All things that real militaries have done and continue to do. It was in TOS. Meyer's interpretation of Starfleet is perfectly consistent with how it was depicted in TOS. Roddenberry only claimed otherwise because he was pissed that Paramount removed him from authority over the movies after TMP. UN Peacekeepers are military personnel, on detached duty from their home nation's armed forces. Even in today's militaries, not everyone is a combatant. And even in Starfleet, those who are "essentially scientists trained as explorers/astronauts" are still expected to be armed when they are in the field, and if necessary are called upon to fight and kill while in the field.
Not really. The United Nations is not a sovereign state -- it does not possess its own distinct population of citizens, territory over which it is sovereign, a government capable of making binding law, its own military, or its own society in any sense. The United Federation of Planets, by contrast, possesses all of the traits that comprise a sovereign state: its own citizenry, its own territory over which it is sovereign, a government legally empowered to make binding law, its own foreign policy, a system of civilian courts and prosecutors, and its own military in the form of Starfleet. Okay we got a lot of misconceptions to unpack here. First off, the United Nations (U.N.) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are absolutely not the same thing, like at all. They are two entirely different international organizations, whose Members comprise a different set of sovereign states, with two different Secretaries-General and two different secretariats supporting their respective Secretaries-General. The U.N. is an intergovernmental organization whose role is, in essence, to be the international forum through which all of the world's states (more or less) may conduct diplomacy in order to avoid war. NATO, by contrast, is a military alliance designed to provide its Member States (the U.S., Canada, and most of Europe) with a significant security deterrent against Russian (initially Soviet) expansionism. Neither the U.N. nor NATO possess their own military forces. For NATO, what it does is it provides a system whereby the military forces of its Member States may be integrated into a common command structure so as to unify them in the field; the Member States remain the sovereigns, and have the authority to withdraw their military forces from the NATO unified command structure at any point. The Member States' military forces' primary allegiance remains at all times to the Member State, not to NATO. The U.N. has once been able to establish a common command structure and recommend that its Member States send expeditionary forces to join that common command structure -- when the USSR boycotted a Security Council vote and so the U.N. was able to establish United Nations Command in the Korean War. However, that hasn't happened since, and like with NATO, the military forces made part of United Nations Command were seconded to it and still owed primary allegiance to their Member States, not the U.N. U.N. Peacekeepers are also a form of common command structure that U.N. Member States may second some of their forces to, but they are both more limited in scope and in effectiveness than traditional military forces. Once again, they are not themselves military forces and the military forces that are seconded to them remain under the allegiance of the Member State that sent them. At all times, the commander-in-chief of the Member State may withdraw any forces they have seconded to NATO or U.N. command structures and those forces must legally obey their own commander-in-chief. While it has on occasion authorized NATO to undertake military missions (such as the occupation of Afghanistan), the U.N. does not use the NATO command structures because the goals of the U.N. and the goals of NATO are not compatible. NATO is not a part of and is not subordinate to the U.N.
Herr Wormhole, no offense but you remind me of my ex wife. If i said the sky was blue she'd argue the shade.
I occasionally drop in too, sure that it's finally sorted out for good, but no. The negotiations continue into the evening.
Think of it this way: People seem to like discussing how military Starfleet is, and people also seem to like complaining about discussions of how military Starfleet is. It's a win-win!
From my point of view, and I'm aware that the issue is nuanced... Starfleet is obviously a military organisation. It has a command structure with military ranks, it's personnel wear mandatory uniforms and carry sidearms... "That's an order!" How many times are those words spoken over every iteration of the show? What's more interesting to me is why some people have an issue with that. It is what it is, according to nearly 60 years of overwhelming evidence.
The impression I get is that is if there's military work to be done, Starfleet's the one that's called in. Because Starfleet does everything in space: carrying ambassadors, fixing planetary biospheres, deflecting asteroids... and if they have a bit of free time they also seek out new life and new civilisations. I think quasi-military is the best description for them I've heard. They have a military structure to their organisation and uniforms, but that's a sensible way to run a ship in any circumstance. Their weapons were originally for self-defence while exploring the unknown. They clearly became the Federation's navy, they're trained to fight, but generally speaking they've still got the mindset that they're primarily astronauts, not soldiers. Though the only problem with calling them a military is when the inconsistencies with real life militaries is treated like a flaw that should be fixed, or something that breaks suspension of disbelief.
100%. Every time there’s a war, it’s explicitly Starfleet who fights it, again and again. It’s not only the military — it seems to combine the functions of NASA with those of the armed forces, and of law enforcement on an interstellar level within Federation jurisdiction — but it unquestionably is the military, and I don’t understand why the question is still asked all these decades on, when the answer was as clear in TOS and has only been reinforced with every series since. Well, yes I do: there’s Roddenberry trying to say it wasn’t the military — despite the surprising militarism in his own novelization of STTMP — and there’s the fact that there are periods where the conflict level lowers enough that they can focus on exploration as Starfleet’s primary activity. Which is certainly preferable! But at the end of the day, whatever even the characters themselves say, they’re the government representatives carrying weapons, on call to fight wars if they occur. Saying they aren’t the military — whatever other, better things they also are — is doublespeak.
@FredH Indeed. Let’s not also forget it was Roddenberry who pushed his writers to make dialogue more militaristic in TOS. The thing is, there’s nothing negative about Starfleet being a military. The word itself has jingoistic undertones, but as a military organisation Starfleet is largely benign. They are explorers, not conquerors, but the tool the organisation uses to explore is unquestionably a militaristic one.
Sure. Quite reasonably, in times of peace, people want Starfleet not to “be the military”—thus Picard in early TNG (I forget the episode?) saying that if they have to resort to a military solution, their mission has failed.
Do they wear uniforms, have a chain of command, and, most importantly, engage in combat (esp as part of their official duty)? Yes. Ofcourse they do, and ofcourse they are. They have said so countless times. As in, every time they bring up court martialing someone. A "court martial" literally and exclusively refers to a military court. They also do other stuff... but then, the Army Corps of Engineers designs damns and bridges... the Navy does transport and oceanographic research. Organizations can do more than one thing. It's disturbing how in denial and defensive people are about this.
A typical military is a combat knife. Starfleet is a Swiss-Army Knife that just so happens to come with an abnormally large blade; if the blade alone doesn't get the job done, all of the other (useful) tools - in tandem - will.