The Typhon Pact

[captcalhoun]

Remember the "root beer" scene in DS9? The Federation has been the dominant political and cultural power in the quadrant for a long time, and a lot of other states see it as a bullying imperialist state, no matter how benevolent it believes itself to be. If you've been an also-ran to a more powerful entity for a long, long time, if you're sick of the way they condescend to you and try to convince you they know better than you do, then you're not likely to want to join forces with them. The Federation has a way of assimilating or at least domesticating the cultures that join it, and these groups don't want to end up drinking the root beer.

I DRINK YOUR ROOT BEEER!

[Christopher]

Sci's analysis is excellent. You can't truly understand an entire civilization with a blanket stereotype. Human nature includes everything from Gandhi to Hitler, from Kirk to Khan. Vulcan nature includes everything from Surak to V'Las. We've seen some friendly Tholians in Vanguard and elsewhere. We've seen Romulan dissidents who sincerely want to reunite with Vulcan and don't share their government's attitudes. And so on. Any blanket generalization you can make describes, at best, the prevailing attitudes of those who currently hold political or cultural dominance within the society. But every society has its dissenters, its internal disputes and disagreements. Any ruling ideology is going to have competition within the society and will sometimes give way to it. Heck, look how quickly the ideology of the United States government has changed since last year.

There's no such thing as a warlike species or a paranoid species or a diplomatic species. Those are racial stereotypes and are wrong on the face of it. There are only civilizations or nation-states whose current leaders or prevailing cultural mores are warlike or paranoid or diplomatic or whatever. But cultures tend to go in cycles and regimes inevitably change.

[Rush Limborg]

^I can barely believe I'm saying this, but...I agree with Sci.

With the exception of the Romulans, we don't really know that much about these Typhon-Pact nations. The Sundred had some nice info on the Tholians, but not enough to count as "world-building". So to assume we know enough about these cultures to pass judgements is quite...hasty.

Still...LutherSloan also has a nice point--the interactions these powers have had with the UFP have generally been hostile....

[Sci]

Thanks, Christopher, Rush. A few things, though...

Rush Limborg wrote:

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Still...LutherSloan also has a nice point--the interactions these powers have had with the UFP have generally been hostile....

To a point and within specific contexts. But it's important to remember two things:

1. The Federation has had on-going dealings with all of these states save the Holy Order. It's exchanged ambassadors with the Breen, Gorn, Tholians, Romulans, and Tzenkethi. That means that the vast majority of the time, Federation interaction with them has been non-violent, if sometimes adversarial. When we saw the Tholians attacking the Enterprise or the Gorn hitting Cestus III, those were the exceptions to the rule, not the normal (or only) interactions the Federation had with them.

2. In some of those hostile interactions, the Federation was the aggressor -- or, at least, was perceived to be such by the foreign state in question. Take, for example, the Federation's establishment of a colony on a Gorn-claimed world. The Gorn likely believed themselves under threat of imminent invasion from a vast empire they had never before encountered. Or take the Federation's deliberate decision to move into the Taurus Reach to try to scavenge technology from the Shedai -- a move that cannot fail to strike anyone who knows how dangerous the Shedai are as being anything other than deliberately provocative if not out and out aggressive and threatening to other cultures. Or, for that matter, take the Enterprise's and Excalibur's deliberate invasions of Tholian space in 2269 and 2298. Would a Tholian be accurate and fair, therefore, in criticizing the Federation as warlike and aggressive?

[Christopher]

^Again, excellent points, Sci. The Gorn in particular have had mostly friendly relations with the Federation as far as we can tell. They had a violent first contact due to a misunderstanding, with the Gorn acting to defend themselves against what they believed were invaders. After that, though, relations seemed to go pretty well. They must have, since the Gorn actually ceded the Cestus system to the Federation at some point. If they were a hostile power, there's no way that would've happened (since the UFP wouldn't engage in territorial conquest). The one instance of conflict we've seen since "Arena" was in The Gorn Crisis, but that was with a militant faction that assassinated the sitting regime and was then defeated by Picard. If anything, the Gorn are indebted to the Federation for that.

As for the others, just because we've seen periods of conflict in the past doesn't mean those nations are defined solely by enmity. Look at real history. Over the course of its existence, the United States has at various times been at war with Great Britain, France, Mexico, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Japan, and other states that are now our allies.

[Deranged Nasat]

Rush Limborg wrote:

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Still...LutherSloan also has a nice point--the interactions these powers have had with the UFP have generally been hostile....

Not that there's much to add to what others have posted above, and this is rehashing old points anyway, but remember the interactions between some of the Typhon Pact members have also been generally hostile in the past. Past hostility has already been overcome there, or at least buried in the interests of toleration. Breen and Romulans, for example, have shown great disdain for one another in several stories and found themselves on opposite sides of a major armed conflict, too. Yet they have evidently decided to put that behind them or overlook it in order to work together. Past interactions aren't necessarilly that meaningful anymore; the Borg invasion shook things up too much. Judging post-2293 Klingon/Federation relations on the basis of past interactions is not too meaningful. Judging post-2154 Andorian/Vulcan relations on the basis of past interactions means little too. Or, the other way around: judging post-2153 perceptions of the Guardians by the Xindi government(s?) on the basis of prior perceptions would be flat-out foolish. Major, rather sudden events simply changed the galactic political landscape too much for the state of things in the past to truly matter to a majority of people. The Borg invasion was another such sudden change. Placing too much faith in an analysis of past interactions might be a mistake.

[rahullak]

^
I agree with Sci and the others on the nature of the Pact. Sorry to go off-topic, but I was wondering if the Founders/Dominion would have any role to play in the politics of the Alpha Quadrant?

[Deranged Nasat]

rahullak wrote:

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^
I agree with Sci and the others on the nature of the Pact. Sorry to go off-topic, but I was wondering if the Founders/Dominion would have any role to play in the politics of the Alpha Quadrant?

We'll have to wait and see what the DS9 books do with the Dominion in the time between "Olympus Descending" and the Typhon Pact series. The last time we saw the Dominion

the Great Link had dissolved and each Founder had left to seek isolation, with only Odo and Laas to hold the Dominion together. We can't even be sure there will BE a Dominion in 2382...

[rahullak]

^Thanks!

[LutherSloan]

Sci wrote:

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Or, for that matter, take the Enterprise's and Excalibur's deliberate invasions of Tholian space in 2269 and 2298.

Don't you mean the Defiant? Or am I missing something?

[JarodRussell]

Does the Typhon Pact have anything to do with the Typhon Expanse from Enterprise (I hope that's not a too dumb of a question to ask)?

[LutherSloan]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Does the Typhon Pact have anything to do with the Typhon Expanse from Enterprise (I hope that's not a too dumb of a question to ask)?

Yes, the pact members met for the first time somewhere in this region and established the Typhon Pact.

[Sci]

LutherSloan wrote:

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Don't you mean the Defiant? Or am I missing something?

Actually, it should be Excelsior. Captain Sulu had his ship brought into Tholian territory in The Lost Era: The Sundered, but it appears that my brain turned "Excelsior" into "Excalibur."

[Christopher]

JarodRussell wrote:

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Does the Typhon Pact have anything to do with the Typhon Expanse from Enterprise (I hope that's not a too dumb of a question to ask)?

The Typhon Expanse is actually from TNG; it's where the Enterprise and Bozeman were trapped in a time loop in "Cause and Effect." You seem to be confusing it with the Delphic Expanse from the third season of Enterprise.

Typhon was a mighty monster from Greek mythology, kind of a multi-headed dragon that battled Zeus for rule of the universe. He was the father of many of the worst beasties of Greek myth, including the Hydra, and after Zeus defeated him and flung him down below the Earth, his upheavals became the cause of earthquakes and volcanoes. Presumably the Typhon Expanse was named in his honor, and the name "Typhon Pact" refers to a treaty signed somewhere in the Expanse (like the Warsaw Pact it's based on; the treaty that founded it was signed in Warsaw, Poland).

[Hartzilla2007]

LutherSloan wrote:

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Don't you mean the Defiant? Or am I missing something?

Actually since the last date given is 2298 I think Sci was thinking of the Excelsior.