Editing The World Wars (section)

===Alliances===
To prevent one country from getting too much power and hopefully prevent war through mutually assured destruction, the great powers formed increasingly complex and entangling military alliances, which ultimately coalesced into two pacts: the Triple Entente (France, Britain (kind of), and Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, and Austria), with the United States being free to do whatever the fuck it wanted in the Americas and eastern Pacific sans Canada. The Ottoman Empire was desperately trying to stave off its imminent and inevitable collapse, and the chaos in the Balkans would eventually lead them to try and join the Central Powers.

Japan was a special case. It had an alliance with Britain to act as a sort of "check" against the Russians and their Pacific ambitions, while also serving as an valuable ally against the German Pacific colonies. The benefit was also that Russia could act as an ally against the Japanese if they ever started looking towards Australia without Parliament's permission.

Serbia's national sovereignty was guaranteed by France and Russia, and Belgium received a guarantee from Britain that they'd intervene if Germany tried to use them to just waltz into France and thereby threaten Britain. Meanwhile Italy was in theory allied to the Germans and Austrian-Hungarians, but had stuff in Austria-Hungary that they wouldn't [[Blood Ravens|feel too bad about stealing]]. [[Tzeentch|If this all sounds very convoluted, welcome to the late 1800s.]]