I know. I'd just gotten so used to seeing it the other way.
What's that's supposed to mean? That's like implying that if both country A and country B have similar GNP/GDPs relative to their populations that they're somehow equally geopolitically relevant.
Except Chernobyl didn't end with some ridiculous Russian/Chinese/British/American conspiracy to continue the war. Seriously, "A Starfleet admiral and lieutenant, a Romulan ambassador, and a Klingon general..." sounds more like the opening line of a bad joke.
Under any scrutiny, the Romulans seem to be the only ones to really have a plausible agenda for the whole affair.
Both Chang/Cartwright's motive is utterly absurd: I want to keep fighting my enemies, so I'm going to commit treason and conspire with them. That's one giant shot glass of whiskey-tango-fox.
The film also presents an alternative motive for Cartwright: that is, the "mothballing of Starfleet." This ties into Meyer's determination of further militarizing Starfleet--or rather, making it a pseudo US Navy. This isn't about the old "is Starfleet a military?" argument. The truth is really somewhere in the middle.
However, the classic monolog pretty clearly states the Enterprise's mission; it says nothing about fighting Klingons. And, of course, there are plenty of people who laud TUC while they're standing in the "nuTrek isn't Gene's vision" line.
But that's all irrelevant, really, because, like Abrams, it was Meyer's film, and he was in well within his right to do whatever the hell he wanted.
The problem I have is the conceit that, even if Starfleet's primary function was the defense of Earth, that the only thing it had to defend it from was Klingons. I'm just about 100% sure that no single person in the US/British/etc. navies opened the newspaper on April 27, 1986 and said to him/herself, "Oh shit. I'm out of a job."
Then there's the idea that Praxis exploding would mean the immediate end of the Klingon Empire. For one thing, Klingons are marauders and conquerors. I doubt they'd be so dependent on one moon facility. None the less, in Star Trek terms, "Key energy production" means dilithium. And yet, later, the film goes on to show us another place Klingons get their dilithium.
No one could argue that the issue was the explosion wave itself cause irreparable damage the qu'nos system. But that was not at all indicated in the film, and, even if it were, that'd fall into the same "that's not how it works" science tin can as the magic blood. Not to mention, Meyer had already pulled that gag out of his shorts once.
Then there's the whole whodunnit plot itself. On the surface it seems so perfectly planned that it makes one wonder how four people who don't like each other very much could so meticulously coordinate and execute it. But on closer inspection, one finds that it's not so perfectly planned at all. In fact, it's dependent events progressing in very specific succession. If things didn't play out exactly as they do in the film, the whole conspiracy falls apart. There are simply way too many unknown variables. On their own, anyone seems pretty nitpicky: Kirk's log entry Valaris chooses to record just happens to be so damning; Burke and Samno being so willing participants; the foremost Xeno-biologist in the Federation not knowing anything about Klingon anatomy (as if he'd never seen one before); Martia. However, add them all up, and a pattern begins to form. And the whole deal with the phasers was pretty thin in a "it has to be this way because plot reasons" sort of way.
And, yes, all these things are easy to overlook in favor of the enjoyment of the film--which takes us right back (once again!) to square one.
Sorry, too late at night for that, right now.
