Antwerp conference / Romulan-UFP relations

[Timo]

The events from Ent S4 are equivalent to the french declaring war towards the germans in 1937.

The French declared war on Germany in 1939, while Germany at that timepoint wanted nothing but peace with them. This by no means suggests that the French were aggressors with conquest plans, or that the Germans were victims without plans for conquest.

Earth fought a defense war against the romulan agression. In the end, it may have retained 'buffer' territories as defense against a continually aggressive empire.

That sounds heroic and epic and sympathetic and whatnot - and at the same time utterly unconvincing. Hard proof for this is completely lacking. And so is the "heavy implication" in the source material, unless one's viewpoint is bigoted from the start.

Just because Earth feared invasion during the war doesn't prove they didn't start it. It may just as well be that they came close to reaping what they sowed.

Then each victorious country in history - no matter its reasons for entering the was - fought a conquest war.

The definition would be narrower than that. If the victor didn't gain new territories at the conclusion, then the war wouldn't have been a successful conquest campaign. If the victor never gained any territory, then the war wasn't even an unsuccessful conquest campaign.

And none of this relates to the question of who started the war, and to what end. All options are currently open: Romulans starting a conquest campaign, or starting a defensive war, or responding offensively to an Earth aggression that did not involve any territorial ambitions, or responding defensively to an Earth conquest campaign, etc. etc.

And the federation/starfleet did not just kept the secret about the romulan appearance - it didn't know how the romulans looked like.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Since the very concept of the Romulan faces remaining hidden is so difficult to buy, virtually any conspiracy on the vein that the knowledge was suppressed sounds preferable in relation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Timo

About WW2:
You missed the part where the germans invaded Poland (an ally of the french), de facto declaring war on the entire alliance and where it was the germans who invaded the french who were fighting a defensive war.
"Germany at that timepoint wanted nothing but peace with them"? Is this supposed to be a joke?

Then each victorious country in history - no matter its reasons for entering the was - fought a conquest war.

The definition would be narrower than that. If the victor didn't gain new territories at the conclusion, then the war wouldn't have been a successful conquest campaign. If the victor never gained any territory, then the war wasn't even an unsuccessful conquest campaign.

Timo, ANY victor gains advantages from the war - wheter territories or something else. By your defenition, any victor - regardless of how it entered or how he fought the war - is either a conqueror (gained territory) or morally similar (gained something else).

"And none of this relates to the question of who started the war, and to what end. All options are currently open."
No, they aren't.
I all but proved that the romulans started the war - Ent S4 trilogy, how each time the war was mentioned, the romulans being the agressors was heavily implied (even outright stated, I seem to recall).
You failed to bring any evidence to back up your claims beyond highly improbable/unsupported (even contradicted) specualtions.

 

[Timo]

About WW2: You missed the part where the germans invaded Poland (an ally of the french), de facto declaring war on the entire alliance and where it was the germans who invaded the french who were fighting a defensive war.

You missed the part where declaring war on the enemy may be a wholly defensive move unrelated to conquest ambitions...

"Germany at that timepoint wanted nothing but peace with them"? Is this supposed to be a joke?

The literal truth, of course. Peace is often a prerequisite for a good invasion: if your opponent is on a war footing, he's all the more difficult to defeat... In the ideal case, France would have still been at peace with Germany when the German troops flooded the streets of Paris and took control of the French ports and industries. But certainly it was Hitler's desire for France to remain at peace despite the invasion of Poland, and he was mightily disappointed that this didn't happen.

By your defenition, any victor - regardless of how it entered or how he fought the war - is either a conqueror (gained territory) or morally similar (gained something else).

Yup. So what? In this discussion, we were specifically interested in conquest (not "similar" things), and in the issue of starting a war. Both of those are considered morally objectionable in conventional wisdom, even though we already had a nice real-world example of a defensive declaration of war, and could mention quite a few cases where a side that didn't have conquest ambitions ended up gaining territory. It all simply goes to show that we can't determine guilt, let alone motivation, merely from the end result. But generally speaking, we still have reasons to condemn successful conquest even if the other kid started it - it's extremely seldom that conquered territories are better off due to the conquest.

I all but proved that the romulans started the war - Ent S4 trilogy, how each time the war was mentioned, the romulans being the agressors was heavily implied (even outright stated, I seem to recall).

But you recall wrong. I dare you to quote even a single piece of dialogue that would support your viewpoint.

Romulans have been quoted as performing at least one surprise strike that was compared to Pearl Harbor. That was never tied to the "BoT" war, though. And the Feds have performed aggressive espionage in various episodes, attempted a preemptive strike against Romulans in "The Defector", and generally demonstrated willingness to settle issues with the force of arms.

Simply saying "our heroes never start wars because they are the white hats" doesn't cut it in this context, because a lot of Star Trek drama is based on the idea that the hero side (even if not the heroes themselves) remains selfish, violent and prone to misjudgments. Saying "our villains must be the guilty ones because they are the villains, doh!" doesn't work, either, because a sympathetic and wronged villain is also a common element in Trek storytelling.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Just as one day the Federation would enter space that was claimed by the Cardassian Union beginning a war, a Earth ship entered space claimed by the Romulan Star Empire beginning . . .

HOSHI: They're ordering us to leave their system immediately or they'll destroy us. They say they've annexed this planet in the name of something called The Romalin Star Empire.

T'POL: Romulan. It's pronounced Romulan.

Now annexation is the formal act of acquiring something (especially territory) by conquest or occupation. There were at least two Romulan ships in that system. That would be your occupation. And not all colonies are places with settlers. There are resource colonies, likely evacuated as soon as hostilities began. If the M-class planet in the episode Minefield was say a mining colony it could have been worked by Remans with a small number of Romulan overseers.

Not having people living there doesn't mean a place isn't yours. There are thousands of square miles in the interior of America where no one lives, forests, deserts, prairies. America also has many hundreds of islands, some far out in the middle of the Pacific, upon which no one lives. But make no mistake, these place are claimed by us and are ours.

At the end of the war, earth took territory that, most likely, did not belong to the romulans.

Of course it no longer belonged to the Romulans, they lost it in battle. Earth had conquered it and planted their proud flag upon it as all conqurers do. As you pointed out, they paid for that new territory with blood. However Earth and the young Federation did not have to keep this territory and the many star systems within it.

In the second world war America took vast areas of the pacific ocean away from the Empire of Japan, the islands in this area became American territory. The Republic of the Marshall Islands was granted sovereignty on October 21, 1986, The Federated States of Micronesia was granted sovereignty on November 3, 1986 and The Republic of Palau was granted sovereignty on October 1, 1994.

But, of course, America is not a Interstellar Empire.

 

[Timo]

In absence of hard facts, we might postulate something similar for the old Cardassian War, too. Supposedly, there exists a stretch of neutral territory between the Federation and the outermost holdings of Cardassia in that direction - but said holdings consist of Bajor, after which the next stop already is Cardassia Prime! How could a war with the Federation produce such an outcome?

Easily, if the Federation conquered planets previously owned by the Cardassian Union (and no doubt conquered by those naughty villains before that) while on its way to deliver comeuppance to the Cardassians, then forced Cardassia to cease aggression, and then withdrew from the territory it did not covet in the least but did not wish to see in Cardassian hands, either.

The continuing plight of the Bajorans would then be a gesture of mercy from UFP's part: they didn't push all the way to Cardassia Prime, because too much blood would have been shed, so they stopped short of this one final Cardassian-conquered world. The half-measure would cause resentment, and it would be no wonder so many of the cultures around Bajor would be allies of Cardassia, not allies of the UFP...

Timo Saloniemi