[quote=Dinh AaronMk]
Yea sure, but it was simply Russia declaring war on Russia because they were "afraid" of their industry. They went to war because they had to.Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia over the Arch-duke, which prompted Russia to declare war on Austria-Hungary yo protect their Balkan lapdog, prompting Germany to get more involved and to demand Russia cease their general mobilization. Russia refused and Germany had to act on their commitments to its allies and declared war on Russia.At the same time they demanded France not get involved, in response France mobilized her reserves which threatened Germany.What arms race there was didn't initially involve Russia, given they were in any case an industrial cluster-fuck incapable of doing much of anything (even more so their army where even though it was large it was about as effective as erectile dysfunction). The arms race that existed was predominately between the Germans and the British with the goal of the Germans being to equip the Kaiserreichmarine to counter the British Royal Navy. France followed later because fuck it. Russian naval capability was destroyed if not greatly humiliated by Japan prior to the build-up so they didn't have anything to build off of and got themselves ruled out for the Anglo-German dick measuring contest
[/quote]

What you ignore is that Russia had begun to modernize, it's economy was growing rapidly and it had started to build railroads. The Germans thought that by 1917-1918 they would be no match for Russia. This was one of the big reasons why the Germans gave their blank check to Austria-Hungary during the July Crisis. Serbia was seen as essentially a satellite of Russia and had recently grown in strength during the Balkan Wars, this was compounded with the fact that in the Austrian government there was a strong imperialist group which wanted to declare war on Serbia. One of the arguments these imperialists used was that Russia and Serbia were going to be too powerful to stop soon and that unless they declared war on Serbia now then even with Italy and Germany at their side Austria-Hungary would be overrun.