The Romulans, The War, and Sisko

[Withers]

So, Captain Sisko gets the credit and at the same time the shame of bringing the Romulans into the Dominion War. His actions in The Pale Moonlight led directly to their involvement in the War. It is often considered one of the darker things a Starfleet Captain is ever shown on screen doing because it makes it seem as though the Romulans are duped into participation that would have happened no other way.

Essentially, they were tricked, and it did cost a few people their lives...but it seems like everyone forgot about the Romulans showing up in Inferno's Light uninvited. No one even asked for their help and they showed up to fight the Dominion. Had the plot succeeded their Warbirds would have been eliminated along with DS9, the Klingon Fleet, and Bajor. That would've been a declaration of war on the Empire in and of itself.

So what changed? Why did the Romulans suddenly need to be tricked into joining the war? They were all gung-ho about fighting with the other Alpha Quadrant powers at first. Even though their feelings obviously changed at some point doesn't it stand to reason that, at some point, they would have joined the war against the Dominion, with or without Sisko's actions?

I'm not saying that excuses anything he did or makes his behavior more tolerable. In fact, because it seems like their inclusion in the war against the Dominion was inevitable anyway, killing people to speed it along might make what he did even worse...

Thoughts?

-Withers-​

 

[Jono]

They didn't join the war because they signed a non-aggression pact with the Dominion. The Romulan Senate made the decision that it was better to take up a treaty with the Dominion at that point instead of been drawn into a conflict. Given they don't really like the Federation or Klingons it isn't really surprising they would bail out the first chance they got to save their own skins and doom their enemies.

As for joining the war I don't think there was anything inevitable about the Romulans joining. Sure the Jack Pack predicted the Romulans would join up in around a year from Operation Return but I take their predictions with a grain of salt. I don't think their predictions would be any more or less accurate then a typical analyst could come up with.

Sisko and Starfleet obviously felt that waiting wasn't a good thing to do. Especially if the Federation and Klingons continued on a downward slope, the longer the war goes on the weaker their position and the less favourable it is for the Romulans to side with them. Subtefuge was decided to be the easiest and least costly method, they could have tried negotiating the Romulans to join but given the Romulans would have such a superior position they could demand whatever they wanted, the Federation and Klingons really don't have any leverage to get the Romulans into the war other than the vague threat that the Dominion might attack Romulus, which would be difficult to sell without any evidence.

 

[Myasishchev]

As I understood it, it was an extremely close issue in the Romulan Senate, as well, with an almost even split between interventionists and isolationists. Just killing Vreenak might have actually done the job on its own, if his constituency elected a replacement (or if his legal successor to the seat) that was pro-war. The faked Dominion war plans were icing.

Regarding "Inferno's Light," why would Romulan ships have been destroyed? The Enterprise-D wasn't destroyed by the implosion of the Amargosa star--unsurprsingly, since the danger was subluminmal and the E-D is, of course, superluminal. (Even if the pair of D science students who wrote Generations apparently forgot this when Picard was on Veridian III.) I see no reason why the Romulans couldn't have avoided being swallowed by the expansion of the Bajoran sun.

And another thing--what was the Dominion planning on doing after Bajor's star blew up? If fusion ceased in the core, it'd blow off its outer layers consistent with stellar evolution. The end result should be an artificial red giant which may engulf the wormhole and at least make the local space much warmer. Alternatively, if trilithium absolutely ends nuclear fusion forever, the result would be a white dwarf and a planetary nebula, which may also be bad for travel, although less so. On the other hand, trilithium is magic and I should probably just relax.

 

[Withers]

Regarding "Inferno's Light," why would Romulan ships have been destroyed? The Enterprise-D wasn't destroyed by the implosion of the Amargosa star--unsurprsingly, since the danger was subluminmal and the E-D is, of course, superluminal. (Even if the pair of D science students who wrote Generations apparently forgot this when Picard was on Veridian III.) I see no reason why the Romulans couldn't have avoided being swallowed by the expansion of the Bajoran sun.

There's a quote in the episode where the presumed destruction of the assembled fleet is either directly stated or at least implied. Why they couldn't all have warped away I'm not sure but the impression was given that they would've been caught off guard and thus destroyed by the destruction of the star.

They didn't join the war because they signed a non-aggression pact with the Dominion. The Romulan Senate made the decision that it was better to take up a treaty with the Dominion at that point instead of been drawn into a conflict. Given they don't really like the Federation or Klingons it isn't really surprising they would bail out the first chance they got to save their own skins and doom their enemies.

I agree with that... so why did they show up during Inferno's Light? I mean what was their motive at that point? It seemed like, then, they understood what invasion by the Dominion would mean for the entire Quadrant and that they wanted to prevent that outcome (a Dominion dominated Alpha Quadrant.) So what changed that made what Sisko did necessary... or did anything change?

-Withers-​

 

[TheGodBen]

I agree with that... so why did they show up during Inferno's Light? I mean what was their motive at that point?

They had no motive, it was a knee-jerk reaction. A force that once destroyed a fleet of Tal Shiar ships had just annexed a major power and the Federation and Klingons reshaped the political landscape by reforming their alliance, the Romulans didn't have time to think the situation through, they just acted. After several months of watching the Klingons having their asses handed to them by the Dominion, and assurances by the Vorta that the Omarian nebula incident was a "misunderstanding" and that the Dominion wishes only for peace with the Star Empire, the Rommies reluctantly agreed to a non-aggression pact.

 

[Withers]

^I'll take that.

So, that being the case (as far as I'm concerned now), do you think they would've joined the Federation Alliance without Sisko's actions?

-Withers-​

 

[TheGodBen]

It's hard to say. The Romulans almost always work in self-interest, so every day the war waged on the less winnable it became for the Federation Alliance and the less likely the Romulans would have been to intervene. At the same time, the longer the war waged on the more obvious it became that the Cardassians were being treated as subjects of the Dominion and not members, and that would surely have made the Romulans more wary of a post-war peace with the Dominion. I'd say that if the war had lasted until the end of season 6 without Romulan involvement then it would have become unwinnable, and my guess is that they would have spent the remaining months of the war building up a defence fleet for the day when the Dominion would eventually come knocking on their door.

 

[neozeks]

There's a quote in the episode where the presumed destruction of the assembled fleet is either directly stated or at least implied. Why they couldn't all have warped away I'm not sure but the impression was given that they would've been caught off guard and thus destroyed by the destruction of the star.

Seems to me the writers didn't really think it through enough. But we can always rationalize it by saying that the star was supposed to be destroyed in a way that would also propagate some kind of a warp-field-colapsing-subspace-effect...or something.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Seems to me the writers didn't really think it through enough. But we can always rationalize it by saying that the star was supposed to be destroyed in a way that would also propagate some kind of a warp-field-colapsing-subspace-effect...or something.

I'm just thankful they didn't say the Bajoran sun's supernova would threaten the entire galaxy.

Thoughts?

All of my thoughts have been addressed, except for one. Why did you stop centering your posts?

 

[Withers]

All of my thoughts have been addressed, except for one. Why did you stop centering your posts?

There was a lot of whining and complaining about it (apparently some people found it exceptionally difficult to read) and that finally got moderator attention and I was essentially told to knock it off. Whether or not it qualifies as trolling or not hasn't been addressed officially but as soon as I can PM anybody I'll find out. For now I'm happy to rock the boat by antagonizing Anwar (in the friendliest way of course)

-Withers-​

 

[indolover]

the romulans' two greatest enemies were getting a hiding, and couldn't win the war in the long run (especially after betazed was captured by the Dominion).

Should the Federation/Klingon Alliance fallen, would the Romulans have been next? Most likely, yes. However, i think the fact that Romulans had been enemies of the Federation and Klingons for centuries precluded them from joining the war.

 

[Baconnaise]

The romulans even in tng were never really portrayed as being some all powerful empire imo. It's always looked to me like they were that side nuclear power that didn't get involved unless it was to their advantage and a gain was a certainty.

I look at romulans of a psuedo china where they are actively agressive mostly around their own border. They tend to focus internally almost exclusively unless you happen to do or be in an area next to them.

The alpha quadrant having the three main powers allied from the onset would have made it harder to push the idea that cardassia and the dominion could prolong the war as long as they did. We have two empires with cloaking fleets and the federation I doubt cardassia as a military could hold back the onslaught since the klingons alone were beating their ass. Dominion wouldn't have changed much realistically since the wormhole was blocked.

I mean think about it cardassia was on the ropes with the klingons already most of that infrastructure should have been destroyed mostly even before the dominion joins in. It's bad enough that they expected us to believe that somehow the dominion had so many ships let alone the means to build them up and running so quickly. We're talking about huge shipyards and jem hadar grow farms that take massive resources to build themselves. The federation alone could have built just as many and more. It's a show though so meh .

 

[Timo]

But we can always rationalize it by saying that the star was supposed to be destroyed in a way that would also propagate some kind of a warp-field-colapsing-subspace-effect...or something.

Or we could say that warping to and from Bajor, and especially DS9, is wrought with more danger than in the general case - because of the stormy and unpredictable Denorios Belt.

Or we could say that the explosion of the star was never intended to achieve anything. Indeed, it was never even intended to take place. It was just a ruse to get the Alphans to look in the wrong direction when the Dominion did something else.

There's no objective proof that the Bashir Changeling had a starkiller device. All we have is a bit of rushed speculation by our heroes:

Dax: "Looks like someone's been doing some modifications to the Yukon. I'm also picking up large amounts of trilithium, tekasite, and protomatter on board."
Kira: "A bomb. If it explodes inside the sun-"
Dax: "It could trigger a supernova. Wipe out the entire fleet, the station..."
Kira: "...And Bajor. We have to use the tractor beams."

The signature of a starkiller bomb could have been faked by the Bashir Changeling. Note how Dax only "observes" the presence of those substances after the Changeling flips a switch on a mysterious device aboard the runabout. Sounds like faked emissions to me...

Also, Dax and Kira only speculate that the emissions might denote a bomb; that the bomb might kill the star; and that the death of the star might wipe out the fleet. They're discussing a worst-case scenario, exactly as the Dominion would wish them to. Quite possibly, the fleet would never have been in any real danger even if the bomb had been real and had succeeded in blowing up the star. Bajor and the rest of the planets in the star system would still be dead, so Starfleet counterreaction was certainly warranted.

Probably cooler heads prevailed at the other end, though. At least we see no sign of Starfleet, the Klingons or the Romulans evacuating.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Herbert1]

I thought that the issue was that the Romulans were biding their time and would eventually declare war on the Dominion at a time of their own choosing despite the non-agression pact. The intent of Sisko's plan was to speed the Romulan entry into the war so that the Federation wouldn't suffer so many casualties and that he would be saving the lives of friends and colleagues. I don't believe that there was ever a question that the Romulans wouldn't declare war on the Dominion.

 

[Myasishchev]

I mean think about it cardassia was on the ropes with the klingons already most of that infrastructure should have been destroyed mostly even before the dominion joins in. It's bad enough that they expected us to believe that somehow the dominion had so many ships let alone the means to build them up and running so quickly. We're talking about huge shipyards and jem hadar grow farms that take massive resources to build themselves. The federation alone could have built just as many and more. It's a show though so meh .

I dunno, I got the feeling that Cardassia was actually somewhat rich, but also extraordinarily poorly run, so the ultimate effect was poverty. Sort of like Russia (pick a regime, any regime) in that regard.

The signature of a starkiller bomb could have been faked by the Bashir Changeling. Note how Dax only "observes" the presence of those substances after the Changeling flips a switch on a mysterious device aboard the runabout. Sounds like faked emissions to me...

Would explain how some (Changeling posing as a) Starfleet doctor got ahold of the materials to make a sunkiller bomb. (Which, incidentally, is a broken overpowered weapon for the Generations writers to have come up with. <_< )

 

[Nightdiamond]

Sisko put it perfectly; 'once they're finished with us, they're coming after you'.

In some ways, the Romulans had to share some blame- Their Tal Shiar incident create a huge security risk for most of the Alpha Quandrant. Then later they suddenly refuse to do anything.

And before that,Sisko caught one of their cloaked ships just in time, before they were about to destroy DS9 and the wormhole.

I think that may have made Sisko less reluctant to bring them into the war.

Well, it would have gave him a good reason to at least.

 

[Baconnaise]

I mean think about it cardassia was on the ropes with the klingons already most of that infrastructure should have been destroyed mostly even before the dominion joins in. It's bad enough that they expected us to believe that somehow the dominion had so many ships let alone the means to build them up and running so quickly. We're talking about huge shipyards and jem hadar grow farms that take massive resources to build themselves. The federation alone could have built just as many and more. It's a show though so meh .

I dunno, I got the feeling that Cardassia was actually somewhat rich, but also extraordinarily poorly run, so the ultimate effect was poverty. Sort of like Russia (pick a regime, any regime) in that regard.

I actually had the reverse feeling you have. Cardassia was run very efficiently (record keeping military service looked mandatory) but lacked resources (occupation of bajor and it's resources). They made some comments in the show how the fed cardy war they couldn't feed their own people but could conduct a war which seems to me like they were run just fine but needed more resources.

Russian empires have been poorly run but usually had plenty of resources. Empire of Japan seems to be more fitting in this example as they had good leadership but severely lacked resources.

This brings up my other thoughts on how it's hard for me to believe the dominion could build and maintain their military strength in a poor sector of space in comparison to the others.

 

[Baconnaise]

Sisko put it perfectly; 'once they're finished with us, they're coming after you'.

In some ways, the Romulans had to share some blame- Their Tal Shiar incident create a huge security risk for most of the Alpha Quandrant. Then later they suddenly refuse to do anything.

And before that,Sisko caught one of their cloaked ships just in time, before they were about to destroy DS9 and the wormhole.

I think that may have made Sisko less reluctant to bring them into the war.

Well, it would have gave him a good reason to at least.

The way this and other relevant episodes surrounding this were portrayed we were shown how depressing the casualties were to Sisko and other federation officers. That lead up to him actually doing something you wouldn't expect from a starfleet captain due to depressing nature and low morale of losing friends and former colleagues.