The long term causes of World War I were nationalism, militarism, and alliances. Nationalism was a cause because many of the nations involved had extremely high nationalism and believed that their country could be successful in winning the war; these nations were not going to back down in the war to another nation's power. This also served as the basis for alliances for different nations began to ally with each other causing distrust in other nations. Militarism served a role in the long term cause of war because of Germany building up its naval military so much, Britain began to worry about a war coming up and began to try to keep up with advances. A shorter term cause of WWI was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary
