As a french, being enslaved by a german kaiser is not what I call a "petty dispute"
Responding to violence aimed at destroying or enslaving your society with enough violence to prevent it is kind of required by any society that does not have a death wish.
I can choose to respond with pacifism to violence directed at me. I do not have the right to choose that for anyone else, nor for my nation.
Would it really have mattered to the common man? Maybe not. did it matter to the common man that he or his sons got sent away to war to die? Definitely.
Pacifism can be a sensible policy sometimes. Some wars aren't worth fighting, even if you "win" or force a stalemate.
This is not entirely true. The term "war of attrition" came from WWI, and it was specifically referring to depopulating the opponent's country by killing all the males.
The Kaiser wasn't a bloodthristy genocidal maniac, and an unconditional surrender from the Entente would not have been the only outcome of an early peace. War reparations, and, as per most European wars, small territorial/colonial concessions would have been the far more likely outcome.
What really was at stake was national pride. For the ruling class, that was one thing that they would not surrender. The common man should not have given a rat's ass about.
I'm pointing out that if say the French had surrendered to the Germans early in WWI there's no historical evidence that that would have been the case, and likely countless lives would have been saved.
The destruction of the state is not synonymous with the destruction of the people in it. Most wars only seek to abolish state power, not the people that make up those states.
Or even earlier, France could have declared neutrality in regard to Serbia like Germany asked them to
E.g. the Germans believed the British wouldn't go to war with them over Belgium, the British knew Belgium was under threat in advance, but wouldn't draw a clear line in the sand telling the Germans that violating Belgium was an act of war.
Likely doing that would have kept Britain out of the war entirely since Germany would have attacked France directly.
Responding with violence actually is the only reason why there was WWI. Also every party that took part in the war saw it as an opportunity to further their own interests.
Doubly asinine to link that old utopian thought to mystical singularity nanobot swarms etc...
PS: nanobot swarms would make a terrifyingly effective military weapon.