Yet another example of how Romulans have stomped all over the Federation. It's amazing how most every species considering even entering their space as an act of aggression and even war...yet the Romulans have done all sorts of things and the Federation has done nothing. They SHOULD have declared war on the Romulans a long time ago. I'm curious if the Romulans could so totally control Geordi why wouldn't they take that opportunity to just have him give the entire Enterprise specs or information about weapons, etc? Also since Geordi touched the chips they could have just taken his finger prints off of it haha.
yes, what the Romulans did was an act of war. They've done other stuff throughout the series that could be considered acts of war as well, as have other powers(the Cardassians in "the wounded" and "chain of command.") the bottom line is that TNG was not going to be a "war show" so the various incidents are just dealt with as isolated events. also, just because sometjing can be considered a legal justification for war doesn't mean that war is necessary. The UFP probably just kept considering cost/benefit analyses and deciding that war wasn't worth it.
Yeah but at some point enough has to be enough. Abducting Geordi to make him an assassin, firing on the Enterprise (numerous times), intrusions into the neutral zone, obvious admission of spying / espionage. Stealing the Enterprise schematics via the Klingon spy, taking humans as concubines (Sela), etc. It's quite amazing really...
^^ also the thwarted invasion of Vulcan (as discussed in another recent thread). Yeah, it's always emphasized that one not dare give a dirty look across The Neutral Zone, lest the Romulans be provoked to aggression and lead to treaty violations and war. Yet incident after incident, the Romulans keep pulling stunts that make "The Enterprise Incident" seem tame. And they always get away with it.
One wonders what could be accomplished by war. The Feds apparently defeated the Roms in the mid-22nd century war, and locked them behind the Neutral Zone. That never stopped the villains from being villainy: they just rebuilt their fighting strength and went on being pains in the ass. Apparently, the only apparent way to stop the villainy would be to kill all the Romulans, from grannies who still remember the Old War to babies who have barely learned to curse the Federation. Anything short of that would simply get some UFP citizens killed for no gain. Timo Saloniemi
what? Where does that ridiculous either/or dilemma come from? All the UFP is trying to do is stop the routine Romulan provocations. A one-off military strike at a strategic target instead of open war is a possibility. It's called keeping a deterrent factor. If you don't eventually respond to routine provocations, opponents can see it as projecting weakness.
But a one-off strike would specifically mean "projecting weakness", if the Romulans learned that the Feds were unwilling to do anything real about the Romulan threat. Remove Romulan fighting ability for a few decades... Sounds good for human politicians, but Romulan ones live for centuries and will not be impressed. If you always wear velvet gloves, you'll be seen as a dandy, you will simply be a dandy, and the enemy will only get bolder. Why subject your soldiers and civilians to the risk of dying from doing merely to stop these "acts of war", which never really harmed anybody in TNG? The casualties in "The Enemy", "The Defector", "Unification" or "The Mind's Eye" were all exclusively on the Romulan side. Why go to war to stop the enemy from making an utter ass of himself? That sort of behavior should be encouraged instead! Timo Saloniemi
well I don't agree that an opponent would see ANY response short of total war to be projecting weakness. Proportionate response can be effective if used right. As to your second point, if the UFP keeps giving the Romulans the opportunity to see their schemes through to completion, they're going to do some real damage at some point.
The problem with that is asymmetry. What is a barely tolerable campaign of brutality for the Feds is unlikely to shake the long-lived and war-hardened Romulans much. The track record isn't all that convincing yet. And the more failures there are, the less respect and support the Romulans get from the interstellar gallery of UFP enemies. We know the Romulans can't defeat the Federation on their own, but we also know their eagerness to get allies such as Klingons or Cardassians. The Feds fighting the Romulans back would only give them undue street cred! Timo Saloniemi