Politics in the Federation(Post-Typhon Pact Novels)

[fredrick]

I am a long-time lurker here and decided to finally post after seeing the discussion of trek politics here. While fascinating, what interests me is not whether treklit or trek generally is based on real-life politics - of course it is. What interests me is how it is likely perceived by characters within it.

For some time I have been bothered by the approach to politics within the Federation. It is one thing to have an enlightened electorate beyond buzz words - it is another to have comatose one. The way politics is approached is to show a corrupt political process, but a pure electorate, which is more moral, more principled and better informed than many of their leaders, and would of course condemn policies against the principles of the Federation if they knew they were ongoing. After billions of deaths in a borg invasion and an invasion every other year for 15 years.



The nature of the Trek Universe requires a people who have moved beyond conflict and avoid it at all costs. The nature of entertainment is that such efforts are destined to be eternally futile. The result in trek fiction is not an enlightened public holding to its ideals, but an increasingly brain-dead morass of people too addicted to whatever it is they are doing to put two and two together and conclude that the Federation's entire approach is problematic. Not its goals but its approach.

What really made this clear to me was the throwaway line in Zero Sum Game where Bacco expressed a desire to be defeated in her next election, and it was explained that her ratings was excellent. This may be understandable in the context of a population too shell-shocked to think critically but by any standard her tenure has been a disaster, which if not of her own making, dwarfs anything Min Zife achieved to any objective observer.

Let's See:

1. She presided over a Borg invasion in which Starfleet paranoia prevented the arming of Starfleet or its allies with the only effective weapon thereby necessitating broadcasting its design openly leading to its adaption.

2. Following this she allowed a Ferangi Mercenary to infiltrate the Federation and inflict massive damage on reconstrution efforts.

3. Most of the Federations enemies(and they would be viewed by the public as enemies - Romulans tried to blow up Earth in 2379, the Breen attacked it directly in 2375, and no one needs to say anything about the Tholians) to form an alliance altering the balance of power unfavorably.

4. Rather than dealing with this crisis with a military build-up she assigns ships to exploration and engages in experiments with the integration of vastly different species on starships(Titan) a noble goal but probably not the priority.

5. She then proceeds to lose a key ally, the Imperial Romulan State, denying it aid in its time of need, and allowing the incorporation of its assets into the Typhon pact.

6. To make matters worse, she then presides over the unthinkable - Andor's withdrawal from the Federation.

I can understand the argument that she is doing the best she can in difficult circumstances, but it escapes me how any observer can see the above and conclude she has anywhere above a 20% approval rating or is considered anything other than one of the least-successful Presidents in history. For all his flaws, Zife won his war, and Azernal talked constantly of the need to stay militarized for future threats. That should start looking pretty good right about now.

In fact, if one wants to argue, I am surprised that we are not seeing a Conservative reaction against the Federation entirely. Pretty much every policy implemented by the political elite that run the federation(and everything we have seen indicates that the Federation political arena is the province of an elite al la France - at least on worlds like Andor, Vulcan, and Betazed if not on Earth) has been a disaster.

2267: The Federation signs a treaty with the Cardassians ceding Federation colonies with the promise of peace and proper treatment.

2269: With the Cardassians clearly violating the treaty the Federation declares colonists defending themselves from Cardassian genocide to be criminals.

2272: When the Federation's longtime allies the Klingons attack the Cardassians, who have shown themselves to murderous and untrustworthy, the Federation abandons its long-time allies to protect its former enemies, eventually involving itself in a bloody war at the end of the year.

2273: After all of the Federation's aid, the Cardassians betray the Federation to the Dominion, vindicating the Klingons, and rendering anyone who died fighting the Klingons to have done so in vain.

You can repeat this with the aid to the Romulan Star Empire after Nemesis.

I understand the above time-lines are an oversimplification of the events involved, but they are also an accurate summation of what took place. I think it would be quite interesting if Bacco received a challenging willing to articulate some of them, because they have to be on the minds of billions of Federation citizens.

Instead, what I suspect is that we will get more cheerleading for Bacco, and more self-doubt about the moral righteousness of the Federation, and whether Section 31 is "too extreme", when in reality, Admiral Leyton could probably win the Presidency with 70% if the electorate was behaving in a realistic manner.

 

[Christopher]

What really made this clear to me was the throwaway line in Zero Sum Game where Bacco expressed a desire to be defeated in her next election, and it was explained that her ratings was excellent. This may be understandable in the context of a population too shell-shocked to think critically but by any standard her tenure has been a disaster, which if not of her own making, dwarfs anything Min Zife achieved to any objective observer.

I'm sure that every sitting president entertains the wish to be relieved of the responsibility. It's not a reflection on their performance.

1. She presided over a Borg invasion in which Starfleet paranoia prevented the arming of Starfleet or its allies with the only effective weapon thereby necessitating broadcasting its design openly leading to its adaption.

It wasn't paranoia, it was reasonable caution. The Borg adapt to every new weapon eventually. The more Starfleet used transphasic torpedoes, the sooner the Borg would adapt -- just as overusing antibiotics hastens the evolution of antibiotic-resistant germs. It was a valid decision to hold back their use so that they wouldn't lose their effectiveness too soon. It was a very difficult call to make: do you use it the first time a world is threatened and risk losing it early in the game, or do you save it for when it's really absolutely needed at the cost of losing worlds? There's no clear, easy answer there, but a very hard, painful choice. It certainly can't be dismissed as paranoia.

3. Most of the Federations enemies(and they would be viewed by the public as enemies - Romulans tried to blow up Earth in 2379, the Breen attacked it directly in 2375, and no one needs to say anything about the Tholians) to form an alliance altering the balance of power unfavorably.

No, Remans led by a human clone self-identified as Reman tried to blow up the Earth. After they assassinated the entire Romulan Senate, meaning that they were enemies of the Romulans.

At the point the Typhon Pact was formed, relations with the Romulan Star Empire were strained but not actually hostile, and arguably as good as they'd ever been in history; there were unfriendly relations with the Tzenkethi and Breen, but no open conflict; there was a long history of unfriendliness with the Tholians, but as far as we know, no actual war with them at any point in history; relations with the Gorn were generally neutral to good-ish, with the current Gorn administration actually indebted to Starfleet for its survival; and there were no relations one way or another between the Federation and the Kinshaya, although the Kinshaya were in a state of war with the Klingons.

Meanwhile, former enemies such as the Klingons, Cardassians, Ferengi, and Talarians were allied or considering alliance with the Federation, and the Dominion and Borg no longer existed. So I think it's an exaggeration to say "most of the Federation's enemies" joined in the Pact.

Besides, it doesn't make sense to blame a president for bad things that happen elsewhere on her watch. Was FDR to blame for the Holocaust or Pearl Harbor? A president should be judged for how she responds to external crises once they happen.

4. Rather than dealing with this crisis with a military build-up she assigns ships to exploration and engages in experiments with the integration of vastly different species on starships(Titan) a noble goal but probably not the priority.

"Rather than" is not correct. She is committed to rebuilding the fleet. But Starfleet has always been both a military and an exploratory force, so rebuilding it means rebuilding both those functions. After all, the big crisis is over. It's a gross mistake to assume the Typhon Pact is simply another military aggressor out to conquer the Federation. What they want is to stand on their own free of domination by the Federation. Which means that for the UFP to undertake a military buildup would be absolutely the wrong thing to do, because that would just spook the Pact into reacting defensively and increase tensions. The best thing the UFP can do to avoid conflict with the Pact is to take a nonaggressive stance toward it. Because the Pact (except maybe the Breen) doesn't want to start a fight. It just doesn't want to feel threatened by the Federation's power. So reaffirming that the Federation is a civilization defined by peaceful exploration and diplomacy is the right move to make in response to the Pact. It's also the best way to make new allies that can increase the Federation's strength, prosperity, and security.

And it's strange that you'd include the Luna-class experiment with multispecies crews here. First off, that was a Starfleet undertaking, and it was initiated before Bacco took office. Second, it was initiated in late 2379, more than two years before the Borg invasion, and it seems to have proved pretty successful by that point. So I don't think it really constitutes an "experiment" anymore. It constitutes continuing a proven program, one that's demonstrably valuable to the Federation's security. Remember, if Titan hadn't been in the right place to discover the Caeliar and Erika Hernandez, then the Federation would never have survived the Borg invasion.

I can understand the argument that she is doing the best she can in difficult circumstances, but it escapes me how any observer can see the above and conclude she has anywhere above a 20% approval rating or is considered anything other than one of the least-successful Presidents in history.

Approval ratings rise and fall throughout a president's term, and they aren't really a measure of success. They're an obsession of reporters and bloggers who need to cover the horse race in order to have something to talk about, but the only numbers that really matter are the ones at the polls on election day. And that's still at least a year away, book time. A lot can happen in that time.

For all his flaws, Zife won his war, and Azernal talked constantly of the need to stay militarized for future threats. That should start looking pretty good right about now.

Only to people too frightened or shortsighted to understand what the Typhon Pact really is. Those who bother to apply their intelligence and learn the actual situation will understand that the Pact isn't a potential invader that needs to be armed against. They're more interested in defending their own territory, their own sovereignty, against what they perceive as the threat of the Federation's power. So it would be politically stupid to provoke them by turning the Federation into an armed camp.

2272: When the Federation's longtime allies the Klingons attack the Cardassians, who have shown themselves to murderous and untrustworthy, the Federation abandons its long-time allies to protect its former enemies, eventually involving itself in a bloody war at the end of the year.

Because the Klingons were attacking on the basis of false information given them by the Dominion. And the Cardassians they attacked, remember, were the brand-new civilian reformist government that had just overthrown the former "murderous and untrustworthy" Central Command. Take care not to stereotype an entire civilization.

2273: After all of the Federation's aid, the Cardassians betray the Federation to the Dominion, vindicating the Klingons, and rendering anyone who died fighting the Klingons to have done so in vain.

On the contrary. That was part of the same Dominion plan. The Changeling Martok fed Gowron false information that drove him to invade and conquer Cardassia, which weakened and angered the Cardassians and made them receptive to the Dominion's offer of an alliance. The whole thing was a Dominion scheme to gain a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant, and both Gowron and Dukat fell for it hook, line, and sinker. The Federation was the only government that caught on to what was really happening and refused to be made a Dominion puppet. (Honestly, I've never understood why Sisko didn't just tell Dukat that the Founders were responsible for getting Cardassia invaded in the first place, that they were playing him for a sucker.)

You can repeat this with the aid to the Romulan Star Empire after Nemesis.

Which should actually prove a positive, because it gives the Romulans good reason not to see the Federation as an active threat.

I understand the above time-lines are an oversimplification of the events involved, but they are also an accurate summation of what took place.

As demonstrated above, they are less than completely accurate.

 

[Technobuilder]

The more people talk about the Federation (and their interpretation of it) post-Destiny, the more I start to see it as mirroring the path of the "Solarian League" from David Weber's Honor Harrington series, than the Federation I grew up hearing about.

Quark was right in a lot of ways. The Federation doesn't conquer worlds, they welcome them with "open arms" into a system heavily dominated by the worlds that came before them. And really what could scare the Breen or the Tholians more than becoming just another faceless member world.

The formation of the Pact is a departure for them for sure, but I guess the rationale is start your own "federation" get in on the ground floor, and in 300 years, you'll be sitting at the 'top' 'looking down' on new member worlds wanting to join your team.

I still haven't had a chance to read Paths of Disharmony but I'm hoping what happens with Andor makes sense to me. Cause I'm having trouble with the idea unexplained.

Also, I don't think of Bacco as an ineffectual President, but just a strong and capable woman who happened to take the job right before the all the sh*t hit all the fans.

Maybe we'd have a better understanding of the people's perspective if we actually got to see it once in a while, but Trek has the habit of focusing on the perceptions of Starfleet Officers more than Federation Citizens.

I have to say I've always enjoyed the moments where we get to take a hard look at the Federation from the other side by hearing from a 'somewhat outside' perspective Quark, Garak, Odo, and yes even Q.

 

[fredrick]

Thanks Christopher for the indepth response. It is not that I don't think there were good reasons for everything that happened - we know them from the TV shows and the books.

My problem here is that there seems to be an unstated assumption that the Federation public is also aware of everything the viewer is and making judgments on it. And I am finding that questionable.

What really made this clear to me was the throwaway line in Zero Sum Game where Bacco expressed a desire to be defeated in her next election, and it was explained that her ratings was excellent. This may be understandable in the context of a population too shell-shocked to think critically but by any standard her tenure has been a disaster, which if not of her own making, dwarfs anything Min Zife achieved to any objective observer.

I'm sure that every sitting president entertains the wish to be relieved of the responsibility. It's not a reflection on their performance.

My issue is not with her feelings, I can understand them. Its more with the reaction of Federation public opinion and the electorate. Any Federation citizen under age 40 has seen their entire adult life dominated by war, invasion, failed treaty, one after another. I you were born in 2350 you saw a Borg invasion at 17, the Maquis stuff at 19, War with the Klingons at 22, another Borg attack at 23, war with the Dominion at 24, a Breen attack on Earth at 25, a Romulan bid to destroy Earth at 29, a Borg invasion at 32. And then of course comes the Typon Pact. How on Earth does a society produce pacifists with those life experiences.

I am a political consultant/historian and that sort of thing produces a sea change in political outlooks. A whole generation sees the universe differently from their elders and begins to become frustrated with why they seem inflexible. The result can be progressive, as in Britain in 1945, or regressive as in South Africa in 1948. In both cases living legends who were universally beloved by their people were voted out because they seemed out of touch with the changing times and wanted to go back rather than forward.

1. She presided over a Borg invasion in which Starfleet paranoia prevented the arming of Starfleet or its allies with the only effective weapon thereby necessitating broadcasting its design openly leading to its adaption.It wasn't paranoia, it was reasonable caution. The Borg adapt to every new weapon eventually. The more Starfleet used transphasic torpedoes, the sooner the Borg would adapt -- just as overusing antibiotics hastens the evolution of antibiotic-resistant germs. It was a valid decision to hold back their use so that they wouldn't lose their effectiveness too soon. It was a very difficult call to make: do you use it the first time a world is threatened and risk losing it early in the game, or do you save it for when it's really absolutely needed at the cost of losing worlds? There's no clear, easy answer there, but a very hard, painful choice. It certainly can't be dismissed as paranoia..

Do we know that the Borg adapted from continued use or by reading the transmission? I remember several Admirals speculating that they could not adapt to transphasic torpedo due to the nature of the weapon. In any event, the issue is how the people whose worlds were destroyed would view the decision and I am suggesting I think a lot more of them would be inclined to a less charitable interpretation of events.

No, Remans led by a human clone self-identified as Reman tried to blow up the Earth. After they assassinated the entire Romulan Senate, meaning that they were enemies of the Romulans.

At the point the Typhon Pact was formed, relations with the Romulan Star Empire were strained but not actually hostile, and arguably as good as they'd ever been in history; there were unfriendly relations with the Tzenkethi and Breen, but no open conflict; there was a long history of unfriendliness with the Tholians, but as far as we know, no actual war with them at any point in history; relations with the Gorn were generally neutral to good-ish, with the current Gorn administration actually indebted to Starfleet for its survival; and there were no relations one way or another between the Federation and the Kinshaya, although the Kinshaya were in a state of war with the Klingons.

Meanwhile, former enemies such as the Klingons, Cardassians, Ferengi, and Talarians were allied or considering alliance with the Federation, and the Dominion and Borg no longer existed. So I think it's an exaggeration to say "most of the Federation's enemies" joined in the Pact.

Besides, it doesn't make sense to blame a president for bad things that happen elsewhere on her watch. Was FDR to blame for the Holocaust or Pearl Harbor? A president should be judged for how she responds to
external crises once they happen.

I can't buy this "our leader just tried to commit genocide against you, but its ok we didn't know what he was planning" line. Its not the sort of thing that I would expect to be persuasive to voters who would have incinerated had one crew and one ship not gotten lucky. Really I would be questioning why Starfleet keeps finding it in situations where one crew is all that sits between 10 billion people and extermination.

Its also only true in a strictly literal sense, but most of the Romulan fleet supported the coup and wanted a war in any event so Shinzon was not unrepresentative of Romulan opinion. Gell Kamenor may mean well, but evidence indicates that public opinion on Romulus is militantly anti-Federation and as such a more democratic Romulus is a more threatening one.

And the Breen carpet bombed Earth probably killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Given how Earth is painted in the series, that has to be as traumatizing as 9.11 times a thousand. People would remember, and they would demand it not be allowed to happen again.

"Rather than" is not correct. She is committed to rebuilding the fleet. But Starfleet has always been both a military and an exploratory force, so rebuilding it means rebuilding both those functions. After all, the big crisis is over. It's a gross mistake to assume the Typhon Pact is simply another military aggressor out to conquer the Federation. What they want is to stand on their own free of domination by the Federation. Which means that for the UFP to undertake a military buildup would be absolutely the wrong thing to do, because that would just spook the Pact into reacting defensively and increase tensions. The best thing the UFP can do to avoid conflict with the Pact is to take a nonaggressive stance toward it. Because the Pact (except maybe the Breen) doesn't want to start a fight. It just doesn't want to feel threatened by the Federation's power. So reaffirming that the Federation is a civilization defined by peaceful exploration and diplomacy is the right move to make in response to the Pact. It's also the best way to make new allies that can increase the Federation's strength, prosperity, and security.

And it's strange that you'd include the Luna-class experiment with multispecies crews here. First off, that was a Starfleet undertaking, and it was initiated before Bacco took office. Second, it was initiated in late 2379, more than two years before the Borg invasion, and it seems to have proved pretty successful by that point. So I don't think it really constitutes an "experiment" anymore. It constitutes continuing a proven program, one that's demonstrably valuable to the Federation's security. Remember, if Titan hadn't been in the right place to discover the Caeliar and Erika Hernandez, then the Federation would never have survived the Borg invasion.

Again, in the aftermath of the Breen attack, Shinzon, and now losing the IRE and Andor I would think the highest priority for Earth voters would be ensuring that Shinzon/Breen Attack never ever happen again. Starleet may be dedicated to exploration, and it may be beneficial in the long-run, but don't you think its logical some people see it as a drain on Starfleet's resources. Remember the excuse used for not supporting Donatra was the lack of ships. If I were in the Federation Council I would get up and denounce Bacco for sending ships off into the unknown so that we had too few to stand by our ally in their time of need.

In a modern leader that would be an impeachment worthy offense. At least as much as anything that is in the public domain in regards to Zife and Azernal.

Also how much about the Caelier is in the public domain?



[Quote}Approval ratings rise and fall throughout a president's term, and they aren't really a measure of success. They're an obsession of reporters and bloggers who need to cover the horse race in order to have something to talk about, but the only numbers that really matter are the ones at the polls on election day. And that's still at least a year away, book time. A lot can happen in that time.




Only to people too frightened or shortsighted to understand what the Typhon Pact really is. Those who bother to apply their intelligence and learn the actual situation will understand that the Pact isn't a potential invader that needs to be armed against. They're more interested in defending their own territory, their own sovereignty, against what they perceive as the threat of the Federation's power. So it would be politically stupid to provoke them by turning the Federation into an armed camp.[/Quote]

Questionable and irelevent. Regardless of their intentions, their actions, stealing the Slipstream, attempting to wipe out a civilization, destroying a Federation ally, provoking the secession of Andor, all of these are hostile acts.

And again, regardless of truth, based on public domain knowledge it looks like a villain hook-up, especially given that several of them tried to attack Earth in the last decade.

Because the Klingons were attacking on the basis of false information given them by the Dominion. And the Cardassians they attacked, remember, were the brand-new civilian reformist government that had just overthrown the former "murderous and untrustworthy" Central Command. Take care not to stereotype an entire civilization.

I attempting to give an impression of what Earth public opinion would think after repeated Cardassian treaty violations, publication of their attacks on Bajorans, and the fact that this same new reformist government had just butchered its own people in cold blood because they had the nerve to demand elections.

Contrast that with the Klingons who are long-time allies. I can not see how there would not be a significant segment of opinion in the Federation that would see throwing the Alliance overboard for the Cardassians as a short-sighted decision, especially when the Federation could have remained neutral without alienating them.

And I suspect all of the above people would have viewed themselves as vindicated when Dukat joined the Dominion, and a lot of others would have decided they were right all along.

A lot of this is my perspective as someone who worked a consultant on political campaigns, where one of the key principles is how people make decisions based on available information, not what is objectively true. And the available information paints a picture quite different from the net total.


Take Min Zife - We know about Tezwa as well as how hopeless that administration was. None of that is public knowledge. And the Federation was clearly the predominant power in the quadrant during his term or at least it appears that way in hindsight. Thats the sort of thing people internalize when they vote.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Christopher and Technobuilder did an excellent job of covering many of the points I would have made, but here are some that they didn't:

2. Following this she allowed a Ferangi Mercenary to infiltrate the Federation and inflict massive damage on reconstrution efforts.

Um, she didn't "allow" anything. The Ferengi, Sekki, had quietly entered into the Federation (and Klingon Empire, don't forget) and used the chaos to further the ends of her boss, the Typhon Pact. It took a concerted investigation over the span of a significant period of time to uncover this. It's not fair to blame Bacco for a situation that she (and many) originally assumed was just the continued fallout of the post-Borg Invasion universe.

5. She then proceeds to lose a key ally, the Imperial Romulan State, denying it aid in its time of need, and allowing the incorporation of its assets into the Typhon pact.

She denied it military resources. Considering that

A) The Federation needs all of its ships even more so than usual, and
B) Sending military resources to help the IRS would have made an already unstable situation in Romulan space even worse

There's really not much that she could have done to make things better.

Also, remember, that public opinion was beginning to turn against Donatra (and Tal'Aura, to be fair) and it is Federation policy not to get involved in the internal affairs of other powers (part of the Prime Directive). Donatra made the decision to reintegrate the IRS with the RSE. Whether or not it was smart is an entirely other debate.

6. To make matters worse, she then presides over the unthinkable - Andor's withdrawal from the Federation.

She had sent the Enterprise and several top Federation scientists to Andor, and she had been interested in and trying to help since she was first sworn in. Andor was a ticking time bomb, as Paths of Disharmony and Andor: Paradigm showed. Its problems were centuries in the making, and it had been made clear that, for the most part, Andor had largely withdrawn from the Federation anyway as it focused on its own survival. In addition to that, it was the release of information by the Typhon Pact that had been classified since the 2260s in the Federation, and even that was just one more push in a long series of pushes.

Pretty much every policy implemented by the political elite that run the federation(and everything we have seen indicates that the Federation political arena is the province of an elite al la France

Maybe because Paris is where the Federation government's main organs are? And what "elite" are you talking about? The Federation Councilors?

- at least on worlds like Andor, Vulcan, and Betazed if not on Earth) has been a disaster.

What "policies" have been a disaster? Everything you've mentioned has either been an action taken by others, or an event, and in both cases was beyond the control of President Bacco.

Everything you've mentioned here is either false or heavily slanted.

 

[Sci]

In fact, if one wants to argue, I am surprised that we are not seeing a Conservative reaction against the Federation entirely.

What does this mean? What constitutes Conservatism and Liberalism in the arena of Federation politics? What traits would characterize Conservatism in era of the Federation? Liberalism?

(and everything we have seen indicates that the Federation political arena is the province of an elite al la France - at least on worlds like Andor, Vulcan, and Betazed if not on Earth)

Well, Federation politics is the province of an elite in the sense that there are a relative few key decision-makers who lead the Federation who are either democratically elected or who are appointed by democratically elected officials. But there's certainly no evidence of hereditary, racial, sexual, economic, or other undemocratic privilege in the UFP . There's certainly no evidence of any sort of UFP Wall Street influencing the Palais.

Pretty much every policy implemented by the political elite that run the federation(and everything we have seen indicates that the Federation political arena is the province of an elite al la France - at least on worlds like Andor, Vulcan, and Betazed if not on Earth) has been a disaster.

2267: The Federation signs a treaty with the Cardassians ceding Federation colonies with the promise of peace and proper treatment.

2269: With the Cardassians clearly violating the treaty the Federation declares colonists defending themselves from Cardassian genocide to be criminals.

2272: When the Federation's longtime allies the Klingons attack the Cardassians, who have shown themselves to murderous and untrustworthy, the Federation abandons its long-time allies to protect its former enemies, eventually involving itself in a bloody war at the end of the year.

Those events would have all happened during Jaresh-Inyo's term, and Articles of the Federation and A Time for War, A Time for Peace make it very clear that while most Federates don't think him a bad person, they also don't think he was a successful President, which is why he only served one term in a UFP that routinely elects Presidents to three terms.

2273: After all of the Federation's aid, the Cardassians betray the Federation to the Dominion, vindicating the Klingons, and rendering anyone who died fighting the Klingons to have done so in vain.

As Christopher pointed out, Dukat's coup against the Cardassian civilian government did not constitute vindication for the Klingons. The Klingons were manipulated into going to war with the Cardassians, and the Cardassians were manipulated into joining the Dominion. Both sides were played for fools.

You can repeat this with the aid to the Romulan Star Empire after Nemesis.

I rather think the image of Romulans fighting and dying to protect Earth from Shinzon would go a long way to stopping anyone from making irrational assumptions about the intentions of a chaotic Romulus that lacks a government.

I understand the above time-lines are an oversimplification of the events involved,

I wouldn't call them oversimplifications. I think that's completely unfair. Most of what you've said is not oversimplification.

Most of what you've said is flat-out bullshit.

I think it would be quite interesting if Bacco received a challenging willing to articulate some of them, because they have to be on the minds of billions of Federation citizens.

I agree that that would make for an interesting story, in the same sense that Typhon Pact POV challenges to the Federation's self-image make for interesting stories.

That doesn't make the other side not full of shit, though.

Instead, what I suspect is that we will get more cheerleading for Bacco, and more self-doubt about the moral righteousness of the Federation, and whether Section 31 is "too extreme", when in reality, Admiral Leyton could probably win the Presidency with 70% if the electorate was behaving in a realistic manner.

I think you're confusing the worst impulses of the modern American electorate with "realism."

My problem here is that there seems to be an unstated assumption that the Federation public is also aware of everything the viewer is and making judgments on it.

You think the Federation wouldn't share these various pieces of information?

Its more with the reaction of Federation public opinion and the electorate. Any Federation citizen under age 40 has seen their entire adult life dominated by war, invasion, failed treaty, one after another. I you were born in 2350 you saw a Borg invasion at 17, the Maquis stuff at 19, War with the Klingons at 22, another Borg attack at 23, war with the Dominion at 24, a Breen attack on Earth at 25, a Romulan bid to destroy Earth at 29, a Borg invasion at 32. And then of course comes the Typon Pact. How on Earth does a society produce pacifists with those life experiences.

Is the Federation a society of pacifists? It's certainly a society of people don't believe in militarism, and that's a function of most of its worlds having gone through their equivalent of World War III or of being descended from prior worlds which went through such events.

What kinds of popularly-favored foreign policies would you expect to see, specifically?

Do we know that the Borg adapted from continued use or by reading the transmission?

Yes. DEST made it clear that the Borg adapted from the transphasic torp because it was used too much, not because of the transmission. The torpedo still worked for a time after the transmission was made, and there was no evidence the Collective ever penetrated the encryption on that transmission.

The Borg adapted because the Borg adapt, not because there was a problem with transmission security.

I remember several Admirals speculating that they could not adapt to transphasic torpedo due to the nature of the weapon.

And Seven of Nine pointed out that their speculations to that effect were bull.

In any event, the issue is how the people whose worlds were destroyed would view the decision and I am suggesting I think a lot more of them would be inclined to a less charitable interpretation of events.

Maybe if they're looking for someone to blame other than the Borg. But the Federation is a society full of people who are more emotionally mature than that.

I can't buy this "our leader just tried to commit genocide against you, but its ok we didn't know what he was planning" line.

Those elements within the Romulan Imperial Fleet who supported Shinzon's coup didn't know he was going to attempt to destroy Earth. And when they found out, they risked their lives to fight alongside the Enterprise to stop him.

Only an anti-Romulan bigot would take that to mean that the Romulan Star Empire was attacking the Federation.

Its also only true in a strictly literal sense, but most of the Romulan fleet supported the coup

We don't know that, actually. It's unclear whether or not "most" of the Imperial Fleet supported Shinzon's coup or just a few key admirals and commanders.

and wanted a war in any event

Patently false. Some of the Imperial Fleet admirals who supported Shinzon did so because they thought he would move against the Federation, but there was no evidence they wanted a full-scale war.

Gell Kamenor may mean well, but evidence indicates that public opinion on Romulus is militantly anti-Federation

What evidence? All you've cited are the political games played by a few unelected elites amongst themselves.

And the Breen carpet bombed Earth probably killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

"Elven Hours Out" depicted the Breen attack on Earth in the anthology Tales of the Dominion War. It did not carpet-bomb Earth and kill hundreds of thousands. The Breen ships were much more surgical in their strike. It's possible that hundreds were killed, but not more than that.

Again, in the aftermath of the Breen attack, Shinzon, and now losing the IRE and Andor I would think the highest priority for Earth voters would be ensuring that Shinzon/Breen Attack never ever happen again.

Actually, the highest priority is rebuilding, which you would know if you read TNG: Losing the Peace. The second priority is defense, and Zero Sum Game and other novels have made it clear that Starfleet is in no way compromising its defense role. In fact, both Titan: Over A Torrent Sea and TNG: Losing the Peace make it clear that the Luna-class fleet and the Voyager expedition to the Delta Quadrant, that Starfleet made a P.R. point of displaying as they sent them out, are pretty much the only ships doing any real exploration right now.

So your premise is false. Starfleet is expending far, far, far more resources on rebuilding and defense than on exploration.

If I were in the Federation Council I would get up and denounce Bacco for sending ships off into the unknown so that we had too few to stand by our ally in their time of need.

Depends. What's your goal? Is your goal to undermine Bacco for the sake of undermining Bacco, or is your goal to protect the Federation and adhere to Federation law?

"Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" established very explicitly that the Articles of the Federation prohibit the Federation government from doing anything that interferes in the internal affairs of a foreign state. The Imperial Romulan State was plunged into turmoil because public opinion within the I.R.S. began to shift away from the idea that Donatra's government had any legitimacy or that the Romulan people should be sundered into two states. Thus, sending ships to the I.R.S. for the sake of countering potential, not-yet-there Typhon Pact ships and propping up a government that does not have popular legitimacy with its own citizenry would, in point of fact, be a violation of Federation constitutional law.

It would also mean endangering Federation citizens for the sake of a government that's been friendly to you, but which did not join the Khitomer Accords alliance, and which does not have the support of its own people. You're saying the Federation should stick its neck out and risk an armed conflict over what is, in effect, the Romulans' civil war.

It's the equivalent of saying we should send in the Army to prop up Mubarak or Gaddafi, frankly. I rather imagine most Federates would react by saying, "Why should we endanger our lives when it's their civil war?"

Also: You're basically saying you would condemn her for sending out a grand total of 20 ships -- 9 to the Delta Quadrant (Project Full Circle, which also has a security purpose in ascertaining that the Borg are truly gone and looking for the Caeliar) and 11 to the Beta Quadrant (the Luna fleet). 20 out of hundreds and hundreds. It's more than a little silly.

In a modern leader that would be an impeachment worthy offense.

Bullshit. Modern leaders sever alliances for the sake of both domestic law and political expediency all the time. The most we might see is the Federation Councillor from Ardana denouncing her decision, because it was an I.R.S. ship that saved it.

Also how much about the Caelier is in the public domain?

So far as we know, all of it.

Only to people too frightened or shortsighted to understand what the Typhon Pact really is. Those who bother to apply their intelligence and learn the actual situation will understand that the Pact isn't a potential invader that needs to be armed against. They're more interested in defending their own territory, their own sovereignty, against what they perceive as the threat of the Federation's power. So it would be politically stupid to provoke them by turning the Federation into an armed camp.

Questionable and irelevent. Regardless of their intentions, their actions, stealing the Slipstream, attempting to wipe out a civilization, destroying a Federation ally, provoking the secession of Andor, all of these are hostile acts.

1. Stealing the slipstream is a hostile act. So is infiltrating Breen space to destroy their prototype and spacedock. And Zero Sum Game made it clear that neither side publicly disclosed the others' actions against them.

2. "Attempting to wipe out a civilization." Again, that was one guy, who had illegally usurped power on Romulus, and whose backers in the Romulan Imperial Fleet turned on him once they realized what he was planning to do to Earth. Only an anti-Romulan bigot would hold that against them after Romulans fought and died to protect Earth from Shinzon.

3. The Imperial Romulan State was not a Federation ally. It was friendlier than the Romulan Star Empire -- but that was naked self-interest, an attempt to cultivate the UFP as an ally in order to keep itself afloat. And its legitimacy amongst its own citizenry was questionable, at best -- Donatra had clearly lost popular support. When, in the end, it was dissolved and its former territory re-integrated into the Romulan Star Empire, that re-integration was popularly supported.

4. The Tholians did not provoke Andor's secession, per se. They disclosed the fact that the Federation was keeping secret something that could help save the entire populace of one of its Member States -- that's not an act of war. It may not be politically convenient for the UFP, but the Typhon Pact is not responsible for Andor's subsequent decision to secede, Andor is. And let's bear in mind that the Tholians didn't do anything that violated any treaty.

And again, regardless of truth, based on public domain knowledge it looks like a villain hook-up,

Only if you assume the public is as ignorant and irrational as it is today.

especially given that several of them tried to attack Earth in the last decade.

You mean like the Klingons and the Cardassians?

Because the Klingons were attacking on the basis of false information given them by the Dominion. And the Cardassians they attacked, remember, were the brand-new civilian reformist government that had just overthrown the former "murderous and untrustworthy" Central Command. Take care not to stereotype an entire civilization.

I attempting to give an impression of what Earth public opinion would think

You must have a low opinion of the citizens of United Earth.

But please remember that the Federation is not Earth, and that the opinions of Earth are not the be-all, end-all of the UFP.

after repeated Cardassian treaty violations, publication of their attacks on Bajorans, and the fact that this same new reformist government had just butchered its own people in cold blood because they had the nerve to demand elections.

The attack on Cardassian civilians, detailed in the novel The Never-Ending Sacrifice, did not happen until months and months after the Klingons broke the Khitomer Accords and attacked Federation Starbase Deep Space 9. You are getting your chronology mixed up.

Contrast that with the Klingons who are long-time allies. I can not see how there would not be a significant segment of opinion in the Federation that would see throwing the Alliance overboard for the Cardassians as a short-sighted decision, especially when the Federation could have remained neutral without alienating them.

You are also utterly mis-remembering "The Way of the Warrior" now. The Federation tried to remain neutral; the Klingons would not allow it. Chancellor Gowron demanded that the Federation either support his invasion of Cardassia or he would sunder the Khitomer Accords alliance.

A lot of this is my perspective as someone who worked a consultant on political campaigns, where one of the key principles is how people make decisions based on available information, not what is objectively true.

And one of the key premises of Star Trek is that the overwhelming majority of people are more educated, more tolerant, more open-minded, less militaristic, less jingoistic, and less nationalistic than they are today. Your argument would work if you were talking about the American populace, with its widespread ignorance, susceptibility to propaganda, and strong tradition of Jacksonian nationalism and jingoism, but you are not, and your argument does not work well given that fact.

Take Min Zife - We know about Tezwa as well as how hopeless that administration was. None of that is public knowledge.

His role in arming Tezwa is not public knowledge. His role in getting the Federation embroiled in a Klingon-Tezwan conflict, in ordering Tezwa conquered and occupied, and of getting thousands of Federates killed in an intra-Tezwan civil war, is publicly known. Most Federates believe he resigned because of Tezwa, not for the economic reasons he cites -- it's just that most Federates don't know the EXTENT of how bad Tezwa was.

Also, remember, that public opinion was beginning to turn against Donatra (and Tal'Aura, to be fair) and it is Federation policy not to get involved in the internal affairs of other powers (part of the Prime Directive).

Exactly!

Donatra made the decision to reintegrate the IRS with the RSE.

No, Donatra made the decision to travel to Romulus for a conference with Praetor Tal'Aura in the hopes of working out some sort of power-sharing deal. It was Tal'Aura who made the decision to dissolve the Imperial Romulan State after she captured and imprisoned Donatra on false charges of murder.

Everything you've mentioned here is either false or heavily slanted.

Yep. To be fair, that makes me completely believe him when he says he's a political consultant, though.

 

[Christopher]

My problem here is that there seems to be an unstated assumption that the Federation public is also aware of everything the viewer is and making judgments on it. And I am finding that questionable.

I'm not making that assumption at all. I'm just assuming the 24th-century electorate is more informed and less susceptible to shallow or sabre-rattling propaganda than the present-day electorate.

My issue is not with her feelings, I can understand them. Its more with the reaction of Federation public opinion and the electorate. Any Federation citizen under age 40 has seen their entire adult life dominated by war, invasion, failed treaty, one after another. I you were born in 2350 you saw a Borg invasion at 17, the Maquis stuff at 19, War with the Klingons at 22, another Borg attack at 23, war with the Dominion at 24, a Breen attack on Earth at 25, a Romulan bid to destroy Earth at 29, a Borg invasion at 32. And then of course comes the Typon Pact. How on Earth does a society produce pacifists with those life experiences.

Look at the societies that have produced the most devoted pacifists of the past century: India under the prolonged and often violent oppression of the British Raj (Gandhi) and the American South following centuries of slavery and racial oppression (Dr. King). Pacifism is not passivity or complacency; it is a recognition that the force of conscience can be a more potent weapon against oppression than the force of arms. And that recognition is sometimes clearest to people who have lived within a cycle of violence and injustice for so long that they've clearly seen that violence only perpetuates problems rather than solving them.

And let's go over the specific events you cite. The first two Borg "invasions" did Starfleet a lot of damage, but didn't really do Federation civilians a lot of harm beyond a couple of remote colonies, since they were stopped before reaching Earth. It wouldn't seem quite as bad to most civilians as it did to Starfleet.

The Maquis stuff took place on the border, and probably didn't trouble the average citizen of the Federation much. We already know that the UFP is so huge that events that loom large on one border can be inconsquential elsewhere; we learned in TNG season 4 that the UFP had been at war with Cardassia throughout seasons 1 & 2, yet those seasons portrayed Starfleet as a peacetime organization. Of course this is actually a continuity error, but it can be reconciled by drawing on a point Poul Anderson made about interstellar civilizations in much of his fiction: that they're just too large to consider a unified single entity. Consider how hard it is to keep abreast of the current events of just one planet, let alone hundreds. The events involving the Maquis would've been important to people in and around the demilitarized zone, but probably quite remote for the average citizen of Mars or Deneva or Tellar.

The Klingons were mostly at war with Cardassia and actual combat with the Federation was intermittent and brief, as I recall. It probably would've been largely forgotten once the Dominion War started in earnest. And the Breen attack was part of the Dominion War -- and the first time in over a century that war had struck Earth, which is important to remember when thinking about how the average Federation voter perceives these events. Most of the stuff that looms large for Starfleet officers would be remote for the average civilian voter.

And once again, it was a Reman bid to destroy Earth. If you continue to repeat a blatantly incorrect statement after your error has been pointed out, it really damages the credibility of anything you have to say.

And what about the good things that have happened in that time? New worlds discovered, new technologies developed. Holotechnology becomes more commonplace. New truths are discovered about the evolution of humanoid life. Advances are made in winning the rights of artificial intelligences. Initial fears of the Ferengi prove unfounded and they end up becoming allies and business partners. A wormhole to a new quadrant of the galaxy is discovered and Bajor joins the Federation. The starship Voyager opens up the fourth quadrant of the galaxy and brings home amazing new discoveries and contacts.

It's the nature of fiction to focus on the things that go wrong. So that gives a biased view of events, as does the fact that we're only seeing the Trek universe from the perspective of the people who have to fix the things that go wrong. It would probably look very different to an average citizen of Earth or Vulcan, and a lot more balanced between good and bad.

Do we know that the Borg adapted from continued use or by reading the transmission?

We know that they would have adapted eventually if they'd seen the torpedo in use repeatedly. That is what the Borg do: they take the first few hits and then they find a countermeasure.

I remember several Admirals speculating that they could not adapt to transphasic torpedo due to the nature of the weapon.

I wrote some of the scenes you're remembering. And what I wrote is that the admirals and advisors (including Seven of Nine, who's a pretty reliable source about the Borg) concluded that the Borg had a harder time than usual adapting to the transphasic torpedoes because of their novelty and variable configuration, but that given enough opportunities to see the weapon in action, they would inevitably evolve a defense.

In any event, the issue is how the people whose worlds were destroyed would view the decision and I am suggesting I think a lot more of them would be inclined to a less charitable interpretation of events.

Certainly possible. But surely the fact that Starfleet actually played a role in ending the Borg threat forever would help counter that. And we've seen that the Bacco administration and Starfleet are doing everything they can to help in reconstruction. There are two sides to this.

I can't buy this "our leader just tried to commit genocide against you, but its ok we didn't know what he was planning" line. Its not the sort of thing that I would expect to be persuasive to voters who would have incinerated had one crew and one ship not gotten lucky.

Are you talking about Shinzon here? Again, he was politically Reman, not Romulan. He conquered the Romulan nation by assassination and force, and even his own Romulan allies turned against him within weeks. It should be obvious to any moderately informed voter that Shinzon was not the leader of the Romulans, but the conqueror of the Romulans.

Its also only true in a strictly literal sense, but most of the Romulan fleet supported the coup and wanted a war in any event so Shinzon was not unrepresentative of Romulan opinion.

Illogical. If the majority of Romulan opinion had agreed with that of the military hardliners who backed Shinzon, then those hardliners wouldn't have needed to overthrow the sitting government to get their way. The very fact that they needed to get support from a human/Reman and his slave buddies should be proof that they did not have the support of the majority of Romulans.

See, this is why it's wrong to make blanket generalizations about entire species. There are multiple opinions, factions, ideologies, etc. within any of these species.

Gell Kamenor may mean well, but evidence indicates that public opinion on Romulus is militantly anti-Federation and as such a more democratic Romulus is a more threatening one.

I don't see any such evidence. In fact, I'd say the evidence shows that the general public among the Romulans is less hostile toward the UFP than the state and military, given how successful the Vulcan Reunification movement has been at gaining a foothold among the common people.

And the Breen carpet bombed Earth probably killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Evidence? All we know for certain is that the Breen attacked Starfleet Headquarters and damaged portions of San Francisco.

Given how Earth is painted in the series, that has to be as traumatizing as 9.11 times a thousand. People would remember, and they would demand it not be allowed to happen again.

True, such sentiments would exist. But presumably this more educated, enlightened civilization would not give in to xenophobic paranoia to the same extent that some factions in America did after 9/11. Even here after 9/11, it's not as if every American agreed with the decisions to invade Iraq or detain Americans without cause or torture prisoners. Fear doesn't make everyone march in lockstep behind a militant response, and it would have less hold upon Federation citizens than upon present-day people.

Again, in the aftermath of the Breen attack, Shinzon, and now losing the IRE and Andor I would think the highest priority for Earth voters would be ensuring that Shinzon/Breen Attack never ever happen again.

Which is exactly why it would be stupid to provoke the Pact into attacking by acting like we're arming for a war against them. Naturally that fear would exist, but you need to give the citizens of the Federation more credit for being able to listen to reason and make intelligent decisions rather than simply being slaves to panic and paranoia.

Starleet may be dedicated to exploration, and it may be beneficial in the long-run, but don't you think its logical some people see it as a drain on Starfleet's resources. Remember the excuse used for not supporting Donatra was the lack of ships. If I were in the Federation Council I would get up and denounce Bacco for sending ships off into the unknown so that we had too few to stand by our ally in their time of need.

And I would respond with the actual numbers demonstrating that the percentage of ships sent on exploratory missions was too small in proportion to the total to make such a significant difference. Then I would point out that the main expeditionary force, the Voyager Fleet, is on a mission important to the Federation's security, seeking to determine whether the Borg threat is truly ended and to find out whether anything else dangerous might be arising in the power vacuum they left. And I would point out that not only are the Luna-class ships not designed for combat, but their mission embodies everything that makes the Federation worth defending and gives people a sense of hope and optimism which is every bit as vital to rebuilding as any merely physical resource. A people confident enough to keep striving to do worthwhile things is stronger than a people too frightened to do anything but cower behind increasingly high walls.

Also how much about the Caelier is in the public domain?

Enough to know that they turned the tide. I mean, come on, it's not like their very existence could be kept secret. Nobody would buy that the Borg just up and left on their own.

Only to people too frightened or shortsighted to understand what the Typhon Pact really is. Those who bother to apply their intelligence and learn the actual situation will understand that the Pact isn't a potential invader that needs to be armed against. They're more interested in defending their own territory, their own sovereignty, against what they perceive as the threat of the Federation's power. So it would be politically stupid to provoke them by turning the Federation into an armed camp.

Questionable and irelevent. Regardless of their intentions, their actions, stealing the Slipstream, attempting to wipe out a civilization, destroying a Federation ally, provoking the secession of Andor, all of these are hostile acts.

But hostile acts taken in the name of fear and defensiveness. Like I said, responding to violence with violence just perpetuates the cycle rather than solving anything. Somebody has to be smart enough to step back and find a better solution, to have the courage to face an enemy with reasoned persuasion and try to convince them not to be an enemy anymore. And that's what makes the Federation what it is.

And again, regardless of truth, based on public domain knowledge it looks like a villain hook-up, especially given that several of them tried to attack Earth in the last decade.

If we're talking about public knowledge, the voters have no knowledge of the Breen's espionage, and they probably know next to nothing about what a rogue group of Gorn warriors almost did to a hitherto-unknown world in the depths of uncharted space. And if by "destroying a Federation ally" you mean the reabsorption of the Imperial Romulan State, I think that would be seen more as the political reunification of a divided nation. And the IRS was never more than a prospective ally anyway.

As for Andor, I'm surprised you're taking the position that the Pact is to blame, since it would better support your argument against Bacco's popularity if you considered that a lot of people in the Federation might agree with the Andorians' view that it was wrong for the government to suppress research that would help them and others. A lot of people in the UFP would probably be grateful to the Tholians for exposing that injustice. That's a scandal that could really hurt Bacco.

I attempting to give an impression of what Earth public opinion would think after repeated Cardassian treaty violations, publication of their attacks on Bajorans, and the fact that this same new reformist government had just butchered its own people in cold blood because they had the nerve to demand elections.

What the hell are you talking about? According to "The Way of the Warrior," the Klingon invasion came only days after the coup, and there was no mention of any butchery by the Detapa Council; there certainly wasn't time for any elections.

A lot of this is my perspective as someone who worked a consultant on political campaigns, where one of the key principles is how people make decisions based on available information, not what is objectively true. And the available information paints a picture quite different from the net total.

Only if you assume that Federation voters are as ill-informed and easily deceived as present-day voters and that Federation political campaigns are as sleazy and dishonest as they are today. I prefer not to believe either of those things.

 

[Sci]

A lot of this is my perspective as someone who worked a consultant on political campaigns, where one of the key principles is how people make decisions based on available information, not what is objectively true. And the available information paints a picture quite different from the net total.

Only if you assume that Federation voters are as ill-informed and easily deceived as present-day voters and that Federation political campaigns are as sleazy and dishonest as they are today.

Quoted for Truth.

Sorry, but there's no Federation Tea Party. Try again next time.

 

[fredrick]

A lot of this is my perspective as someone who worked a consultant on political campaigns, where one of the key principles is how people make decisions based on available information, not what is objectively true. And the available information paints a picture quite different from the net total.

Only if you assume that Federation voters are as ill-informed and easily deceived as present-day voters and that Federation political campaigns are as sleazy and dishonest as they are today.

Quoted for Truth.

Sorry, but there's no Federation Tea Party. Try again next time.

I think this is sort of what it comes down to. Is there no middle line between an irrational reaction to events, and little to no reaction?

One of the key points Christopher brings up is the importance of WWIII and similar events, which clearly indicates that war and violence have trans-formative effects in memory.

This makes sense. The thing is, that such changes are rarely permanent. I find it plausible that WWIII, or more likely what followed it(which with a bit of inference and common sense can be concluded to have been far far worse than what was likely a very limited exchange) would effect the generation that came after it and their children. And if the society they built informed by those values was successful, people would not see a reason to question it.

That is until it stopped working. Then people begin to ask why are we doing things because of events that happened in our great grandparents time? We saw a bit of this on Enterprise when Terra Prime gained widespread popularity after the Xindi attacks. Many humans who had been content to trust their leaders and the policies they had followed for the last seventy or so years were badly shaken by the events, and responded.

I do not think the Federation would become war-like from intent. For one thing it is too diverse to ever have the sort of nationalist reaction that even underlines movements like the Tea Party. But what you may well get is questions about the way the Federation is governed, and the way it approaches interstellar relations.

What I think such a platform might be is as follows:

1. Reform of the Prime Directive: It would be clarified to allow intervention in cases in which hostile powers were also interfering in internal conflicts - aka legitimizing what Picard did in redemption, or justifying intervention Riker's part in STF and giving it the mark of policy. It would also be wavable in cases of threats to Federation security.

2. Adoption of Cloaking Technology - The political and legal situation has changed dramatically since it was signed, not least with the formation of the Typhon pact, and its arguable that the decision of the Romulans to share the technology with their allies abrogated the treaty in any case. If neccisary this could be accomplished through a treaty with the Klingons and the maintenance of the legal fiction that Klingon cloaking devices are fundamentally different technology. The Typhon Pact does not want a war right now and therefore would likely give in after fiery complaints.

Regardless, it presents a massive tactical advantage, especially given the Federation's superior R&D abilities it is easy to see how the Federation could rapidly gain an advantage over even Romulan systems.

3. The re-organization of Starfleet in Exploratory and Military Branches. This may seem controversial, but let's look at how wars have been fought in the Star Trek Universve. Because Starfleet assigns ships independently, fleets are assembled on an ad-hoc basis and seemingly flung at enemy formations in a manner reminicisent of first world war tactics. Coordination depends on captains working with each other other than a clear chain of command.

A decision to deploy a large portion of Starfleet in more or less permanent multi-ship formations would give crews experience of working with one another, and of fleet tactics. It would also train a new generation of Flag officers, who currently seem to fall into two categories - paper pushers, or promoted starship captains. There are few, if any, competent fleet commanders.

At the same time it would allow those who would rather pursue less military functions to join a branch dedicated to exploration.

Furthermore it would allow a rationalization of design philosophy. There are far too many starship classes, and many are far too large for Starfleet to be efficient. A focus on mass producing hundreds of just three or four specialized classes, say Defients, Akiras, Prometheus, and Sovereigns would save production time and resources.

4. The creation of a general staff, and a total re-examination of doctrine in light of the technological changes of the last decade.

For one thing, there is no need for the size of many of the classes being developed. Size in naval warfare has always capped at the smallest possible class that can kill a capitol ship. The introduction of the Transphasic Torpedo into general usage should dramtically shift the balance from defensive technology to offensive, and seven or eight Sabers armed with Transphasic Torpedoes would be pretty deadly to enemy dreadnoughts, especially when combined with functioning cloaking devices. And if you can figure out a way to fire kinetic weapons like torpedos while cloaked? It would revolutionizes warfare.

They would also be incredibly fast to build, and most importantly in the current environment easy to crew.

5. Reforms to the governmental system. Most seriously, given the make-up of the Federation Council(with member states represented rather than the public at large) the President is the only figure with genuine popular legitimacy in the central government. It seems in recent books that the Council mainly exists to obstruct and weaken the Federal response.

There are grounds for adding a Federation Assembly elected by universal suffrage without reference to planets, and to make the Cabinet responsible to this body. This would simultaneously strengthen central authority while also weakening executive power, something that should be quite popular post Andorian secession.


I don't think the above are particularly extreme or unreasonable, but in the view of the current political elite they would likely be looked upon as extremist. To people who grew up over the last few decades they would seem like common sense.

This is the sort of split I think would be interesting. And I think its the sort of challenge Bacco would be vulnerable to, because they seem like things the Federation could actually do. And if there is one criticism one could level against the recent performance of the Federation leadership, its that they seem to reacting to events rather than driving or preempting them.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

What is this political elite you keep referring to?

And who would have predicted:

-That the Borg would launch a massive, scorched-earth invasion of the Federation
-That the astropolitical entities that have been, in the past, hostile or aggressive towards the Federation, would band together in a rival alliance
-That the Breen would infiltrate and steal the slipstream data
-That the Gorn would suffer a massive ecological disaster possibly leading to the destruction of the warrior caste and would find and attempt to use an ancient terraforming device akin to Genesis
-That the Romulan Star Empire would break up...and then reunite
-That Andor would finally secede (since they've been threatening to for a while)
-That the Taurus Reach information would be revealed


I mean, how do you preempt any of that?

In regards to your Prime Directive point: Why bother having a formal reform? Considering how holey it is, any reforms could potentially remove the flexibility Starfleet already has.

Cloaking: Why should the Federation bother using cloaks, when all they need is to continue researching ways to detect them?

I'm just going to have to flat out disagree with pretty much everything else after that, with one more focus, in particular the "reform" of the Federation Council:

The citizens of each member state, in one way or another, do select their representatives. Betazed has direct elections, for example, where as Andoria had their Councillor chosen by the majority party in the government. Bajor's representative was nominated by the First Minister and approved by the Chamber of Ministers.

Your argument leads back to that "political elite", which you have yet to define or explain, and which looks rather silly.

 

[Sci]

Only if you assume that Federation voters are as ill-informed and easily deceived as present-day voters and that Federation political campaigns are as sleazy and dishonest as they are today.

Quoted for Truth.

Sorry, but there's no Federation Tea Party. Try again next time.

I think this is sort of what it comes down to. Is there no middle line between an irrational reaction to events, and little to no reaction?

Having a reaction with which you disagree is not the same thing as no reaction.

And your entire argument is hooey -- as we see from Losing the Peace, A Singular Destiny, and Paths of Disharmony, Federation Member States' populations are having a wide variety of reactions to the post-Borg Invasion Alpha Quadrant.

One of the key points Christopher brings up is the importance of WWIII and similar events, which clearly indicates that war and violence have trans-formative effects in memory.

Not just World War III, but the combination of World War III and First Contact.

And, further, you're being ethnocentric in your argument. You're only looking at this from an Earthcentric, Human POV, but the Federation is not Earth writ large. It's comprised of over 150 separate societies -- from cultures that have been space-faring for millennia (the Vulcans) to cultures that have only just achieved warp flight in the past decade (the Evora).

This makes sense. The thing is, that such changes are rarely permanent. I find it plausible that WWIII, or more likely what followed it(which with a bit of inference and common sense can be concluded to have been far far worse than what was likely a very limited exchange) would effect the generation that came after it and their children. And if the society they built informed by those values was successful, people would not see a reason to question it.

That is until it stopped working.

When did "it" stop working? What is "it?"

We saw a bit of this on Enterprise when Terra Prime gained widespread popularity after the Xindi attacks. Many humans who had been content to trust their leaders and the policies they had followed for the last seventy or so years were badly shaken by the events, and responded.

What makes you think they had been "trusting their leaders and the policies they had followed?" What makes you think that their leaders hadn't been following their people's views?

You keep arguing that United Earth and the United Federation of Planets are some sort of top-down power hierarchy, but you're approaching this as an a priori assumption. You're not actually arguing what makes this the case.

But what you may well get is questions about the way the Federation is governed, and the way it approaches interstellar relations.

I think that's a reasonable inference. But I don't think it's reasonable to say that the UFP would react the way modern Americans might. (And even there, I, who am somewhat cynical about the American populace on occasion, feel obligated to note the role of the Great-Big "Might." Americans can be Progressive one minute and Jacksonian the next.)

What I think such a platform might be is as follows:

1. Reform of the Prime Directive: It would be clarified to allow intervention in cases in which hostile powers were also interfering in internal conflicts - aka legitimizing what Picard did in redemption, or justifying intervention Riker's part in STF and giving it the mark of policy. It would also be wavable in cases of threats to Federation security.

I'm not sure what the Prime Directive has to do with anything going on in the Trekverse these days.

2. Adoption of Cloaking Technology - The political and legal situation has changed dramatically since it was signed, not least with the formation of the Typhon pact, and its arguable that the decision of the Romulans to share the technology with their allies abrogated the treaty in any case. If neccisary this could be accomplished through a treaty with the Klingons and the maintenance of the legal fiction that Klingon cloaking devices are fundamentally different technology. The Typhon Pact does not want a war right now and therefore would likely give in after fiery complaints.

I think that's a reasonable position, but I also think you're over-estimating the advantages cloaking technology actually offer.

3. The re-organization of Starfleet in Exploratory and Military Branches. This may seem controversial, but let's look at how wars have been fought in the Star Trek Universve. Because Starfleet assigns ships independently, fleets are assembled on an ad-hoc basis and seemingly flung at enemy formations in a manner reminicisent of first world war tactics.

Actually, the manner in which permanent fleets are organized is unclear. During DS9, there were permanent numbered fleets; they may well have persisted after the Dominion War, alongside ships operating individually like the Enterprise or the Aventine. We don't know.

5. Reforms to the governmental system. Most seriously, given the make-up of the Federation Council(with member states represented rather than the public at large)

False. False, false, false, false, false.

Seriously, I'm not sure how much more wrong you could be, here.

Dancing Doctor already outlined this very well, but I'm going to repeat it:

Federation Councillors are determined in whatever manner their Member State decides. Betazed's is popularly elected. Bajor's is appointed by the popularly-elected First Minister with the ratification of the Chamber of Ministers. Andor's is determined in the basis of which political party wins a majority of seats in the Parliament Andoria.

And every Federation Member State is a democracy.

Now, personally, I'd prefer to see a situation where all Federation Councillors are popularly-elected, and I suppose we might see a movement to that effect at some point. But the notion that Federation Councillors do not represent their Member States' peoples is just false. It depends on the Member State.

the President is the only figure with genuine popular legitimacy in the central government.

Depends on what you mean by "genuine popular legitimacy." Certainly the Federation President is the only one who is popularly-elected by all Federation citizens -- but, there again, the United States President and Vice President are the only government officials in the U.S. who are popularly-elected by all U.S. citizens. That doesn't mean that the Speaker of the House lacks genuine popular legitimacy.

It seems in recent books that the Council mainly exists to obstruct and weaken the Federal response.

I think that Articles of the Federation and A Singular Destiny put lie to that notion.

There are grounds for adding a Federation Assembly elected by universal suffrage without reference to planets,

By "planets," do you mean, the Member States? Nope. Even if you have a lower house -- and I question the wisdom of bicameralism -- you'd need to organize it on the basis of each Member State's population, a la the U.S. House of Representatives. Personally, I'd prefer to see a reform of the Council rather than a bicameral legislature.

and to make the Cabinet responsible to this body. This would simultaneously strengthen central authority while also weakening executive power, something that should be quite popular post Andorian secession.

Maybe. Maybe not. President Bacco herself wasn't aware of the existence of the secrets being kept from the Andorians until literally a few hours before their secession. I see no reason to attribute that issue to executive power, since it's not like Bacco was abusing her power by actively keeping a secret.

Further, if you've read Articles of the Federation, you would know that the President works very, very closely with the relevant Federation Council committees on any given issue -- more closely, sometimes, than she does with her own Cabinet, and usually presiding over the committees themselves. So it's simply not accurate to compare it to the American system in that regard.

I don't think the above are particularly extreme or unreasonable, but in the view of the current political elite

Most of what you've said isn't, but you frame it in these ridiculously extreme terms. "The current political elite?" You mean, the current democratically-elected President and the current democratically-elected-or-appointed-by-democratically-elected-officials Federation Councillors? That "elite?" You keep framing it like they all inherited their positions from being born into rich families or something.

And if there is one criticism one could level against the recent performance of the Federation leadership, its that they seem to reacting to events rather than driving or preempting them.

What does that mean? What kind of "driving" of events should the Federation be doing?

 

[JD]

Actually, the manner in which permanent fleets are organized is unclear. During DS9, there were permanent numbered fleets; they may well have persisted after the Dominion War, alongside ships operating individually like the Enterprise or the Aventine. We don't know.

I thought that the ships were always part of a specific fleet, but were just off doing their own thing until a fleet action was necessary.

 

[DEWLine]

Point to Christopher. The UFP almost certainly has its own conservative movement. By and large, though, they conduct themselves in honourable fashion.

 

[Christopher]

And it's a given that if they do use the terms "liberal" and "conservative" in the 24th-century Federation, they don't use them the way they're used in political discourse today -- which has little to do with what either of the words actually means or how they have been used in the past.

 

[TerraUnam]

With regards to "Political Elites", aside from Starfleet, we have almost zero evidence about what the rest of the Federation Public Service looks or operates like. Or even if there is much of one, aside from Starfleet and a few key areas like Time Travel we have no reason not to believe that most Federation departments focus mainly on coordinating activities between member's own administrative departments. Christopher Bennett's upcoming DTI book is the most we will have ever seen of the Federation's civilian public administration and bureaucracy.

As a follow on to Sci, one of the brilliant things KRAD did in Articles of the Federation was to craft a government structure that was workable and engaging to read about without being a clone of present-day examples. I'm Canadian and I for one appreciate it when parliamentary systems get a nod.

BTW "Liberal" and "Conservative" have meanings that date only from the 1840's. Before that it was Whig and Tory or Federalist/Democratic-Republican or Democrat/Whig. Our own terms aren't that old.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, those are the capitalized terms used as actual partisan labels in an American political context. I was using the lower-case words with more universal meanings -- "liberal" meaning free-thinking, open-minded, generous, or loose, and "conservative" meaning cautious, traditional, resistant to novelty or excess. The non-political uses of the terms can be dated back as far as 14th-century Middle English.

 

[Sci]

This does raise an interesting question about what "liberalism" or "conservatism" would mean in a Federated context.

A political science professor I had in college once suggested that the fundamental distinction between liberalism and conservatism is with whether greater emphasis is placed on the need for equality or on the need for freedom of action. To a liberal, he argued, liberty is infringed without equality; to a conservative, he argued, liberty is infringed if there are limits placed on individual action.

The question then becomes -- since conservatism wouldn't really tend to have definition lacking liberalism, as an advocate of conservatism would simply be an advocate of the status quo -- what would it mean to be "liberal" in a post-scarcity or very nearly post-scarcity environment like the Federation? What would it mean to favor equality in a world where there is no poverty and no hereditary privilege of any sort? No sexism, racism, speciesism, classism, etc?

 

[Christopher]

A political science professor I had in college once suggested that the fundamental distinction between liberalism and conservatism is with whether greater emphasis is placed on the need for equality or on the need for freedom of action. To a liberal, he argued, liberty is infringed without equality; to a conservative, he argued, liberty is infringed if there are limits placed on individual action.

But aren't those just two facets of the same thing? Equality means giving everyone equal freedom of individual action and achievement. It's just that if you don't live on a deserted island, then you have to balance your individual freedom against everyone else's, and that requires some compromises. So it's finding a balance between those "liberal" and "conservative" impulses as your professor defined them, finding a way to achieve both goals simultaneously as much as possible, that's what makes a society function.

 

[Sci]

A political science professor I had in college once suggested that the fundamental distinction between liberalism and conservatism is with whether greater emphasis is placed on the need for equality or on the need for freedom of action. To a liberal, he argued, liberty is infringed without equality; to a conservative, he argued, liberty is infringed if there are limits placed on individual action.

But aren't those just two facets of the same thing?

I would think so, and you would think so, but, then, we're both liberals.

Equality means giving everyone equal freedom of individual action and achievement. It's just that if you don't live on a deserted island, then you have to balance your individual freedom against everyone else's, and that requires some compromises. So it's finding a balance between those "liberal" and "conservative" impulses as your professor defined them, finding a way to achieve both goals simultaneously as much as possible, that's what makes a society function.

Yes, but where that balance falls is the issue. Liberals, he argued, tend to place more emphasis on equality; conservatives, more emphasis on what I suppose we could call individual autonomy. A prime example being the idea of taxes. A liberal might argue that a progressive tax system is better because it creates a more equal playing ground for everyone; a conservative might argue that it is his right to make as much money as possible without breaking the law and that any progressive tax system is a form of theft which unduly inhibits his and everyone else's freedom to make a lot of money.

 

[Christopher]

^And the way government should work is for people with those differing liberal and conservative views (and others in between) should work together to hash out compromises that balance both points of view as much as possible for the maximum benefit of the American people. Instead we have a system where the two parties just try to undermine each other and work against each other for the good of their own parties, rather than working together for the good of the people they're sworn to represent. An adversarial system can work if it's recognized as a means toward the end of achieving balanced solutions, but not if it's seen as an ideological war with no quarter given.