Cardassia as an Alpha Quadrant Power

[Myasishchev]

No analogies to the French b/c all the AQ powers and associated planets fought. I guess that planet where The Boy got into a little trouble might be the French

No Poland either. However, Bajor could make a decent Poland.

In any event, I fear we're taking the comparison beyond its limits.

Going back to my original assertion, Cardassia was, in terms of power, Trek's Italy. They had a decent navy, apparently a rather terrible army, and turned against their allies once they looked like they were going to lose the war.

 

[Thor Damar]

No analogies to the French b/c all the AQ powers and associated planets fought. I guess that planet where The Boy got into a little trouble might be the French

No Poland either. However, Bajor could make a decent Poland.

In any event, I fear we're taking the comparison beyond its limits.

Going back to my original assertion, Cardassia was, in terms of power, Trek's Italy. They had a decent navy, apparently a rather terrible army, and turned against their allies once they looked like they were going to lose the war.

I think the WWII analogues are false in my considered opinion. The Races and organisations in the Trek Universe represent either an archetype or a particular Ideology common to our real world experience.
So Cardassia is both Fascist and Stalinist( Strong efficient Secret Police, Loyalty to the State and strong elements of Xenophobia),this may not be the accepted definition of Fascism but it describes the Union very well.
Myasishchev, I must respectfully disagree with you when you state that Cardassia had a decent Navy but a terrible Army. In "Return to Grace" Kira complements the basic efficiency of the Cardassian Disruptor Rife and several of the EU Trek Novels ( for example Terok Nor) mention Cardassian Armour, something not seen in the other AQ powers. In my mind the Starfleet had the Worst Army, Hell they aren't called redshirts for any old reason!
As for the Union Fleet I've always thought that the Navy got a bad press, the Galor is a fine Cruiser(and a great ship design!) and the Keldon and Hildkei Classes function very well. If you look at some of the Cardassian ships on some of the Trek games, they get even better!
The Cardassians are able tacticians and even the almighty Klingons are forced to admit so. (Soldiers of the Empire) so even if their ships are weak they gave a good account of themselves.
The Cardassians appeared weak because plot demanded it, a few years later the Galors are blowing up Klingons left,right and center.

Finally I agree with Neryrs Ghemor's proposal for improving the Union and with her opinion of Martok's dishonorable conduct on Cardassia Prime.
Poetic justice my arse!

Please no more WWII comparisons? They make me want to .

( PS anti French Jokes?)

 

[Thor Damar]

Cardassians are posers.

< Agreed, check out the avatar!

 

[Photon]

^ Re: the above?

Re: Fighting French-
Q. How do you stop a French tank?
A. Say "boo"

How do you separate the men from the boys in France? With a crowbar.


Why do the french get more votes in the U.N.? They vote with both hands

Q. What is the difference between a frenchwoman and a basketball team?
A. The basketball team showers after 4 periods.


What is the french peoples favorite movie? The Running Man

During WW2, the French resistance fighters, in their finest hour, bravely threw sticks of dynamite at the advancing German troops. The Germans then lit them and threw them back.

Q.What is the first thing the French teach their kids in school?
A.How to say "We Surrender" in German!

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: the Cardassian ground forces, they surrendered 500,000 of them at Septimus III. A lot like the Italians in Libya. Although we don't know whether their opponents were quite so vanishly small as the Italians'.

 

[Myasishchev]

Double post. Don't know why it does that. <_<

 

[iguana_tonante]

Going back to my original assertion, Cardassia was, in terms of power, Trek's Italy. They had a decent navy, apparently a rather terrible army, and turned against their allies once they looked like they were going to lose the war.

Hey, we did it just because we didn't like them so much to start with.

(and because they were inflicting much more damages to the civilian population than the British or American. not much of an ally.)

Myasishchev, I must respectfully disagree with you when you state that Cardassia had a decent Navy but a terrible Army.

Well, maybe they had brave, good soldiers and really terrible generals. Just like us.

( PS anti French Jokes?)

Are you surprised? I see a lot of them around the board usually.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Re: the Cardassian ground forces, they surrendered 500,000 of them at Septimus III. A lot like the Italians in Libya. Although we don't know whether their opponents were quite so vanishly small as the Italians'.

Surrendered?!

That was an effing SLAUGHTER! And why? Because the Dominion decided not to allow the Cardassians to defend themselves against the incoming Klingon fleet, not even to bother with a freaking evacuation, if they had to give up the planet!

No...that happened because Cardassian lives were worthless to the Founder and she had no second thoughts about throwing all their lives away, and for nothing.

 

[Thor Damar]

Re: the Cardassian ground forces, they surrendered 500,000 of them at Septimus III. A lot like the Italians in Libya. Although we don't know whether their opponents were quite so vanishly small as the Italians'.

Wrong! The Klingons massacred them, try again.

 

[Myasishchev]

Massacred, surrendered. A difference that makes no difference is no difference.

And, as indicated, I was being facetious. Besides, we have no way of knowing what kind of force that was in Septimus III, other than broadly "military" in nature. In likelihood, they were support troops.

Land war is insignificant in Star Trek, because orbital bombardment or the threat thereof is the means conquest or neutralization of enemy planets. Ground troops are for 1)the protection or securing of key infrastructure that is either protected from orbital attack or so valuable it will not be attacked, like a big subspace relay hub; and 2)to provide police functions during occupation. This is why there is no Federation Stararmy, only a Federation Starfleet. There is probably no real Cardassian Army in separate service.

As for whether they were left to die by the Founder for no reason, we don't know that either. Clearly, they had been significantly overexposed, but that doesn't mean that rescuing them was the correct military decision, or even possible. To use a WWII analogy again, did the Japanese make a mistake, by not evacuating the Philippines in the face of the American invasion? Not really, they didn't even have the option, because by that point in the war, they did not have the fleet resources to do it. It's just as likely that Damar's reaction was emotional as it is likely that it was logical. I agree that the Founder was callous, but 500,000 support personnel of an Order that no longer exists as a fighting force are arguably not worth the effort and risk.

And chances of success were low. Evacuating 500,000 soldiers would require huge starlift capacity. Hundreds if not thousands of transports. They'd be picked off by birds-of-prey as they shuttled up the evacuees. Or their transporter beams would be scrambled in midflight, reducing what came out on the other side to smoldering jelly. All this while pinning an escort fleet in orbit around a planet, at the mercy of enemy forces with faster-than-light operational flexibility.

I realize belatedly that that's a lot of words to exegize two or three damn throwaway lines.

 

[Infern0]

The Caries always seemed a bit weak to me, thier ships for example didn't seem to be up there with the other powers' and also DS9 for example, wen they left it it was old and rubbish, and starfleet had to do a massive overhaul to bring it up to scratch.

 

[Blueicus]

I always thought of Cardassians as second-rate powers, in The Wounded the Phoenix destroyed warships (even with the prefix codes) with ease and the E-D and Defiant were shown to be more than a match for them as well... the only reason the Federation signed that peace treaty was probably because they were embroiled in so many border conflicts (Tzenkethi, etc.)

 

[Infern0]

I agree, they seem to be more of a pest than anything else, hence why they were picking on poor defenceless bajor

 

[Myasishchev]

Something else to consider, and I'm arguing the other side now, is how effectively the Dominion was able to make use of their Cardassian power base. After the wormhole was blockaded, the Dominion could no longer count on the far vaster industrial resources in the Gamma Quadrant. Other than their "starting counters," in wargame terms, the Dominion relied entirely on Cardassian production, while the Klingons, Romulans and particularly the Federation had huge resources to fall back upon. Yet the Dominion seems to be able to match the Federation and Klingons with appears to be purely Cardassian sources of supply.

This suggests that the Cardassian economy might have been stronger, or their economic potential might have been greater, than we might think, and that a combination of internecine struggles, laggard technological development and overreaching during the wars with an enemy Federation were what eventually crumbled their power to the state seen in DS9.

But they were still Italy in the Dominion War. Maybe even Romania.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

As much as I would like to think that was all Cardassian industry...I have to wonder just how much those Dominion fleets brought over of an industrial nature from the Gamma Quadrant, before the mining of the wormhole.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Something I think about when watching Star Trek is whether every region of space is homogenous with regards to available energy, and it probably isn't.

The economies of the spacefaring civilizations are ordinarily based on antimatter (with the possible, even likely exception of the Romulan Empire). Antimatter production (apocryphal "charge reversal" devices notwithstanding) cannot be cheap and is likely to be very energy intensive. Good natural sources of such energy are stars, black holes, and neutron stars. Stars are too weak and too big, but x-ray binaries (stars paired with black holes, neutron stars and sometimes white dwarves whose accretion of the stellar material radiates in the high frequency spectrum, useful for generating antimatter in high-powered industrial colliders. At any rate, surely the antimatter comes from somewhere, since its properties rather preclude finding a significant and viable treasure trove in nature.

Perhaps Cardassian space was richer in this sense than most, but relatively unexploited (noting, for example, that Cardassia Prime is less industrialized than the Federation, with people starving, even in an antimatter-driven economy). When the Dominion arrived, they brought their technical expertise and exploited Cardassia to a far fuller potential.

 

[Timo]

Why should stars be weak sources of energy for producing antimatter? It's done with the magical doohickeys anyway: rigging a machine that gets something other than raw power from the natural source would be a gigaproject so impressive that a civilization capable of that wouldn't need starships any more. Rather, solar panels big enough should do the trick.

Perhaps the Dominion was better at mining the resources deep in the crusts of Cardassian worlds? We know even the Vorta agree that Federation engineers are impressively skilled - but Dominion manufacturing tech could fall between the Fed and Cardassian ones, and still increase Cardassian output significantly. Or it could be superior to the Federation skills, even if individual engineers aren't as imaginative.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TedShatner10]

I say the Cardassian Union is easily comparable to Belguim and Holland, in that it is militarily competent but still outmatched by its contemporaries, but despite that has a long history of colonial cruelty. They could also be comparable to Cuba with a much bigger superpower heavily bolstering their military capabilities.

 

[Thor Damar]

^ Nope, if we're compering a spacefaring alien civilization to any of the nations on earth for no real reason, then the Cardassian Empire is the United Kingdom!
Why? Well Cardassia is a power in decline that once had a great empire, they are resource poor (just like the UK is, due to being a island) have a proud xenophobic streak and have made some very bad choices in allies.
The British system of reserve and understatement suits the Cardassian character (especially Garak). And both the British and the Cardassian's make great hollywood style villians! (for which we thank you America)

The Bajorians, therefore are the Irish

 

[Myasishchev]

Why should stars be weak sources of energy for producing antimatter? It's done with the magical doohickeys anyway: rigging a machine that gets something other than raw power from the natural source would be a gigaproject so impressive that a civilization capable of that wouldn't need starships any more. Rather, solar panels big enough should do the trick.

Stars, at least like our sun, are quite weak per-square meter in comparison to natural x-ray sources. Why, 255 million square kilometers of the Earth is facing the huge fusion furnace that is our sun at any given time, but I doubt you could make so much antimatter out of the photons the Earth collects that it could drive a starship.

I say humbug to magical charge-reversal devices. They're 1)not canon (only "canonesque") and 2)not very dramatically useful. Energy from nowhere undermines any source of conflict in the Trek universe, other than those started by ideological aggressors like the Dominion or the Borg.

I far prefer to believe something larger and more fundamental underlies the wars between great galactic powers, at least something better than common M-class rocks. A contest for the energy resources of the galaxy better befits the level of civilization the Feds and other big powers have. One more colony to put 300 people on so they can get killed by berthold rays or eaten by Hortas isn't much of a thing to fight over.

Granted, there is the competition for dilithium-rich systems, but that's part and parcel of the antimatter energy regime.

Naturally I concede that none of this speculation is based on anything but inference, but I feel it's good inference.