Re: Planets. Armed and powered as only a planet can be armed and powe
Dukat, for all his evil, was a humanoid, and like a human, he was from a social species with a genetic predisposition toward working together with other humanoids, even if this predisposition found expression in counter-productive, exploitative, or merely hierarchical ways. The Founders, by contrast, were a unitary creature with no particular evolutionary reason to have developed the trait of mercy, and who had as much concern for humanoids as most humanoids do ants.
And Dukat wasn't the one calling the shots.
The Founders are presented as having a profound fascination with order: few things are less orderly than a dead planet.
Here we have to distinguish between countervalue and counterforce strikes. Destroying Earth is a countervalue attack (because, presumably, it is what we "value"), and the deterrence theory developed during the Cold War suggests that a first-strike involving countervalue targets is immoral as well as retarded and suicidal, when facing a commensurate enemy.
Counterforce, by contrast, is the targeting of an enemy's deterrence capacity, it's generally seen as amoral, but a power that retains any residual capability of responding will do so, for fear of losing what little capability it has left, against countervalue targets, in order to make the aggressor pay. This is why we fielded and field SSBNs, and used to field airborne bombers. Deterrence theory predicts that survivable methods of mass destruction should be assigned, as a priority, countervalue targets.
Nuclear deterrence theory is a lot like a hostage situation.
The thing is, in Trek, there are nothing but strategic weapons--just about any starship carries as great destructive power as any modern nuclear arsenal. They are treated tactically, but at their root is the possibility that all military force ultimately rests on to be effective--the potential to wipe out something the enemy, or something the enemy cares about. In this case, its scope is strategic: it can destroy an inhabited planet.
Almost every fight we have seen in Trek has involved counterforce targeting almost exclusively--that is, starship vs. starship, or starship vs. sensor array, or whatever. The Die Is Cast is an exception: Tain's task force embarked on a combined counterforce/countervalue mission. Its primary goal seemed to be counterforce--the destruction of the Dominion leadership--as opposed to countervalue--the destruction of the Great Link in and of itself. But as a practical matter it was both (there is some confusion in the real world, if I'm not mistaken, over whether decapitation strikes against highest leadership should be classified as counterforce or countervalue, as well--it ordinarily isn't regarded as a good idea, particularly as it leaves an enemy with its capacity to do harm intact but no one to negotiate with).
This begs the question, if robot missiles exist and are effective, why not use them against the Founder homeworld?
For that matter, even if one is going to operate on a strictly coutnerforce basis, why not use them against starships? They're surely much cheaper than starships, and any war in Trek is going to be playing for strategic stakes right off the bat. So why have no photonic missiles been launched against major starbases, repair yards, antimatter refineries, sensor arrays, communications hubs, and so forth? Why send a ship to do a missile's job--if a missile can do that job?
Warfighters in Trek do generally seem to eschew countervalue attacks, probably for fear of retaliation. When they don't fear it, they sometimes engage in it, for example when Sisko made a Maquis colony world unliveable. Presumably the Federation does have some moral restraints on how far they're willing to go down the countervalue road, although after being hit first, I think it'd be interesting to see what those restraints would be. Perhaps not that many--Nechayev in Descent outright orders Picard to commit genocide on the Borg, if given the chance. Presumably other enemies with similar implacability and unsympathetic natures, like the Founders, would get the same treatment. And in fact they did.
Hey, deterrence, after all, depends on a credible threat, not just the bare capacity.
The Founders, at any rate, had zero moral qualms about mass-murder. They freely engaged in it by bombing their own capital in the Alpha Quadrant from orbit.
So, the question here is, why didn't they do that to other planets?
Firstly, we don't really know they didn't. It's possible that they did, just not any planets we care about, and that they were prevented from doing this to "important" worlds.
Beyond that, up until they became aware of the virus, they might have been afraid to, out of self-preservation.
Afterward, however, they had no incentive to hold back, and every reason (indeed, even rational reason) to undertake countervalue operations against the humanoids who had already undertaken one against them, with biological instead of photonic weapons.
The answer must lie in impossibility. They must not have had the means to strike. If cheap, disposable interstellar cloaked ballistic missiles (ICBMs, of course--except I guess they're not really ballistic) exist and are as effective as our own nuclear missiles, then there is no reason to expect that the Dominion wouldn't have used them in their final hours (at least, before belatedly realizing that Odo did have a cure). Neither deterrence nor humanitarian concerns would have had an ounce of bearing on their decision to use, or not to use, such weapons. Only possibility and practicality.
Dukat, for all his evil, was a humanoid, and like a human, he was from a social species with a genetic predisposition toward working together with other humanoids, even if this predisposition found expression in counter-productive, exploitative, or merely hierarchical ways. The Founders, by contrast, were a unitary creature with no particular evolutionary reason to have developed the trait of mercy, and who had as much concern for humanoids as most humanoids do ants.
And Dukat wasn't the one calling the shots.
The Founders are presented as having a profound fascination with order: few things are less orderly than a dead planet.
It's difficult to determine how much of their own shots the Breen were calling. They appeared subordinated to the Dominion, but at the same time were given tremendous deference, in contrast to the Cardassians. At any rate, if planet-killer missiles existed, the Dominion surely had their own stocks, maintained by biologically-loyal Jem'Hadar and under the direct control of the Founders.
He did. Boy, did he get it wrong. You know, you'd think he'd have cared more about Cardassia Prime being lain waste, but that's an issue for another discussion.
The Founders were dying. As far as they knew, they would have ceased to existed in short order. It was the perfect, and appropriate, time for massive retaliation.
Sure, but, as said, they were dead already, from a biological attack.
The Cards and Roms did, with their attempt to destroy the Great Link. Apparently, while they recognized that they were bringing war to their respective nations' doorsteps, they didn't seem to fear at all an immediate, certain and total retaliation from the Dominion upon the completion of their mission. From The Die Is Cast, it appears a fully-armed fleet is necessary to prosecute extinction-level attacks.
Timo said:
Here we have to distinguish between countervalue and counterforce strikes. Destroying Earth is a countervalue attack (because, presumably, it is what we "value"), and the deterrence theory developed during the Cold War suggests that a first-strike involving countervalue targets is immoral as well as retarded and suicidal, when facing a commensurate enemy.
Counterforce, by contrast, is the targeting of an enemy's deterrence capacity, it's generally seen as amoral, but a power that retains any residual capability of responding will do so, for fear of losing what little capability it has left, against countervalue targets, in order to make the aggressor pay. This is why we fielded and field SSBNs, and used to field airborne bombers. Deterrence theory predicts that survivable methods of mass destruction should be assigned, as a priority, countervalue targets.
Nuclear deterrence theory is a lot like a hostage situation.
The thing is, in Trek, there are nothing but strategic weapons--just about any starship carries as great destructive power as any modern nuclear arsenal. They are treated tactically, but at their root is the possibility that all military force ultimately rests on to be effective--the potential to wipe out something the enemy, or something the enemy cares about. In this case, its scope is strategic: it can destroy an inhabited planet.
Almost every fight we have seen in Trek has involved counterforce targeting almost exclusively--that is, starship vs. starship, or starship vs. sensor array, or whatever. The Die Is Cast is an exception: Tain's task force embarked on a combined counterforce/countervalue mission. Its primary goal seemed to be counterforce--the destruction of the Dominion leadership--as opposed to countervalue--the destruction of the Great Link in and of itself. But as a practical matter it was both (there is some confusion in the real world, if I'm not mistaken, over whether decapitation strikes against highest leadership should be classified as counterforce or countervalue, as well--it ordinarily isn't regarded as a good idea, particularly as it leaves an enemy with its capacity to do harm intact but no one to negotiate with).
This begs the question, if robot missiles exist and are effective, why not use them against the Founder homeworld?
For that matter, even if one is going to operate on a strictly coutnerforce basis, why not use them against starships? They're surely much cheaper than starships, and any war in Trek is going to be playing for strategic stakes right off the bat. So why have no photonic missiles been launched against major starbases, repair yards, antimatter refineries, sensor arrays, communications hubs, and so forth? Why send a ship to do a missile's job--if a missile can do that job?
Warfighters in Trek do generally seem to eschew countervalue attacks, probably for fear of retaliation. When they don't fear it, they sometimes engage in it, for example when Sisko made a Maquis colony world unliveable. Presumably the Federation does have some moral restraints on how far they're willing to go down the countervalue road, although after being hit first, I think it'd be interesting to see what those restraints would be. Perhaps not that many--Nechayev in Descent outright orders Picard to commit genocide on the Borg, if given the chance. Presumably other enemies with similar implacability and unsympathetic natures, like the Founders, would get the same treatment. And in fact they did.
Hey, deterrence, after all, depends on a credible threat, not just the bare capacity.
The Founders, at any rate, had zero moral qualms about mass-murder. They freely engaged in it by bombing their own capital in the Alpha Quadrant from orbit.
So, the question here is, why didn't they do that to other planets?
Firstly, we don't really know they didn't. It's possible that they did, just not any planets we care about, and that they were prevented from doing this to "important" worlds.
Beyond that, up until they became aware of the virus, they might have been afraid to, out of self-preservation.
Afterward, however, they had no incentive to hold back, and every reason (indeed, even rational reason) to undertake countervalue operations against the humanoids who had already undertaken one against them, with biological instead of photonic weapons.
The answer must lie in impossibility. They must not have had the means to strike. If cheap, disposable interstellar cloaked ballistic missiles (ICBMs, of course--except I guess they're not really ballistic) exist and are as effective as our own nuclear missiles, then there is no reason to expect that the Dominion wouldn't have used them in their final hours (at least, before belatedly realizing that Odo did have a cure). Neither deterrence nor humanitarian concerns would have had an ounce of bearing on their decision to use, or not to use, such weapons. Only possibility and practicality.
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