, but during this time Britain did try to reach some sort of understanding with Germany to be able to use them against France and Russia. As an example of this I point to the Fashodia incident of 1896, which nearly brought France and Britain to war.
What changed after this was German policy. After 1871 Bismarck had pursued a policy of satiation, Germany was no threat to anyone because it had all the territory it needed. The Kaiser Wilhelm I despite being a bit odd (although not technically insane) was still willing to follow his advice. The change in German policy begins in 1888 when Wilhelm the II comes to the throne. He is also a bit odd; such oddities include his fetish of military uniforms and women’s arms. There were also homosexual scandals involving people close the Kaiser (the Prussia society frowned upon these things), although the Kaiser was not involved (and he was willing to blow the brains out of any newspaper editor who implied otherwise). However the most important of the Kaiser’s oddities (well for this debate anyway) was his obsession with proving how tough he was. He always used to sit on the hard chair even when a soft one was available, he used to boast about how he kept a loaded gun next to his bed and used to wear rings with the stones turned inwards to hurt people when he shook hands with him (the Kaiser thought that this would make him seem tough). You ask why do I tell you all of this? The point his that the Kaiser was not a constitutional monarch (in the modern sense), no the Germans had build a political and military machine of such awesome efficiency where the Kaiser was the only loose cog.
Thus when a Kaiser comes to the throne with and imperial sized chip on his shoulder which advisors he going to listen to. The ones who say lets go nice and gently and be nice to people or the ones that same Germany will be great (and by reflection the Kaiser) if it builds a fleet, gets colonies and builds a huge army. No the problem was that the Kaiser was willing to listen to the wrong advisors. Germany could have been in a far better position in 1914 if she had been so aggressive on the world stage prior to this. The fleet construction programme is the case in point. The programme was not just to build a few ships it was an undertaking to build 4 battleships every year until 1921 (I might have numbers wrong). Looking at that I cannot see how anyone can say the Germans were building these because they needed them, why build so many for so long? It could only have been directed at someone (namely Britain). For me the German government must carry a lot of the responsibility because its whole government policy seemed to be aimed at making enemies. This was because the government was lead by a man who had a massive inferiority complex.
