How did the Eugenics Wars start?

[Myasishchev]

I'm pretty sure if a genetic superman somehow managed to take power behind the scenes in India or China, we would care.

I mean, you can make an argument about whether we care about economically insignificant areas, but we've always cared about China. We gave enough of a crap about China to brink ourselves into a war with the Japanese, and we continue to defend the RoC even to this day.

However, if genetic supermen took over, say, Nepal instead, what should be the difference to us? India would probably take care of it anyway.

 

[EJA]

I'm actually working on a fan fic which has Khan born around 2001, and his rise to power occuring in 2042 with the Augment-dominated nations of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa forming the Khanate. I'm thinking of depicting the Augments as having been in the public eye for some years by this stage, in government and in the military. The Eugenics Wars will be the first act of World War III, ending in 2046 and picking up again around 2052 (minus the Augments, of course).

 

[Sci]

I'm pretty sure if a genetic superman somehow managed to take power behind the scenes in India or China, we would care.

Sure. But, as I've said several times, the process in the books was, brushfire wars break out, U.S. populace doesn't care, and then only later does the U.S. government realize that Augments are behind it all, at which point the military gets involved.

 

[Arpy]

^ I agree, but there is a difference between the ramifications of the Second Congo War and Khan's rise to power. Horrible, and shameful, as it was, the war in Africa posed little threat to the West, whereas Khan would have been the greatest threat in history.

Sure -- but would the general populace in the West realize it?

Yes. It's an interesting concept and well pursued, but the world isn't that simple, and we should remember that in discussing it.

 

[Sci]

^ I agree, but there is a difference between the ramifications of the Second Congo War and Khan's rise to power. Horrible, and shameful, as it was, the war in Africa posed little threat to the West, whereas Khan would have been the greatest threat in history.

Sure -- but would the general populace in the West realize it?

Yes.

Oh? The general populace in the West would realize that Khan would represent the greatest threat in their history when he's gone out of his way to conceal his presence from Western governments and citizens while controlling Asian governments from behind the scenes? Really?

Most people in the West couldn't have told you who Osama bin Ladin was before 9/11. Huge segments of the American population today can't even find Iran on a map. The idea that the general population in the West would necessarily have known about Khan is very generous.

And I really have to wonder how many people poking holes in the premise of the Eugenics Wars novels even read the damn things.

 

[Myasishchev]

I'm pretty sure if a genetic superman somehow managed to take power behind the scenes in India or China, we would care.

Sure. But, as I've said several times, the process in the books was, brushfire wars break out, U.S. populace doesn't care, and then only later does the U.S. government realize that Augments are behind it all, at which point the military gets involved.

Oh. Cheerfully withdrawn. Maybe I ought to just read the things.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^ I agree, but there is a difference between the ramifications of the Second Congo War and Khan's rise to power. Horrible, and shameful, as it was, the war in Africa posed little threat to the West, whereas Khan would have been the greatest threat in history.

Sure -- but would the general populace in the West realize it?

Remember, like I said, part of the reason the various conflicts in The Eugenics Wars started by Augments went mostly ignored in the West was that they seemed like small brushfire wars started by the end of the Cold War. It took a long time for the U.S. government to piece together the larger picture and realize how big of a threat the Augments actually were.

Doesn't quite match up to the dialog in "Space Seed"



The West would notice such an "offer".

Would it? The West barely paid attention to al Qaeda after Osama bin Ladin's declaration of holy war on the U.S. in 1996, and still barely paid attention even after al Qaeda attacked two U.S. embassies and a Navy ship. There were all sorts of indicators that something major was going to happen in the months leading up to 9/11, but while there were whistleblowers trying to get people to pay attention, the higher-ups never put it together.

The idea that Western intelligence is omniscient and would detect any patterns to what look like an unrelated series of local wars is, I think, being far more charitable to those intelligence services than their real-life track records has warranted.



1. Why would that many include Westerners?

2. You'll remember that I did say that the U.S. military eventually got involved in the fight against the Augments in the novels. But it took time for them to piece together what had been happening and to then take action.

Doesnt sound like a power behind the throne type of guy

That's your interpretation, and that's valid, but there's nothing inconsistent in the idea of the absolute ruler of more than a quarter of the world being someone who wants to keep his power unofficial for a while.

or someone the West would overlook.

The West overlooked Osama bin Ladin for years. Our intelligence services are not omniscient.

This isn't a guy hiding out in caves and and orchestratiing terrorist attacks. He is the absolute ruler of the area from Asia to the Middle East. Even Maxwell Smart could figure out this guy is trouble.

 

[captcalhoun]

well, yeah, because a buncha raggedy-ass religious nuts slammed airliners into two tower blocks in the biggest city in the world's only super-power and slaughtered a few thousand innocent civilians in the most horrific terror attack ever.

compared to a buncha people in a jungle shooting each other.

So human life becomes less valuable because of where the people happen to be living? Human suffering isn't as important when it's in the Congo as when it's in New York?

I urge you to re-consider your own perceptions of the importance of other cultures and the value of the lives of people from other cultures.

The Second Congo War literally had the largest death toll of any war since World War II. Almost as many people died in the Second Congo War as died in the Holocaust. Think about that.

That the news media in most Western countries virtually ignored it represents a profound ethnocentrism on their part.

i'm not being ethnocentric, i'm saying why the media took more interest.

all life is precious. but, frankly, i'm more worried about my nearest and dearest than someone i've never heard of and never will meet.

 

[Plecostomus]

One Augment leader was a huge Yankees fan and another was a Red Sox fan. It all just went out of control from that point.

More basic than that.

"Mine's bigger."
"Is not."
"Is too."
"Prove it."
*zipper sounds*
"...damn. Be a shame if a neutron bomb caused it to fall off, eh?"
"You wouldn't dare."

"Already did. INCOMING!"
"...shit."

 

[Sci]

The West overlooked Osama bin Ladin for years. Our intelligence services are not omniscient.

This isn't a guy hiding out in caves and and orchestratiing terrorist attacks. He is the absolute ruler of the area from Asia to the Middle East. Even Maxwell Smart could figure out this guy is trouble.

Maxwell Smart would have to know that he's the absolute ruler first. And, as I've said several times, the order of events in the duology was, brushfire wars break out, Khan secretly takes power by blackmailing existing governments, U.S. populace ignores the wars thinking them unimportant, U.S. government realizes Augment involvement, U.S. military gets involved.

 

[Broccoli]

One Augment leader was a huge Yankees fan and another was a Red Sox fan. It all just went out of control from that point.

More basic than that.

"Mine's bigger."
"Is not."
"Is too."
"Prove it."
*zipper sounds*
"...damn. Be a shame if a neutron bomb caused it to fall off, eh?"
"You wouldn't dare."

"Already did. INCOMING!"
"...shit."

Somehow, this came into my mind when reading that.

 

[T'Girl]

Maxwell Smart would have to know that he's the absolute ruler first. And, as I've said several times, the order of events in the duology was, brushfire wars break out, Khan secretly takes power by blackmailing existing governments, U.S. populace ignores the wars thinking them unimportant, U.S. government realizes Augment involvement, U.S. military gets involved.

`
Khan Singh, with his superior intellect, engineers a series of domestic and economic crises in America, a major labor strike in France, a very public sex scandal at number ten downing street, collapses a crowded shopping mall in Japan. Having spent years penitrating his people into the western news media, Khan diverts interest away from unimportant brushfire wars in asia and directs americans towards the upcoming presidential contest between George Bush (sr) and Bill Clinton.

Stopping that new dictator in India -- it another Vietnam !

 

[Nerys Myk]

The West overlooked Osama bin Ladin for years. Our intelligence services are not omniscient.

This isn't a guy hiding out in caves and and orchestratiing terrorist attacks. He is the absolute ruler of the area from Asia to the Middle East. Even Maxwell Smart could figure out this guy is trouble.

Maxwell Smart would have to know that he's the absolute ruler first. And, as I've said several times, the order of events in the duology was, brushfire wars break out, Khan secretly takes power by blackmailing existing governments, U.S. populace ignores the wars thinking them unimportant, U.S. government realizes Augment involvement, U.S. military gets involved.

Not a fan of the duology. Fanwank of the first/worst order IMO.
I don't think Khan's ego would allow him to be a man in the shadows. (As his conversations with Kirk demonstrate.) According to Kirk and Co. the records of that time were incomplete. Seems odd that the "shadow ruler's" identity would survive intact.

 

[Timo]

Moreover, it really doesn't match the biggest and most pertinent facts of "Space Seed".

Khan wasn't a lone supervillain who was dealt with in the shadows. He was part (a minor part!) of a global upheaval that left nobody in the dark, a giant clusterfuck that is still the talk of the town four centuries later, and one of the main tenets in what passes for religion (only the Prime Directive seems to compete in seriousness with the "Thou Shalt Not Khan" thing) in the 24th century.

The very approach of the duology seems oddly counterproductive: the Eugenics Wars were a deliberate attempt by Roddenberry and his writers to establish that the world in Star Trek would be different, would have a different future - that from the 1990s on at least, nothing would be the same again. Yes, at the same time, the writers may have tried to claim that the Trek 1960s was the same as the 1960s of the audience. But it ended there. It just doesn't seem fair that later writers would take the liberty of delaying the future. The Trek timeline is in a great hurry even as is, with manned interplanetary flight becoming routine in the 1980s, less than a century before manned galaxy-spanning flight...

According to Kirk and Co. the records of that time were incomplete.

To be fair, Spock apparently only referred to shipping records, as an excuse for him not being able to positively identify the Botany Bay.

Timo Saloniemi