Interesting - we seem to be taking a 'Star Trek' approach to it after all. We shall see. "The klingons are on the verge of wiping out the Federation" Well no, not really.
Just to play devil's advocate--if the Klingons continue to inflict significant damage, who is to say the UFP is sufficiently politically united to remain intact? Is it inconceivable that some (perhaps many) members would choose to leave and either go it alone or create a different alliance system? "Wiping out the Federation" need not be literal extinction, but the breaking of a political structure. Just a thought.
I kind of suspect that we're going to get the 'principles are all we are' speech from Burnham, followed by Georgiou doing the nasty thing anyway, ending the war while keeping Starfleet's hands technically clean. I hope I'm wrong, and a peaceful solution is planned. But the shot of what appears to be a planet/moon exploding don't fill me with confidence. And a good one. I think it is an area that DS9 shied away from when they did the 'existential war' storyline, but then again by that period, the Federation has existed so long that no-one would remember anything else. Given Vulcan lifespans, the Federation is not a given to them at the time of DSC. We've already seen evidence of Vulcan terrorism; Vexit could be a possibility.
Just to pursue the idea further (not that I think the show runners have done so)--what if the war's aftermath leaves the UFP feeling fragile? The "five year mission" to "seek out new life and new civilizations" may be the search for potential new members, to reinforce the UFP. Kirk's speech to the Organians (obviously a thinly veiled "Peace Corps" Cold War speech) about bringing them up to speed seems to fit into that mould. It could also account for reliance on multi-purpose starships like the Enterprise rather than specialized, more narrowly focused ships, at least for the decade following the war. Well enough spit-balling on Trek. Gotta get that stack of papers marked.
Indeed. We also see in The Apple that Kirk's mission is to beam down and make contact with the inhabitants, without prior study and Prime Directive be damned. The Federation of TOS' era is much more expansionist in this sense than in TNG's era of duck blinds and first contact protocols. Perhaps they are feeling a political pressure to show the Federation growing and succeeding.
Do I spot a D-7 lookalike at the lower right corner of the butt view of that Klingon fleet...? The other sort of D-7, I mean. Some rather un-Klingon faces at the upper ends of those white bodies. Diversity, or just yer token subject species or foreign contractors? Is the planet engulfed in orange even for real, or just a computer simulation of what would happen if...? Timo Saloniemi