What if Cardassia never joined the Dominion?

Let's say that Cardassia never joins the Dominion and that the Klingon-Cardassian War never happens, what would change?

 

Cardassia would be in danger of being invaded at some point, by either the Dominion or another power. Perhaps the civilian government would try to prevent this by working to align itself with other powers, and create its own federation or confederation.

 

You're a big fan of hypotheticals, aren't ya?

Not hating, it's cool.

In this scenario, the writers probably would've built up the Maquis storyline a lot more to use that as a primary source of tension between the Federation and the Cardassians.

 

Would have liked to see something like that. I was hoping to see more of Cardassia in general, the culture, the customs, etc, shown independently of the dominion.

 

A poster speaking my language. The Cardassians and Bajorans unfortunately became a bit one note as the Domion conflict drove more of the series plots after season 3. The Cardassians in particular were very interesting and its sad they have been largely cut out of Trek today. They seemed a bit like Russia, vexing, paranoid, aggressive, chauvinistic but also artistic, complex, intelligent and formidable despite being underequipped. Their society did get a bit of a redemptive arc near the very end of the show but its sad we didnt a few more spy type episodes featuring Cardassians and their complex society. This seems especially tempting given their supposed reputation for cunning and espionage but it never really got much screen time, instead we were served a lot of expository dialog from Garack, Dukat and the odd bit player.

 

The dominon would have occupied the demiliterized zone, and either assimilated or exterminated the marquis.

 

If the Dominion couldn't get a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant, they would likely have invaded without one.

Basically, where the Dominion is concerned, the Founders are its brain, the Vorta are its voice, and the Jem'Hadar are its fists. They'll negotiate if they feel that it suits their needs, but they're firm believers in terror tactics, as seen by the completely unnecessary destruction of the New Bajor colony and the starship Odyssey.

If they felt that the races of the Alpha Quadrant were more than they wanted to deal with, they might have simply tried to collapse the wormhole on their end.

 

Except, without the Cardassians, did they have the power to take DS9 before the minefield went up?

 

If we're assuming that the Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar fleet was still lost in the GQ, that would leave a pretty substantial vacuum in the structure in Cardassian space. They might still seal their borders and impose a communications blackout as the military and dissident movement scrambled to make their move, which may well have sparked a civil war, further weakening them overall, maybe even leading to a break up of the Union into two unequal halves with the larger one dominated by the military (Dukat being very high up in its ranks) and another under the control of the Detapa Council.

The Maquis might take this opportunity to either keep picking away at them or consolidate their forces and resources to declare themselves their own free and independent state, trying to make themselves out like a legitimate government at the same time as their militia keeps carrying out terrorist attacks against anyone that gets too close.

With all this instability right on their doorstep the station has a lot to deal with and gets some additional support with a few more ships assigned to the sector, and a new (non-Klingon) strategic operations officer as part of the crew. On Bajor, Shakaar leads the call to accelerate Federation membership as the political landscape stabilises, though of course Winn can't help but interfere and manages manages to gain support with her anti-UFP rhetoric. Meanwhile, Bashir's pursuit of Dax sees him finally get his girl.

On the other side of the Wormhole, exploration efforts continue, though with ever increasing engagements with Dominion forces which calls into question whether Starfleet should keep committing resources to the effort or whether to put their plans on hold. The Dominion are even bold enough to test the waters and send recons into the AQ to test the mettle of Starfleet, as well as learn what would be needed to gain a foothold. This could then go a couple of different ways:

1. The Dominion send through a massive fleet and seize the station and Bajor, leading to an arc of episodes with a small but savage war with the crew scattered (some on the Defiant fighting back, some left on the station under Dominion occupation, others fighting on Bajor, etc), before finally beating them back
2. The Dominion secures an alliance with another power (eg the Breen) and events unfold in a similar vein to what we got

 

Well, couldn't the Dominion simply have amassed that 2700-ship-fleet in a well hidden location not too far from the wormhole and crossed the wormhole in a suprise move, overrun DS9 and occupy Bajor and establish that as their base of operations? Remembering that the reasons the Federation started creating the minefield in the first place was because they didn't trust the buildup in Cardassian space which would not have taken place in that scenario.

Yes I know that Starfleet has some spy probes or scanning equipment on the other side of the wormhole, but that must have been a fairly limited affair, given that it was close to the Dominion's home turf.

 

Well for one thing, it's possible the Khitomer Accords wouldn't have been reinstated. So with the Klingons still at war with the Cardassians and by proxy the Federation, the Dominion would be invading a quadrant already in conflict.

It could have had a very different outcome,

 

They have no cloaks though, right? The Federation would have sone warning. And prior to Inferno’s Light, they had the option of collapsing the entrance. And then of course. if at any time that fleet was coming and they couldn’t collapse it, Sisko would have still gotten his chance to sway the Prophets.

 

I was thinking: so what if they saw them coming three days in advance? They can't put up a proper defense in that amount of time, if would barely be enough to get a few starships there. But, I had forgotten about the option of collapsing the wormhole. So in that case, they really would need to stay undetected until coming out of the wormhole, which would be a whole lot harder for the Dominion, if even possible at all.

As for Sisko swaying the Prophets, perhaps. But that wasn't even his original intention in the actual timeline. Sisko just went in to do a last ditch defense with his lone ship, and then was grabbed by the prophets, which he found immensely annoying- he requested to be sent back and only after he was told he shouldn't throw away his life, only then did he attempt to convince them. So apparently that was an option he hadn't considered. So probably it wouldn't have occurred to hem in those other circumstances either.

 

I don't know. I just don't see the two powers getting into a conflict with each other over the Maquis.

 

How could they not get into conflict over the Maquis? Sure, as far as the Federation is concerned the Maquis are rebels who do not represent the Federation or its policies. But from the Cardassian perspective, they see a group of aggressive, expansionist Federation residents completely freed from the policies and most importantly limitations of the Federation to act and expand, due to the treaties with Cardassia.

Throwing a group of problematic, aggressive people on the frontiers as buffers against invasion and to bolster expansion is not exactly new in human history, so for Trek purposes we can assume a species with a history like Cardassia would have had similar instances in their own culture. Look at the problematic Scots-Irish populations the English put on the frontiers of Appalachia in the 13 colonies, they were not meshing with the dominant culture in England and Ireland, so were sent out to the edges of New England to drive expansion and discourage raids from the hostile tribes of the region. The Cardassians have every right to potentially view the Maquis as this sort of threat and every time Starfleet refuses to take decisive and brutal actions against the rebels, it would only lend credence to the Cardassians fears of veiled expansionism on their borders.

The Maquis were a great concept that still never got the proper treatment despite a few great DS9 episodes near the end of the show. The potential for conflict and adventure and morality plays was immense, as the Eddington storylined showed, just too bad all the focus was on the Dominion for so long.

 

I don't know if I remember the specifics well enough, but I think that if they hadn't joined the Dominion, they'd have slowly been conquered by the Klingons. The Klingons were careful not to go all-in, knowing the Dominion threat was still to play out and the Federation now no longer an ally (a major pro for the Romulans), but they fortified their positions and began wearing their enemies down. They only returned to their own territory when forced to by the Dominion. So, I could see the slow fracturing and conquest of Cardassia, at least until the/a Dominion War began.

The DMZ might have seen a new Maquis State form to harry its Cardassian neighbors and in defiance of a Federation readying for a larger conflict.

This might have been an opportunity for the Cardassians' other enemies to take advantage. In The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack, the Cardassians had previously made gains against the Talarians, and the Tzenkethi were always at the gates. Maybe one (or both) of them would have taken their own chunk of territory. Or the Romulans might have of disputed Klingon territory – the Klingons can only fight so many enemies at a time, and without the Accords the Federation isn't going to step in.

The Dominion could have made a deal with another local power...I can't think of who else was "on the brink" as Dukat described Cardassia and would invite such an alliance...but who knows what the situation is on Breen or Tholia or Tzenketh or among other powers dreaming of greater status vs the Klingons/Federation/Romulans. It's the path of least resistance for the Dominion to make inroads with locals before initiating broader belligerence. Maybe if they had to deal with a lesser power, say the Talarians, the Dominion would take a different approach to getting its foothold and attempt an anti-Federation with them and the Tzenkethi, maybe the Miradorn and the Gorn and whoever else too, before turning the screws, making them more traditional subjects of the Dominion, and at the same time make overtures to the Romulans. If it stretched out long enough, the Klingons would have just finished conquering Cardassia before the Dominion anti-Federation overran their weakened wide-spread forces.

Or the Dominion could have taken a more brute-force approach and invaded not with fifty ships headed for Cardassia but a thousand headed for poor little Bajor as a staging area for the rest of the quadrant. Would they attack the strongest power, the Federation, first, or the weakest, the Klingons and Cardassians?

 

In all the Star Trek Star Maps, Cardassians space is not even near Klingon or Romulan space. It seems they would have to transit Federation space to attack them. The Federation could not stop the Klingons from transiting their space to stop the Klingon-Cardassian war. Which was an unjust war against the Cardassians...

 

None of the official (and nearly all of the fan-made) maps make clear what’s above and below the plane the map happens to show. There are likely all sorts of corridors and indeed vast regions of territorial space not shown.

 

Those maps are largely speculative, don't include the third dimension, and are not likely as hard as we think of land borders in a nation state. Corridors could exist and a lot of the territory could be less patrolled depending on the region and powers involved. Even if corridors were not available there is no way for anyone to project unlimited 360° power above and below stellar galactic space.

Also, assuming most scanning and security is placed at the frontiers of various empires, ships would be able to potentially pass through sparsely trafficed/populated areas of space regardless of the controlling power. Space would be more like an ocean with ships able to traverse it without necessarily running afoul of the local patrols.

 

Perhaps it would have been possible for the founders to infiltrate one of the Alpha Quadrant Powers and run them from a shadow government, slowly manipulate things the way the wish. Imagine if that was successful within the Federation, and the Federation ended up having amicable terms with the Dominion over time.