Well there were the 2,000 troops on the three Vulcan ships, but what about the cloaked Warbird escort? While 2000 troops doesn't seem like a lot verse a planet, all they have to do is hold the government and a few key locations for long enough to have a full on claim to bring in the Romulan fleet as backup. Starfleet can't reasonably do something like an orbital bombardment. And there is no telling what the Vulcan's logical reaction would be in this situation. If the Romulans already have people in place on Vulcan, they might already hold a bunch of key places and just need troops as backup.
My theory is that hundreds of million of Vulcans were already in a "pro-unification" underground and were just waiting for a small representational appearance by the Romulans to start the process of pushing the existing Vulcan government out of to office and replace it with one of their own likely. The Romulan "troops" were there to show solidarity with the other Vulcanoids on the other side of the neutral zone. Once the Vulcan government (largely) peacefully changed hands, there would be a official notification of cancellation of Vulcan's (and it's colonies) Membership in the Federation. Subsequently, Vulcan and Romulas would become co-capitals of the "Vulcan Republic" All of that was secondary of course. The sole reason the Dominion was defeated was a group of people within the Federation bypass the ineffectual Federation Council and poisoned the Dominion's leadership, and then the cure was withheld until the Founders unconditionally surrendered.
Every time I see this header I read "UPN" -- i.e., the old Paramount Voyager network -- for "UFP." Conquered indeed!
ROMULAN HIGH COUNCIL: So you're telling me, you spent an enormous amount of resources just to get 2000 Romulan troops to land on Vulcan, thinking this would result in our conquering it? SELA: Yeah. ROMULAN HIGH COUNCIL: AND you failed. SELA: That Picard is a crafty one. ROMULAN HIGH COUNCIL: Execute her.
There are already so many strategy discussions on star trek adversaries. I would really like if this one is more about the cultural changes and the normal federation citizens in such a situation! These things are absolutely underdiscussed...
The Dominion seems culturally dead. I imagine on a Dominion occupied Earth you'd have just enough free time to eat and sleep and that's it. Keep people too busy or too tired to think of resistance. Klingons and Romulans would probably use military conquest to spread their culture as much anything. The ordinary person learns to say "Qa'pla" or "Jolan Tru" and they'd probably be fine.
What is with worshipping the founders? I could see founderism as the new state religion :-) Which jobs could the population get? Would there be absolutely no leisure activities that wouldn't be forbidden? Would the Dominion try to change the federation languages similar to 1984's Newspeak?
Nope the war was already effectively over by that point what with the combined Federation/Klingon/Romulan fleets in position to assault Cardassia Prime. Even the female founder pretty much conceded that the war was over and all they could do was make the alpha quadrant powers pay a steep price for their victory. And what largely lead to this point was - The Federation and Klingons retaking DS9 and cutting the Dominion off from the gamma quadrant. - The prophets keeping Dominion ships from crossing the wormhole. - The Romulans siding with the Federation and Klingons and turning the tide. - The Cardassians rebelling after the Dominion aligned with Breen and screwed them over - The Cardassians changing sides during the push to Cardassia Prime So nope Section 31 didn't affect anything except to make the Founders crazy enough to have their forces fight to the death since they probably felt they were screwed any way.
Ekoor: The Federation fleet has surrounded the planet. Kira: I want you to contact the Jem'Hadar and the Breen, and you order their ships to stand down. Garak: And order their troops on Cardassia to do the same. Female Founder: I will do no such thing. No, it wasn't the combined forces facing the Dominion that ended the war. While Starfleet and their allies likely (but not certainly) would have eventually won the war by force of arms, there is no way that force of arms resulted in the female Founder simply instructed enemy forces to stand down. She only did that after Odo proved the availability of a cure. Female Founder: I don't mind dying. It's knowing that my entire race is dying of the same illness and there is nothing I can do about it. As it turned out there was something she could do about it, surrender. The Dominion and it's allies were defeated by the illness created by S31, combined with the Founders narcissism. S31 created the condition that threatened the only thing that the Founders actually cared about, themselves.