Does the Federation "rule" the Galaxy? (ultimately)

So this is my first thread. I was pondering the similarities between the Borg and the Federation.

For instance, the writers chose to use the word "assimilate." Or that the Borg won't assimilate cultures that haven't reached a certain level of technology. Or the Borg are always expanding. Well, this is exactly what the Federation is all about.

-They assimilate cultures and technology, and add them to their own. They won't assimilate just anyone into the Federation, but when a species has developed their own unique method of FTL travel, Starfleet comes along and initiates "First Contact" The Federation keeps expanding....to what end?

To my point...
We see that the Federation is run from Earth and is dominated by humans, Starfleet likewise. In the 29th century, we have the Federation time ship "Relativity." The "Time cops." They can travel to any point in space and time instantaneously, and correct any temporal tampering of THEIR history, that could negatively affect the Federation's Hegemony. I mean, it appears that Humans basically run the galaxy(or maybe more.) To have this policing power, it seems that they've "put all enemies under their feet" All former rivals have been assimilated.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing; in fact, it's pretty cool. I'm sure it works for the best of all species, right? So humanity has a pretty good run, eh?

 

By the 29th Century, the Voth(if they're still around) are simply part of the Federation.

as·sim·i·late
əˈsiməˌlāt/
verb

1. 1.
   take in (information, ideas, or culture) and understand fully.
   

[SIZE=3]I'm not attempting to cast a negative light on the Federation's practices. They don't force anyone. The Feds assimilate other species, and those cultures usually assimilate Federation values(not always).

Btw, I seem to have double posted this thread when I was attempting to edit the title. How do I fix that?[/SIZE]

 

By the end of endgame? No they control less than maybe 15% of the galaxy. By the 29th century and given the rate of fed expansion maybe.

 

"Living Witness" takes place mostly in the 31st century and the locals still have not had additional contact with the United Federation of Planets. In the farther future part is seems like they still have not encountered the Federation, even though their copy of the Doctor took off for the Alpha Quadrant after many years after bringing about the peace. The Voyager part of the story was late Fourth Season, so they were still that far from Federation Space when the first encountered the locals in the 24th century.

 

The Federation isn't like the Borg. No one joins the Federation by force. If anything, the Federation is less like an empire and more like an alliance of individual worlds that each maintain their own sovereignty, but do agree to a certain set of terms or laws when dealing with others.

"...the highest of all our laws states that your world is yours and will always remain yours."
--J.T. Kirk

There are likely many instances of worlds that choose not to join the Federation or simply enter into trade or diplomatic agreements, but ultimately remain independent. In time, the Federation may become rather large, but I think there are probably much larger entities out there (that have yet to be encountered) that make the Federation look puny in comparison.

 

A notion I've been playing with on and off is that while yes, that is the intention, eventually competition with the Federation will arise - another union of worlds with similar benefits to offer to those of the Federation, but perhaps with a less rigid set of requirements for admission (for instance, more flexibility in the government types allowed in). I think we might be seeing the beginning of that with the Typhon Pact. Sort of a cold war situation. At some point, the Federation will find itself embarrassed by being caught out very publicly failing to adhere to its own ideals (think of, for instance, the events of "Insurrection"), and this rival will capitalize on it, and some potential new member worlds will look to them, instead. Some smart potential member worlds might even play the two large alliances off of each other, allowing them to effectively bid for them joining - sort of like the events of "How Much For Just The Planet?". And some of these negotiations might even serve to further democratize the Typhon Pact (on the scale of member worlds, not necessarily individual citizens) and make them increasingly appealing to potential members.

 

They want to establish peace in the galaxy. There'll be no specific point in the future were they'll say, "eh, look you met all the criteria but we're, eh, a bit full, we ain't gonna ever be adding new members, sorry". Unless the Federation suffers some catastrophic defeat were they have to start from all over again, they'll keep expanding.

 

If the Federation wants to maintain a contiguous territory, and keeps encountering other people's territories who resist the Federation's encroachment, the time will come where the Federation will be "walled in" and won't be able to expand anymore.

 

The Federation is all about continual consensual expansion, because they believe that only by incorporating new points of view can they avoid cultural stagnation. They aim to do this consensually -- but it is certainly a fair criticism to aim at them that they view their relationships with most other cultures through the lens of, "You're gonna choose to be one of us, eventually," and that there is a certain amount of cultural chauvinism and cultural imperialism at play within that mindset. But it's still important to remember the huge, huge differences between consensual expansion and genuine imperialism.

Edited to add: And, no, the Federation doesn't rule the galaxy. Nobody does -- Star Trek's faster-than-light technologies are considerably slower than those of Star Wars. Star Wars is interesting in that its FTL are sufficiently advanced that the prospect of a political entity being able to deploy forces to anywhere in the galaxy is plausible, so it makes sense that there would be polities like the Galactic Republic, the Galactic Empire, or the First Order that would seek galactic domination (even though, realistically, no polity could possibly control interstellar space). But in Star Trek, the Federation and its larger neighbors -- the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, the Ferengi Alliance, the Breen Confederacy, the Cardassian Union, the Tholian Assembly, the Tzenkethi Coalition, the Orions, etc. -- only control a small percentage of the galaxy. End edit.

There is no evidence for this.

Well, not exactly. A federation is by definition a federal state -- its constituent polities may have dual sovereignty with the federal polities (i.e., the United States Congress cannot just pass an Act and the President sign it that dissolves one of the states without those states' consent). But they're not fully sovereign anymore, either. Thus, we know that the Federation Council could pass a law banning the use of warp speeds above Warp 5 throughout the UFP in TNG's "Force of Nature," and that Federation laws against genetic augmentation existed and that the Federation Supreme Court has the power of judicial review over Federation laws (DS9's "Dr. Bashir, I Presume?").

But, yes, you are absolutely right to emphasize that the Federation is built upon consensual union, and that its constituent polities retain certain rights that the Federation government cannot infringe upon.

Interestingly -- in the long run, if the Typhon Pact becomes a genuinely democratic federal union, there might end up being no compelling reason for it and the UFP to remain in competition. Or even to remain separate; there might end up being an era in the far future where the Typhon Pact states chose to dissolve the Pact and join the UFP.

Or, for that matter, where the UFP and the Pact become themselves separate constituent polities of a larger liberal democratic federal union.

It's space; there is no such thing as truly contiguous territory, at least not in a practical sense. It's impossible to monitor and control interstellar movement on a scale so vast, so from a practical standpoint, really interstellar space is a de facto no-man's land. Meaningful control of territory begins at the star system level. Compare it to, say, navies being unable to control the entire Pacific Ocean but being able to control island archipelagos. Realistically, the Federation is probably already full of small polities consisting of one or two star systems which are surrounded by star systems that are Federation territory.

 

Thank you!

 

No, by definition the term Federation has multiple possible meaning, including (but not exclusively) the one you mentioned.

Problem with that is we do hear of the Federation possessing "borders" (per Picard FC) and in some areas there are neutral zones.

The Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans do apparent claim and control open space, and not just star systems.

 

We do hear them claim open space -- but we rarely see them able to actually control open space effectively. The best they seem able to do is maintain a system of extensive sensor stations in close proximity to one-another along the borders they draw in open space, to try to monitor if one power or another crosses the border (e.g., the sensor stations in "Balance of Terror"). Notably, the Federation is regularly unable to prevent incursions from foreign powers into its claimed space on a regular basis.

Polities can make whatever claims they want, but in terms of their ability to actually control territory, they can't really control open space and real control starts at the star system level.

 

Remember, this is in reference to what the Federation ultimately becomes. On the various TV series, they are continually expanding. In Star Wars, there are established hyperspace lanes that cover the entire galaxy. By the 29th century, Starfleet possess far greater technology. We already see hyperspace equivalents in TNG, and Voyager(Transwarp, Q. Slipstream, Transwarp Hubs, etc). 500 years later, the Feds can travel to any point in space, or any point in time, in an instant. And by "rule", I don't mean that to be taken any differently than how the Federation "Rules" its own territory in the eras shown on TV. So yes, it could be compared to the G. Republic, just more advanced. Lastly, I never got the impression that it's neighbors were larger. And ultimately, they would simply become members of the Federation, or small territories that are hemmed in and simply exist "inside" Federation space.

 

Like was pointed out by @Ithekro, though, Living Witness proves that even by the 31st century, and by whatever further future time the epilogue of that episode was, there was still at least one relatively advanced Delta Quadrant civilization that had no contact with the Federation at all and only knew of them through the old Voyager encounter and the Doctor, which proves that they don't have domination across the entire Milky Way even that far ahead.

 

I'd say combined with all on-screen evidence the alpha/beta powers control 35%-40% of the milky way. The dominion controls at least 45%-50% of the gamma quadrant, and I'd say the Borg control at least 40% of the Delta Quadrant.

Though not all alpa/beta quadrant space is explored and claimed and there are certainly independent worlds and star systems, god-lings with no one entering signs and so on. World's that are contested or useless and any all the minor alpha/beta powers control 10-15% of the Alpha/beta quadrants.

The Star Trek galaxy is heavily fragmented politically with probably dozens to hundreds of powers jostling for space, influence, and resources..

Somebody mentions Star Wars-in Legends the Republic/Empire controlled a substantial portion of the GFFA thanks to hyperdrive technology but not all of it. You still had the Hapes Consortium, Chiss Ascendancy, Hutt Space, some independent worlds, the corporate sector and so on.

Both the Hutts and Republic in the Legendsverse had been around for over 20,000 years combine that with hyperdrives allowing speeds millions x FTL you have one or two major powers and occasional periods of fragmention-civl wars and SIth-Jedi conflicts being major causes.

 

What gives you that impression re: the Alpha/Beta Quadrants, when only 19% of the galaxy was even charted as of 2365 (according to "The Dauphin"), let alone occupied/controlled? Only a very small portion of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants are taken up by even the largest powers.

And how can you say anything at all about the breadth of control the Dominion has over the Gamma Quadrant when they've never shown anything more than a few weeks' travel from the Bajoran wormhole? We haven't seen more than a very small percentage of the Gamma Quadrant, there's nothing to tell us anything about how much control the Dominion has.

 

The galaxy is a big place. It's entirely possible, and probable, that other huge interstellar civilisations are around in the Milky Way that either we've never seen onscreen/referred to, or who just haven't been discovered yet.

"Local space" of the Federations/Klingons/Romulans/Ferengi/Cardassians/Gorn/Breen/Tholians etc isn't actually that big at all proportionally to the galaxy. Huge swathes of the Alpha & Beta Quadrants are unexplored. It's very far from just "Alpha= UFP & Cardassians, Beta= Klingons & Romulans"

And indeed the same goes for the Gamma & Delta. Voyager just went in a straight line, and through Season 5 & 6 jumped a lot of it out too. It hardly fully explored the Delta Quadrant.



It's totally possible that there could plenty other groups similar to the Federation elsewhere in the galaxy, some far bigger.

This is from the Star Trek Star Charts (2002) There's a lot of unexplored space.


And this was used in Voyager


"Upside down" so it's more familiar. West Alpha Quadrant, East Beta, tonnes of Gamma and still plenty of Delta. The Federation is just a blip really. Yes, by the 29th/31st Century etc they will have expanded a great deal. But I'm just saying for all we know there are things are lot greater still out there in our own galaxy.

 

Ron Moore compared the Dominion to China that implies to me the dominion controls a substantial portion of the Gamma Quadrant and probably has a tributary relationship with the rest of it. 19% charted? That seems rather strange given the intense exploration conducted in the past oh 200 years or so. Maybe charted means thoroughly catalogued every rock and flora.

There are blind spots substantial portions of the Beta Quadrant are unexplored, and there is no telling what you would find going to the Gamma Quadrant not using the wormhole, or the Barzan wormhole reaching on the galaxy's satellite arms in TNG. And yes Voyager only saw a some small fraction of the total Delta Quadrant but it seems to be the Borg would be the dominant power, only I think the Voth would have been able to hold them conventionally. Of course there other powers the Vaadvuar and that culture in the novelverse being examples but I imagine they all exist in the Borg's shadow.