I know this sounds like heresy, but does the Federation really need to be restored? While it was indeed a source of hope, it clearly couldn't adapt to how The Burn changed the galaxy. Instead of restoring or rebuilding it, why not build a new, better organization on its ashes. Maybe call it the Galactic Commonwealth, the Galactic Federal Commonwealth, et cetera.
I mean, I'm not sure what the functional difference is between building a new Interstellar Commonwealth and building a United Federation of Planets. This is really a branding issue, isn't it?
I'm not saying it would be. What I'm saying is if it's heavily restructured and changed it would no longer be the Federation. It would be something new and different. It would be a new successor entity like how the United Nations was for the League of Nations. Why call the new entity the appellation United Federation of Planets if its no longer a federation, but is something more centralized - something that would hold together better?
Well, here's the thing: there isn't
really that much of a difference between the League of Nations and the United Nations. Like, they're similar enough to the point where the League bequeathed all of its assets and property to the U.N. upon its dissolution. The World War II allies called themselves the "United Nations," the U.N. organization was named after them to evoke this idea of it being a new international era, and the League was disbanded because its reputation had become irrevocably associated with the failure to stop World War II, and yes, there are structural differences that were designed to make the U.N. stronger and give it more of an ability to fulfill its mandate to keep the peace and persuade its member states to use it as a forum to resolve their disputes -- but the biggest difference is just branding, isn't it? The League of Nations failed, the United Nations won't (it has, many times), but really they're still basically the same thing, basically variations on the same thing: an international organization whose member states agree (at least in theory) to renounce the use of war to resolve their conflicts and to instead use the international organization as a forum to resolve disputes peacefully.
So... You know, this new thing they build in DIS, whether it has a different operational structure or not, really the question of whether it's called "the United Federation of Planets" or something else, it's really just a question of branding. Does the idea of
the Federation inspire the peoples of these disparate formerly united worlds to join together in a spirit of siblinghood again, or does the name inspire negative feelings? Can the idea of
the Federation still bring people together, or do you need a new name for that?
We don't know how "centralized" the Federation was. That seem to fluctuate with the needs of the plot. This new Federation would theoretically be built around the still existing Federation we're scheduled to meet on Thursday. So it wouldn't be a from the ground up new build.
I mean, apparently the Federation was centralized enough that significant portions of interstellar space are being controlled by lawless business entities and crime syndicates (but I repeat myself) in its absence, while more developed planets like Earth and Trill seem to have reverted to permanent siege mentality.
To fix the flaws of the Federation in the post-Burn era would probably require getting rid of the federal system. True, Federation has plenty of nostalgic value, but otherwise why continue calling it such if it's no longer an actual federation?
I don't think we have
nearly enough evidence to indicate that the federal structure of the UFP government contributed to its demise, or that a unitary state would have fared any better. If anything, the fact that worlds were fairly autonomous under Federation governance probably allowed their worlds to function
better in the absence of the Federation government than they would have had they been dependent on a unitary system all the time to tell them what to do.
Or maybe they were just disloyal cowards who chickened out rather than face the truth.
I really don't think that's a fair assessment. In watching DIS S3 this weekend (finally caught up!), I found myself thinking about how the territories that used to be part of the Roman Empire had to evolve when Rome withdrew its legions and gradually stopped governing its territories. There was no one moment when they realized they weren't really part of the Roman Empire anymore -- Rome's collapse was a process, not an event. Rather, local governments had to step up and start making decisions in Rome's absence, and start establishing relationships with other post-Roman territories, and sometimes this led to peace and sometimes this led to war, etc. It's how the nations we now call England, France, and Germany evolved.
To me it looks like a similar process took place -- as the Federation lost its ability to govern and project force, its agencies slowly began to disappear, and local governments were no longer able to look to it for support and had to step up to take care of themselves. But clearly the memory of the Federation is alive and well in the territories its rump state no longer controls, and the
idea of the Federation as this force for good still seems to have power. People remember the Federation the way the Celts and the Franks remembered Rome.
But do we even know if there were flaws?
What felled the Federation was basically, post-Dilithium or some such analogue. Not complaints over abuses of power, or human imperialism, or maybe the Xindi and Klingons hijacking the Federation. The Federation just couldn't exist as a polity. Interstellar unions with STL tech is, by and large, impossible.
Yeah. There's no indication that the Federation's loss of governance is a function of social organization per se -- it looks like a function of not being able to command enough resources to maintain interstellar travel at sufficient levels to maintain governance. It's a resource issue before it's a social issue.
The universe isn't awash with blood. People just can't get anywhere quickly, and it seems to be near universal. Everything is back to a pre-warp era level. Nothing wrong there.
I mean, so far the post-Federation worlds we've seen have ranged from "so dangerous that the first thing everyone does when they see you is attack you" to "why the fuck are you in orbit get out before we shoot you down." Entire planets appear to be controlled by violent business entities and organized crime syndicates. That sounds pretty awash in blood to me.
Restored yes for those who want to it back. However only the long lived species born before The Burn will remember the Federation. As Earth said they are doing fine without it, so why need it?
United Earth doesn't even control Luna. The furthest extent of its reach was low-Earth orbit. They didn't even know what was going on on
Titan, a moon in their own solar system. And they treated a series of raiders from half-starving colonists who hadn't taken a shower in months as a serious military threat. They have no idea what's going on elsewhere in the galaxy, up to and including no idea if cultures that don't use dilithium might be active or might even be a threat. They've renounced basic communication with the galaxy, and they've renounced the spirit of exploration that drove the Federation.
They may not be dying, and Earth may not be a dystopia, but that doesn't mean it's doing "fine," either.
