IIRC, it was only a Cardassian fleet that was at the nebula, not their ENTIRE fleet. like the equivalent of the USN Sixth Fleet, not the whole of the navy.
After the Destiny events, The Typhon Pact and future novels
- Thread starter kaysea
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I'm wondering the opposite- if rather than hinting at expansion of the UFP it actually puts us on the first steps towards reducing its importance, maybe even dissolving it. I'm wondering if the Khitomer Accords will solidify into a stronger alliance, maybe even a second "Pact", and the UFP will simply be a smaller alliance within it rather than a leading nation in its own right. In other words, rather than the UFP, might not our protagonist nation end up being a larger body of which the previously central UFP was just one member? That would be a fascinating development- having Earth, Vulcan, Andor and Tellar no more important than Ferenginar or Achernar Prime or Qo'noS. And what if Federation worlds see how, say, the Ferengi, get far greater relative representation in this new alliance/state by virtue of being so such smaller than the Federation and representing themselves directly rather than through an alliance-within-an-alliance? Might not, say, the Bolians wish to cut out the whole "going through Earth/Federation Council" part and represent their worlds directly as the Ferengi are doing? The UFP might dissolve and the end result being a larger Federation with each race segregated yet united, rather than all under the umbrella of Earth (because, let's face it, the Federation is Terra-centric).
I'm also interested in the state of affairs in the 25th century, seeing as "The Good That Men Do" mentioned a "pax galactica" (at least the blurb phrased it like that). Do the Typhon Pact and the Accord signitaries eventually unite into one uber-alliance?
I would be very interested to see if they follow real history and feature the states of local space created a sort of interstellar United Nations -- an organization that isn't a state, but is a neutral platform for diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflicts between Khitomer and Typhon Pact states?
Maybe.
Or maybe the Federation and Typhon Pact states will create a new state that they both become members of, in the same way that Earth, Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, and Alpha Centauri created the Federation and gave their sovereignty to it. After all, why frame it in Federation-centric terms by assuming they must become Federation members?
I doubt the UFP would dissolve... how many planets/races are currently in it in contrast to those in the pact? Only a few planets really seemed to 'withdraw' and the pact gained a couple that weren't in the UFP to begin with. The difference still has to be DRASTIC... 100:1? 200:1? More?
Just to allude back to the Luna class program,remember that one mans' "mission of peaceful exploration" is another mans "land speculation".
While the Federation's (and Starfleet) core ideals may seem benign to us,to a Romulan/Breen etc. they might look expansionist and opportunist.Not everyone shares the same vision of the future.
While the Federation's (and Starfleet) core ideals may seem benign to us,to a Romulan/Breen etc. they might look expansionist and opportunist.Not everyone shares the same vision of the future.
How is the Federation going to be different? Do you think that the Federation will still exist in the 29th and 30th centuries, as suggested by Voyager and Enterprise?
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Aren't the upcoming Typhon Pact books essentially cold war stories?
I doubt the Federation is responsible for initiating such hostilities - not with its ideals, definitely not with the shape Starfleet's in.
Obviously, the Typhon Pact formed not only "as a defense against UFP bullying and imperialism", but, primarily, in order to do some bullying of its own - and it didn't waste any time in accompishing this agenda.
The Federation isn't into any kind of imperialism, they remain the same Federation that was formed in 2161. I don't know why you guys can't see that bullying was the only way that President Bacco could make the potential Pact members see the danger that everybody faced. As for the reason why the Pact formed, not all members joined because they want to be peaceful. The Romulan Star Empire joined because they are in a pretty bad situation economically, politically, their people are starving, and not to mention that the Empress of the Romulan Imperial State is the hated enemy of the Preator. The Holy Order of the Kinshaya joined because the Klingons destroyed their homeworld, and who are the Klingons allied with? The Federation. The Tholians felt robed by the Federation, so they have a big beef with them. The Breen are just mercenaries for hire, and the other members(the Gorn and the Tzenkethi) have never been on friendly terms with the Federation.
I can't see TPTB allowing the novels to disband the Federation. Shrink it, damage it, maim it, crush it yes, but get rid of it? No.
It's pretty firmly established that some sort of Federation exists in the 31st century, although you could argue those were all alternate futures.
It'll never happen, but I'd love to see the start of the Chapel family's Consilium from the dark future of the TOS novel Crossroad. Maybe the evil plague from that novel is the final strike in the Federation/Pact cold war? The Federation turning evil for a few decades would be awesome, if done right.
It's pretty firmly established that some sort of Federation exists in the 31st century, although you could argue those were all alternate futures.
It'll never happen, but I'd love to see the start of the Chapel family's Consilium from the dark future of the TOS novel Crossroad. Maybe the evil plague from that novel is the final strike in the Federation/Pact cold war? The Federation turning evil for a few decades would be awesome, if done right.
How would it be good for the Federation to be evil, even if it's for only a short time? If that happened, its values and beliefs would be abandoned, thus turning the Federation into something else.
Sorry, it's late and I'm loaded on nostalgia for the old novel Crossroad after remembering it's existance. I really loved it. The idea that the Federation "won't be this nice forever" struck a chord with me.
Thinking about it, that dark future isn't due for a few hundred years yet(not that the novels will ever follow the plot of a 20 year old novel anyway) and it would be wrong for it to happen as a result of the Pact.
If the Typhon Pact really is all her fault, I wonder if Presedent Bacco will be forced to resign should it become public knowledge what happened?
Thinking about it, that dark future isn't due for a few hundred years yet(not that the novels will ever follow the plot of a 20 year old novel anyway) and it would be wrong for it to happen as a result of the Pact.
If the Typhon Pact really is all her fault, I wonder if Presedent Bacco will be forced to resign should it become public knowledge what happened?
Why? She didn't commit a crime. The members of these other sovereign nations made their own decisions for their own reasons, and they had every right to do so. The Federation doesn't have any moral right to say that the formation of any other sovereign power was a crime that someone should be punished for, especially someone who had no idea or intention that that would be the result. I can see a brutal, paranoid dictatorship deciding that if rival powers choose to unite as an indirect result of an action taken by their own leader, that constitutes an act of treason by that leader. But there's no way an ethical, fair-minded society like the Federation would employ such irrational logic. It's just a fact of life that people make decisions that have unintended consequences.
I can easily see the people of the Federation, upon learning that this scary-sounding, balance-altering Typhon Pact is the result of the President's somewhat unethical negotiating tactics (after, say, a recording of the meeting in question were to leak out), demanding her to step down.
Of course the anti-Bacco propaganda machine would be in full swing with wannabe-Presidents tearing her to shreads in every way imaginable.
Of course the anti-Bacco propaganda machine would be in full swing with wannabe-Presidents tearing her to shreads in every way imaginable.
Again, why??? Why should the Federation's citizens be so obnoxiously self-important as to insist they have to be the only superpower in the quadrant? Isn't the Federation supposed to be above that kind of thinking?
Okay, surely there would be people who thought Bacco had made a bad move. But there'd be just as many people who defended it as the only option available to her. And there'd be just as many people who rejected the kind of kneejerk xenophobia you're talking about and argued that the Pact members were justified in their actions.
There are always going to be people who disapprove of any decision a president makes. That's the nature of a democracy. But she didn't do anything wrong. She didn't break any laws. She played political hardball and it worked, it served the purpose it needed to in the moment, but now the other nations have made an unexpected choice in response to it. That's not Bacco's fault. It's just the way politics happens. One solution produces the next problem.
I'd really like to think the Federation has outgrown the destructive dysfunctionality of our current political system.
Actually, the Typhon Pact was a counter-agent to the bullying and imperialism of two of its members. It forced the Kinshaya and Tholians to apologize for their hostile acts.
Yes, they are. They're into what might be called consensual cultural imperialism.
One of the Federation's underlying goals, after all, is to unite the galaxy under its rule. Their goal is to persuade every culture to adopt Federation values of peace, exploration, egalitarianism, and liberal democracy and to join the Federation as a Member, after all.
And they're remarkably successful. Within two decades of first contact with the Federation, the Ferengi Alliance had abolished official patriarchy and had instituted a system of progressive taxation and social welfare programs. Meanwhile, since signing the Khitomer Accords, the Klingon Empire has gradually become less and less expansionistic according to A Time for War, A Time for Peace, to the point where Chancellor Martok agreed to renounce violent expansion at the end of Articles of the Federation. And the Cardassian Union has instituted a democratic system of government since the end of the Dominion War.
And that's not counting the 150 foreign states the Federation eventually persuaded to join it after its founding!
Now, is that a bad thing?
I don't think so. The Federation is out to export its cultural values, but it's out to do so with others' consent. They don't use force, they don't engage in hostilities, they don't oppress. They expand my mutual consent -- their values spread because they are appealing.
But the fact remains that they are engaging in consensual cultural imperialism. They deliberately seek to replace values that conflict with their own.
I and others have said we do. But we've also said that we see where the states that forged the Typhon Pact would still resent it (in fact, would resent it all the more for realizing that they were wrong to oppose her alliance in the first place -- people rarely like being proved wrong) and would want to create a power structure to protect them from future acts of Federation bullying. Especially since they may not trust the Federation not to bully without a good reason in the future.
That's not true at all. The Federation has been on very friendly terms with the Gorn throughout most of their history. The Federation recognized that they had inadvertently trespassed on Gorn territory when they established the Cestus III colony and apologized, and the Gorn were amenable enough to that that they willingly ceded Cestus III. After that, the only other time they came into conflict was when a rogue Gorn faction instituted a coup that the Federation helped the legitimate Gorn government stop.
ETA:
Well.... Technically, she kidnapped the ambassadors of several foreign states when she refused to allow them to leave the Roth Dining Room. Which is almost certainly a violation of United Earth, Federation, and interstellar law.
But, no, causing them to realize that they were stronger united than divided, which is the ultimate thing that inspired them to create the Pact, was not a crime.
Sci said:
It's worth noting that while the Kinshaya apologized to the Klingons, the Tholians? Well, as laid out in A Singular Destiny....
And from the last page:
Just sayin'.
Is it really accurate to say that the history of all six nations was aggressive, though? The Gorn, canonically, are not an aggressive power; the one known conflict was one where the Gorn believed themselves to be defending against outside aggressors. And the other Gorn story that's an antecedent to the book continuity, The Gorn Crisis, shows that the only aggressive, expansionistic faction in Gorn society is a rebel group that has to overthrow the government in order to start aggressing. If anything, the evidence suggests that aggression is an anomaly for the Gorn state. I think they just get stereotyped as aggressive because they're big scary-looking reptiles.
Given the UFP's history of mostly friendly relations with the Gorn, I tend to think of them as a mollifying element within the Pact, perhaps a point of contact for constructive diplomacy. It remains to be seen whether the books play it that way, though.
Given the UFP's history of mostly friendly relations with the Gorn, I tend to think of them as a mollifying element within the Pact, perhaps a point of contact for constructive diplomacy. It remains to be seen whether the books play it that way, though.
They deliberately seek to replace values that conflict with their own(Sci, 2010). The Federation doesn't conciously try to replace every civilization's culture, if they think that that culture conflicts with theirs. What they do is, if they come in contact with a culture who conflicts with theirs(whether it be politically, or because they are overly violent, thus posing a threat to the Federation and/or its allies), they try diplomacy first ; they do that until all avenues of diplomacy have been exhausted(while talking, they keep Starfleet on high-alert just in case anything bad happens). Even after that happens, they still give the hostile civilization one final warning, and usually wait until first-strike action is taken to attack. The Federation recommends; it doesn't force.
You're looking at it too narrowly. I'm not talking about how the Federation relates to hostile neighbors, I'm talking about how it relates to every other culture it encounters.
When the Federation encounters cultures with value systems that conflict with their own -- particularly with the Federation belief in egalitarianism -- the Federation makes a deliberate attempt to export its beliefs to that culture.
A prime example of this is the Ferengi. In their very first meeting with the Ferengi in TNG's "Lonely Among Us," Riker & company decided to judge the entire Ferengi culture on the basis of the beliefs advocated by the few individuals they met. They concluded that the Ferengi were culturally less advanced than the Federation because of their belief in unregulated capitalism and in the superiority of the male sex. When a T'kon offered to kill the Ferengi, Riker told him not to. Not because the Ferengi were sentient beings with rights -- he told the T'kon not to kill them "because then they would learn nothing."
In other words, "Don't kill them, because then we won't be able to spread our culture to them and persuade them that our values (economic and sexual egalitarianism) are superior to theirs."
And sure enough, within two decades of encountering the Federation, the Ferengi Alliance has banned sexual discrimination and instituted progressive social policies and taxation! The Federation successfully exported its culture to the Ferengi Alliance (though of course there are still conservative hard-liners out there).
Now, I'm not saying that's wrong. Goodness knows the oppression of Ferengi women has probably caused untold suffering throughout Ferenginar's history.
But that doesn't change the fact that when they met the Ferengi, Federation officers' first thoughts were of spreading their values to the Ferengi and persuading them to abandon their own values.
