To what extent can WWI be deemed a failure?

The justification of both the outbreak and longevity of the First World War is a question of heated debate, initiated by those who started the war and further explored by historians up until the present day. Indeed, the extent to which the First World War can be deemed a failure has to be measured against its aims. If an allied victory was supposed to fulfil the promise that World War One would be ‘the war that ended all wars’, it failed to deliver.
The impact and consequences of the First World War include violent uprisings and periods of ethnic cleansing in countries such as Russia, Hungary and Germany. Moreover, the nature of the war – a war of attrition – left even ‘victorious’ nations struggling for resources (food and labour) and buried in debt. However, it is also important to consider the ideological impact the crumbling of multi-ethnic empires and Europe’s geopolitical composition. Indeed, it can be argued that Woodrow Wilson’s promise of self-determination granted independence and the promise of autonomous nation states to ethnic populations including the Armenians who suffered a brutal genocide at the hands of the Turks during the war. Therefore, it becomes clear that while to a large extent World War One only brought more violence and instability to Europe and indeed the rest of the world, it undeniably gave nation-states a new meaning and with that, autonomy a new weight of importance – a success that perhaps even the Allied powers had not recognised at the time.