The big error from which everything else flowed was the progressives’ “captive nations” fantasy. Many examples abound.
Who can doubt the the Turk knew how to sort out the Arabs? How can the Eastern European microstates compete with Germany and Russia? Even today, in the Western fantasy of a unitary, imaginary “Ukraine” within its present borders there is nothing but smoke and bloodshed.
We need an Emperor in Vienna, and a Sultan in Constantinople, along with a Czar in St. Petersburg.
And the Dodgers in Brooklyn.
Then, there will be peace.
The Sultan in Constantinople was doomed no matter what. The rising ideology of the Turks at the time was for consolidation. They wanted to rid their country of the Arabs, they saw them as backward. They wanted a pure Turkish state that was secular and modern unencumbered by Islamic fanatics and backward tribesmen.
Don't forget a Hanoverian (or is it Stuart or Plantagenet) ruling over the 13 colonies again ...