Size and Strength of Empires

[All Seeing Eye]

The Federation theoretically should be huge and powerful. They are spread across 8000 Lightyears, have 150 member worlds and very likely thousands of colony worlds.

For any other civilisation with equal technology to counter the Federation and be as strong they would need the equivalent number of worlds and territory.

So the Klingons or Romulans individually to pose any threat to the Federation would need at least 150 fully developed planets and thousands of colonies.

In order to achieve that the Klingons and Romulans would need to conquer and subjugate at least 150 or more other species and civilisations. We know that the number of inhabited worlds in Trek is many so for the Romulans or Klingons to even have such an area of space as 8000 Lightyears they would without a doubt need to subjugate planets.

So why are the Federation allied to the Klingnons? they are allied to a race that brutally control a hundred or so other species. Why is the Federation not fighting to free the hundred or so worlds under Romulan subjugation?

 

[Timo]

The alternatives as of ST6 seem to be to ally, or to engage in a war with. In the latter case, the alternatives seem to be to fight to a standstill, or to be enslaved by the Klingons. Sounds like simple enough a choice...

I can't think of a single example where the Federation would have fought to free a foreign culture. Indeed, doesn't the Prime Directive say that this would be a big no-no? If they don't do that in general, they sure as hell wouldn't do it to a valuable ally.

For any other civilisation with equal technology to counter the Federation and be as strong they would need the equivalent number of worlds and territory.

But an enemy just one-tenth the UFP strength could still challenge the UFP in any of its flanks; two such enemies could probably bring the UFP to its knees. After all, Star Trek technology doesn't seem to cater for effective defense against aggression. Starships can devastate whole planets, but a starship can only be stopped by another starship, or by fixed fortifications of the type we saw in DS9. And the latter might not be a fixture of each and every of the 150 UFP member worlds. Pretty soon into a war, the UFP might find itself possessing only 70 worlds, then only 30...

The same would be true in the reverse, though. So probably all-out wars are an impractical tool of diplomacy in Star Trek. We have heard of very few such wars. The Klingons were always fighting the Feds on "back burner" in TOS, it seems. The Cardassian War never ended in the conquest of Cardassia or liberation of Bajor, even though the Cardassians appeared to be complete technological underdogs in all their appearances in TNG.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[-Brett-]

The Federation theoretically should be huge and powerful. They are spread across 8000 Lightyears, have 150 member worlds and very likely thousands of colony worlds.

Huh uh. The line in First Contact was 150 planets. Period. No qualifiers.

Why is the Federation not fighting to free the hundred or so worlds under Romulan subjugation?

Why would they? Not to sound like an ass, but you have seen Star Trek before, right?

 

[Thor Damar]

Both the Klingons and Romulans have a number colonies settled by their own people and the Cardassians Union encompasses 'dozens of planets' many of which are Cardassian populated so it's not like they have to subjugate their way across the quardent just to catch up with the Feds.

Then again there has never been a definite statement on the size of any of the other civilizations in ST...

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

I have always wondered that myself. Even with Klingon expansionist tendencies they can't possibly compete with the combined population and construction of so many worlds. Being so isolationist the Romulan Empire can't be all that big either. If they were controlling occupied planets too a lot of their resources would have to go into keeping those planets in line as well.

 

[StarryEyed]

That's the chief reason I don't like Yesterday's Enterprise. I cannot suspend disbelief. There is no way the Klingons would have a prayer against the Federation - especially in a long war.

That said, the Klingons and Romulans dedicate much more of their resources (percentage-wise) to military purposes (during peacetime) than the Federation does. This makes them dangerous opponents.

 

[Darth Picardous]

British Empire 1914- Spread across the globe encompassing 500 million citizens across many colonies.
German Empire-65 million citizens with a few colonies and a heavily industrialised Prussian military mindset.

End Result: With Germany pushing ahead rapidly in the beginning and nearly winning but millions dead and a stalemate on the battlefron. Germans then serve up a second go 20 yrs later.

So if the Klingons are heavily industrialised with the Klingon battle mentality, then they could surely hold their own against large empires.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

That's the chief reason I don't like Yesterday's Enterprise. I cannot suspend disbelief. There is no way the Klingons would have a prayer against the Federation - especially in a long war.

That said, the Klingons and Romulans dedicate much more of their resources (percentage-wise) to military purposes (during peacetime) than the Federation does. This makes them dangerous opponents.

The Soviet Union devoted a lot more of its resources to the military then the U.S. did, but they still lost the cold war. I think militaristic societies tend to have diminishing returns because so much of their resources go into non-renewable items.

British Empire 1914- Spread across the globe encompassing 500 million citizens across many colonies.
German Empire-65 million citizens with a few colonies and a heavily industrialised Prussian military mindset.

End Result: With Germany pushing ahead rapidly in the beginning and nearly winning but millions dead and a stalemate on the battlefron. Germans then serve up a second go 20 yrs later.

So if the Klingons are heavily industrialised with the Klingon battle mentality, then they could surely hold their own against large empires.

Did England incorporate a lot of their colonial population into the war though? I don't think a lot of Indians of Jamaicans fought in WW1, but I could be wrong.

 

[Myasishchev]

The Federation theoretically should be huge and powerful. They are spread across 8000 Lightyears, have 150 member worlds and very likely thousands of colony worlds.

Huh uh. The line in First Contact was 150 planets. Period. No qualifiers.

Except it obviously referred to full members. For an example, I watched "Schizoid Man" today. The world referred to as "Graves' Planet" is pretty aptly-named, because he is literally the only guy on it (technically, Karina Briannon [however it's spelled] is also an inhabitant, but she is no guy, a fact upon which the story turns). Do you really think Picard was counting a crap world like that just because it was in Federation territory and occuped by however few Federation citizens? Indeed, if you went and listed every planet ever mentioned as a Fed-controlled world or colony, I suspect it would actually exceed 150.

If you want to take the man literally, there would actually be at least 150 planets in a mere 15-30 star systems. Sol accounts for eight by itself. And we've certainly seen more than 15-30 Fed systems (heck, we've seen more than 15-30 Fed sectors!). Should we count systems that have no life at all as well? They still contain "planets."

Interestingly, if you do interpret the dialogue to be completely literally, you can't actually count Andor, a Federation founder.

That said...

For any other civilisation with equal technology to counter the Federation and be as strong they would need the equivalent number of worlds and territory.

Why? Since we know the primary power source of all major empires is antimatter (except apparently Romulus, which relies directly on black holes) we also know that terrestrial resources are pretty much worthless, barring dilithium, which does not at all require a native population to exploit. In fact, obliterating any native population on a dilithium-rich planet would probably make it easier to exploit. A lot of stuff is apparently run by fusion, I'll grant, but fusion reactant harvesting doesn't exactly require "fully developed planets," either. It just requires access to water, a gas giant, or given the capabilities of Star Trek science, perhaps even the corona of a star. Again, dead natives would make this resource easier to exploit. As for metals, that could be best exploited without ever venturing down into a planetary gravity well. Plenty of metals in asteroids. Klingons could be raping our asteroid resources as we speak and we wouldn't necessarily even know it.

Conversion of raw materials into useful products, of course, is almost entirely automatic, due to the prevalence of replicators. Even in the 23d century, a combination of proto-replicators with simple automated factories were the likely means of production.

Edit: I would like to point out at this juncture that I fear someone might bring up the notion that any given planet's agricultural resources are worth dick, even locally. This is a completely spurious idea. Replicators are everywhere, and you don't need grain to feed into it. A comet will do just fine for bulk carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Nitrogen is not exactly hard to find, and the other elements biological beings need are not ordinarily rare, either. So crude oil, ashes, or the methane lakes of Titan would be excellent sources of food. One's own crap, shed skin cells, and dead bodies will suffice, really, as long as you can add sufficient energy to it to make it palatable again, and don't need to increase one's biomass, i.e., make more people.

All this means that the raw industrial potential of an interstellar government is by no means reliant on a large population.

What a large population provides, and this is borne out more-or-less by the Federation ordinarily being significantly more advanced technologically than its competitors, is the intellectual resources of greater numbers. If the UFP has a population of a trillion, and the Klingon Empire an effective population of 50 billion, each may have access to the same number of energy sources and mineral resources due to the vicissitudes of history, but one of them is going to have access to a proportionally greater number of scientists, engineers, strategists, and administrators.

The inevitable pressure, therefore, is to bring the client peoples closer into the mainstream of the society and the economy. This is what the Dominion apparently did, to great effect. The Klingons, Cardassians, and Romulans, by contrast, did not, and therefore wound up, respectively, a junior partner, a conquered enemy, and the Trek equivalent of a failed state dealing with a faintly retarded class war.

(Interestingly, and counter-intuitively, there is every indication the pseudo-libertarian Ferengi would welcome cooperation with other species for mutual technological benefit, and hence are probably at the end of the 24th century the second most powerful government in the Alpha Auadrant.)

 

[Timo]

On the issue of UFP planets, 150 member worlds is but one number given. We also hear Kirk say "We are on a thousand planets and spreading out" to Zephram Cochrane in TOS "Metamorphosis". For a low-end scenario, this means the 150 members put together control a thousand planets, and are spreading. For a different scenario, this means the 150 members each control a thousand planets - and indeed Kirk in that episode seemed to be speaking of "we" the humans, as opposed to "we" the Federation, since he was explaining the situation to the pre-Federation Cochrane and separately dealing with the issue of alien life later on in his little speech.

So a thousand planets is the lowest possible size for UFP, and 150,000 planets is a likelier one. And that probably only includes those planets that have habitation or industries on them - thus, humans wouldn't "be on" places like Uranus or Neptune as far as we know, and it's unclear whether they would "be on" Jupiter and Saturn despite definitely inhabiting and exploiting their moons and orbits.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CTM]

British Empire 1914- Spread across the globe encompassing 500 million citizens across many colonies.
German Empire-65 million citizens with a few colonies and a heavily industrialised Prussian military mindset.

End Result: With Germany pushing ahead rapidly in the beginning and nearly winning but millions dead and a stalemate on the battlefron. Germans then serve up a second go 20 yrs later.

So if the Klingons are heavily industrialised with the Klingon battle mentality, then they could surely hold their own against large empires.

Did England incorporate a lot of their colonial population into the war though? I don't think a lot of Indians of Jamaicans fought in WW1, but I could be wrong.

All the colonial powers tapped their colonies for native forces to support the Great War effort. Some even served on the Western Front. There are some stunning photos of African troops in French uniforms, on the Western Front (mostly from IIRC the French North African Colonies). The ANZAC's (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps was substantially white - e.g. not really colonial by the standards of the era - but was entirely raised from the colonies, and served primarily in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey). Granted, most of the colonial troops did NOT serve on the Western Front, they did fight in other scattered actions rolling up the Central Power's colonies - freeing up the British and French troops to take on the Germans directly. I know for a fact that the Indian troops did serve for the British Empire during the Great War, and did so with great distinction. I am not so sure about Jamaican troops, but it would not surprise me if they did serve in some capacity. The Great War was a war for the survival of the involved Empires - they used ALL of their available resources to break the stalemate. The Germans even provided a dedicated train to take an expelled Russian dissident from his exile in Switzerland back to Russia - purely because he was against the war (A decision many later came to regret, as his name was Vladimir Lenin, and he brought about the Communist Revolution in 1917).

 

[Timo]

This is a good example of how things might go for the UFP. The British Empire lacked the resources to ship its considerable Indian manpower to the Western Front, or even to Middle East where it would have mattered most. It also lacked the resources to tap into the economic or technological genius of said Indian manpower, due to cultural differences, differences in educational systems, and general distrust. The UFP would probably face similar problems in bringing any of its theoretical numerical superiority to bear, at least on the short term.

One wonders if the Klingons ever conquered a source of manpower riches, or had the means to exploit it. Their particular brand of warrior code might in fact preclude the use of alien troops in frontline combat, providing an exotic hindrance similar to the German refusal to use women as wartime labor in WWII...

Cardassians obviously love to use local populations for slave labor. One wonders if Bajor was their first and perhaps only chance to do so, or if there were multiple examples of such conquests. Chin'toka, perhaps? Certainly Bajor for Cardassia was much like India was for Great Britain, although Bajor sat on Cardassian doorstep while India's strategic position was quite different.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Except we're all forgetting that the Federation isn't an Empire. It certainly isn't the EARTH Empire, and though it galls many to consider, it is inconceivable that the entire Federation is unilaterally ruled, represented and defended by Earth and it's mostly-human Starfleet.

It's far more likely, militarily speaking, that Federation members have a huge degree of autonomy in what interplanetary operations they choose to dedicate their fleets. Earth may sometimes harangue their fellow members into, say, committing more of their forces to the Border Wars with Cardassia, and those members may push right back saying "Screw you, pinkies, none of our colonies are at stake. Suck it up and sign the treaty."

 

[Timo]

It's a bit strange, though, that we saw no sign of that when we watched "Federation at War" up close. There were no identifiably Vulcan or Andorian or Bolian resources, merely Vulcan or Andorian or Bolian personnel operating generic Starfleet hardware whilst wearing generic Starfleet uniforms and taking orders from generic Starfleet superiors (a great many of whom happened to be human or Vulcan, FWIW).

It does seem that humans are a popular group to be targeted in Starfleet enlisting propaganda or drafts or whatever, or then particularly susceptible to that sort of intake or profession. That could in theory be statistical bias, because we don't see inside most of the starships. But we do see that all those starships are generic Starfleet ones (with Earthling names for some reason). At most, we can argue that species X provides those ships with ovoid primary hulls and species Y those with angular ones...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It's a bit strange, though, that we saw no sign of that when we watched "Federation at War" up close.

Well, we were watching it from the perspective of a single Federation starbase in the Bajor sector. It's entirely possible that most of the Vulcan and Andorian fleets fought enormous pitched battles in totally different sectors, especially since most of the DS9 crew was mainly focussed on the area around Cardassia and DS9, "front and center" as it were. I figure the Andorians and Tellarites probably fought alot more of the defensive actions of the war close to Federation space, since their fleets don't do a whole lot of deep space exploration and were probably geared mostly towards energy exploration in near space. Actually, it's even likely that the Cardassian front was only PART of the conflict, a part which Starfleet happened to be majorly involved in; if you're watching a movie about WWII that only focussed on the Pacific Front, you might not be aware that halfway around the planet the Red Army had fought a long and brutal holding action against the Nazis in which twenty million of their own soldiers were killed.

Come to think of it, I keep running into alot of Hollywood Historians who think that WWII started on December 7, 1941.

It does seem that humans are a popular group to be targeted in Starfleet enlisting propaganda or drafts or whatever, or then particularly susceptible to that sort of intake or profession.

Not exactly. Remember that most of the non-humans serving on Starfleet ships have some kind of conspicuous ties to humanity themselves and could qualify as Earth-immigrants.

Spock: Half human, feels alienated from other Vulcans and can at least feel like a Vulcan if he's surrounded by humans.
Worf: Klingon orphan, adopted by humans (adopted father served in Starfleet).
Troi: Father was a human (starfleet officer, no less).
Data: Built by humans, discovered by Starfleet officers who gave him his first taste of humanity.
Dax: Trill host who mentored a young Starfleet officer in a past life.
Nog: Ferengi boy living on a Starfleet station who can't get a decent job anywhere else.
Ro: Bajoran Refugee living on Earth
Sito Jaxa: Ditto.

Even Dax is the exception that proves the rule, since the Trill don't appear to have their own ships and she couldn't get a posting as a science officer anywhere else. So it seems likely to me that there are as few humans in the Andorian Air Force as there are Andorians in Starfleet. We never see these fleets because they have their own business to take care of and Starfleet (or at least, the Starfleet we see) intentionally operate in areas far from other member fleets so the lines of jurisdiction never get muddled up.

 

[Myasishchev]

Except we're all forgetting that the Federation isn't an Empire. It certainly isn't the EARTH Empire, and though it galls many to consider, it is inconceivable that the entire Federation is unilaterally ruled, represented and defended by Earth and it's mostly-human Starfleet.

It's far more likely, militarily speaking, that Federation members have a huge degree of autonomy in what interplanetary operations they choose to dedicate their fleets. Earth may sometimes harangue their fellow members into, say, committing more of their forces to the Border Wars with Cardassia, and those members may push right back saying "Screw you, pinkies, none of our colonies are at stake. Suck it up and sign the treaty."

Not to rehash this too much, but you want the Federation to be even worse at collective self-defense than NATO? That would be pretty sad if that were the case, and not borne out at least insofar as the Dominion War is concerned. I mean, it wasn't the Betazoid Defense Force that folded, it was a numbered Starfleet.

If such a thing were constitutionally feasible under the Charter, you'd think the Changelings would have expended a lot more resources than they did in splitting the Federation between legal planets that ratified the declaration of war and those that did not. (Actually, was there ever a legal DoW? I don't think it was mentioned.)

As Timo said, we never saw anything but generic Federation starships, run by mixed-species crews, under a mixed-species admiralty. Humans are a high proportion of the service, but as far as we know, humans might just make up a high proportion of the population.

As for Timo's point about names, that never bothered me. Vulcan's desert and Andor's frozen geography would seem to militate against the same degree of naval tradition developed on our pleasant, liquid-water-covered Earth. (Tellar, admittedly, remains an enigma.)

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Not to rehash this too much, but you want the Federation to be even worse at collective self-defense than NATO?

Considering how easy it is for rampaging aliens to penetrate deep into the heart of Federation space with only a handful of starships to intercept them, I'd say they ARE pretty bad at it. Imagine of V'ger had been a flotilla of Klingon battleships and not a Borgified NASA science project; Enterprise is still the only starship that stands in its way.

That would be pretty sad if that were the case, and not borne out at least insofar as the Dominion War is concerned.

The Dominion managed to invade Betazed and even bomb the piss out of Starfleet Headquarters. Again: their defenses aren't all they're cracked up to be, but they seem more than adequate.

OTOH, the NATO comparison doesn't exactly fit. Some Federation members are separated by hundreds of light years; I don't think "collective" defense is even possible at this scale.

If such a thing were constitutionally feasible under the Charter, you'd think the Changelings would have expended a lot more resources than they did in splitting the Federation between legal planets that ratified the declaration of war and those that did not. (Actually, was there ever a legal DoW? I don't think it was mentioned.)

I don't think there was, mainly because the Dominion never bother to actually declare war on people, they just show up one day and start bombing you and they don't stop until you die.

Even if a formal declaration was made, I'm reasonably sure it takes a majority vote by Federation members to declare war or a peace treaty in either case, and all members have to abide by either decision. They would all probably coordinate through the Federation Council, but there's no reason for every ship in every fleet to contain representatives from every planet.

Actually, even NATO members don't do this. They use standardized ammunitions and radio codes--the English-speaking ones, anyway--but the British Army is still the British Army, the French Navy is still the French Navy; even in time of war, they don't get their orders from the Pentagon.

As Timo said, we never saw anything but generic Federation starships, run by mixed-species crews, under a mixed-species admiralty. Humans are a high proportion of the service, but as far as we know, humans might just make up a high proportion of the population.

The population... of the Federation?

That Earth could economically, militarily, culturally and demographically dominate 149 others is not a "United Federation," but is essentially a benevolent Earth Empire.

It may be neat to think that Earth could politely conquer a 149 worlds in two hundred years, but I am reasonably sure this is exactly what the Federation is supposed to NOT be. I mean, unless the Mirror Universe is different only in that the Empire isn't nearly as polite when it conquers new worlds.

As for Timo's point about names, that never bothered me. Vulcan's desert and Andor's frozen geography would seem to militate against the same degree of naval tradition developed on our pleasant, liquid-water-covered Earth. (Tellar, admittedly, remains an enigma.)

What the hell does naval tradition have to do with it? Even Starfleet draws on naval tradition by analogy only; it has no historical ties to ANY naval organization, and appears to evolve from civilian space exploration agencies like NASA and Roscosmos.

Of course, we know the Vulcans had a space service of their own in the mid 2150s, and we know this service was already hundreds of years old when humans were playing with the first chemical rockets. The Andorian space service is at least as old, and until relatively recently in galactic history was technologically more advanced and better organized than Starfleet. I find it extremely hard to believe that either organization would simply capitulate the bulk of their operations to a brand new alien organization run by a race that had only recently discovered warp drive, whose crews had no deep space experience and whose vessels had to borrow technology from other races just to be competitive. The only way this could be logically justified is if every other Federation member had their space services totally decimated by someone or something in such a way that they were never able to rebuild it and were so demoralized that they never had a reason to do so again for two hundred years.

Which, again, is not the United Federation of Planets, it's just a polite version of the Earth Empire.

 

[Unicron]

I can't think of a single example where the Federation would have fought to free a foreign culture. Indeed, doesn't the Prime Directive say that this would be a big no-no? If they don't do that in general, they sure as hell wouldn't do it to a valuable ally.

It would depend on the writing of the PD, as I think its primary goal isn't based on politics in general, but on ensuring that Fed personnel don't take actions would could easily cause cultural contamination and radically alter the development of a culture. If said culture was more or less on the same developmental level, and if it were being threatened by another power, then I think the Feds would certainly consider intervention. It all depends on the circumstances.

That's the chief reason I don't like Yesterday's Enterprise. I cannot suspend disbelief. There is no way the Klingons would have a prayer against the Federation - especially in a long war.

That said, the Klingons and Romulans dedicate much more of their resources (percentage-wise) to military purposes (during peacetime) than the Federation does. This makes them dangerous opponents.

I tend to think it's not impossible for the Klingons to be as successful as they were in YE for the reasons in your second paragraph, and the war had been going on for two decades before they were getting close to actually beating the Federation. That suggests to me that Starfleet probably had some early successes but gradually lost its advantage, much as the Dominion was eventually outclassed by a new enemy (the Romulans) and by revolts among the Cardassians.

 

[StarryEyed]

I can't think of a single example where the Federation would have fought to free a foreign culture. Indeed, doesn't the Prime Directive say that this would be a big no-no? If they don't do that in general, they sure as hell wouldn't do it to a valuable ally.

It would depend on the writing of the PD, as I think its primary goal isn't based on politics in general, but on ensuring that Fed personnel don't take actions would could easily cause cultural contamination and radically alter the development of a culture. If said culture was more or less on the same developmental level, and if it were being threatened by another power, then I think the Feds would certainly consider intervention. It all depends on the circumstances.

That's the chief reason I don't like Yesterday's Enterprise. I cannot suspend disbelief. There is no way the Klingons would have a prayer against the Federation - especially in a long war.

That said, the Klingons and Romulans dedicate much more of their resources (percentage-wise) to military purposes (during peacetime) than the Federation does. This makes them dangerous opponents.

I tend to think it's not impossible for the Klingons to be as successful as they were in YE for the reasons in your second paragraph, and the war had been going on for two decades before they were getting close to actually beating the Federation. That suggests to me that Starfleet probably had some early successes but gradually lost its advantage, much as the Dominion was eventually outclassed by a new enemy (the Romulans) and by revolts among the Cardassians.

The problem with the Klingons prevailing in a long war against the Federation is that the Federation would draw upon its massive intellectual, people and material resources to build ships better-suited for war - like the Defiant and Sovereign classes. Just like they did when they were threatened by the Borg and the Dominion. The Klingons simply can't match that kind of innovation.

The Klingon birds of prey were great, tough little ships that packed a lot of punch in a small package. The Federation didn't build that type of the ship - until they were threatened. When they felt the need to build small, combat-oriented ships, they came up with the Defiant-class which far out-classed a bird of prey. They developed lean, mean capital starships like the Sovereign-class which would dominate anything the Klingons cold build.

Those are the kinds of ships we would have logically seen in the alternate reality of Yesterday's Enterprise. It's silly to think that the Federation would build the same types of ships designed for peace-time in war-time.

 

[Unicron]

How do you know? That we never saw more than a few Klingon designs canonically (and the YE BOPs seemed pretty powerful) doesn't mean the Klingons couldn't build ideal warships in sufficient numbers. The alternate Galaxy seemed reasonably powerful too, naturally being a battleship in YE. While I agree that the Feds would have built more dedicated warships like the Defiant during the war, I also think they would have continued to use modified versions of a lot of the common designs, as they did during the Dominion War. I tend to think that Starfleet has a handful of Defiant type designs in peacetime, but can produce more as needed for wartime. The bulk of their ships are capable of doing both, though not necessarily excelling at war functions.