This scenario was born out of the combination of various ideas: to make a WWI-like situation where war does spread to every continent and pretty much every great and middle power of note; to create a scenario broadly similar to the USAO TL but a variant where the Union loses the ACW and a TL-191-like US/CSA division is created; and to reverse the alleged OTL political divide between the alliance blocs by making the *Alliance mostly liberal-democratic and the *Entente mostly conservative-authoritarian (of course, things were, and are, much more nuanced than that).
Its purpose is to develop an interesting strategic situation and not to obsess about what may or may not be the 'most probable' (as if) outcome of the various main divergencies used. It is acknowledged that certain butterflies may have been purposefully chosen for the sake of getting the desired outcome or keeping certain things familiar.