Is the Federation too powerful?

[cheekygirl]

I haven't been on a Star Trek internet forum since about 2003 (I suspect many of you were young'uns when St-Intel was around), but I thought I'd ask this question: Is the Federation too powerful?

It's a federation of 150 worlds (maybe fewer powers) but though numerous, are generally unaggressive and see a benefit in collective defence than having their own independent military. There is probably great range in the power of the UFP member states - some may be very populus (Earth, Vulcan, Andoria), but I bet most are small outliers and ex-colonies.

So how can a seemingly weak federation of scaredy-cat states manage, by 2378 to destroy the Borg, take a leading role in the containing the Dominion, and be the most (military) technologically advanced powers in the Alpha/Beta quadrant?

There is argument that a broad base of many different races and species in the Federation can pool their talents and invent new technologies, but Starfleet ships/technology are too consistent in terms of design to be a compromise of 150 different design inputs. Just imagine the variety of ships, technology etc that you would get from 150 different viewpoints, it seems unlikely that they could agree on one.

IMO the Federation probably deserves to be a top-ranking power due to technological and resource diversity, but militarily I can't see it. I see Starfleet as an organisation of powers pooling in lots of their own ships and manpower all with various levels of potentcy (like how if you grouped all the World's navies together for example) but with only a few common designs of technology and ships.

Anyway, in summary I think the Federation would be too compromised by its non-aggressive stance and diversity in membership to field a singular, coherent and powerful military force.

Discuss

 

[indolover]

The Federation isn't aggressive, but in a way it encounters enemies by accident. It did not attack the Borg initially, but the temporal loop set in play by Q made them an enemy. The Dominion also became an enemy by accident, since the Federation did not know the Dominion existed, up until the season two finale.

I think it's just the case that not every neighbouring power will be peaceful or seek to co-exist.

 

[Xerxes1979]

(a) Voyager Endgame = Borg destroyed? I don't agree with that. Why do you think the Borg are gone?

(b) The Alpha quadrant wasn't fighting the whole Dominion, only that which existed on our side of the wormhole. Clearly humanity is the prodigal race on this side of the galaxy.

The Vulcans and Romulans took a much longer path to colonize space and Klingons arguably simply stole advanced technology from the Hurq. The Dominion took a big gamble, maybe thinking that the Federation needed to be put down before they spread over the entire rest of the galaxy and mastered time as well as space.

Its not like the Federation never fought a war before, the first Klingon-Federation war was a formal war. Clearly the coordinating mechanisms to control fleets of ships over great distances exist. Even if you accept that most of the 24th century was peaceful, the Yesterday's Enterprise reality showed that Federation did adapt structuraly to the needs prolonged and widespread combat.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The real question is just how big and powerful the Federation's neighbors are (the Klingons, the Romulans, the Cardassians, etc.).

It may very well be a case that although space is very big, the strength of any galactic government depends on what kind of overall force it can project--and I'm not talking just about military force, but economic force, technological advantages, political power (via alliances with other governments), and simply sheer physical size as well.

The Klingon and Romulan Empires could both rival the Federation in size and power for all we know, IMO.

 

[Xerxes1979]

I don't think distributed R&D is that big of a problem. All those individual data points are unified through subsapce communiques.

I mean look at a modern commerical airliner. Parts are designed all over the world and combined into a whole design in a virtual workspace.

Everytime Geordi gets smug by acheiving a new warp efficiency, the results are catalogued in the computer, and presumably those experimental cultures Crusher is always working on are being published in a medical database. The body of knowledge is always expanding.

There are always dedicated sites like the Daystrom Institute as well.

Federation science is awesome, after 2245 nothing can really stop us.

 

[T'Girl]

though numerous, are generally unaggressive

Depend on how you define "unaggressive." The Federation is expansionist, and has fought multiple territorial wars, Starfleet fought two such wars with the Tzenkethi. It was the Federation's attempt to expand and colonize beyond it's existing borders that brought them into conflict with the Cardassians (also expansionist), and created the Maquis.

It was the Federation's attempts to establish a mining settlement and facilitate the creation of a Bajorian colony in the Gamma quadrant that resulted ultimately in the Dominion War.The Dominion's actions were excessive, but they were a response.

I think the Federation would be too compromised by its non-aggressive stance and diversity in membership to field a singular, coherent and powerful military force.

While the Federation is diverse, there are strong indications that Starfleet is not. During the episode Reunion, Picard revealed that the flagship of the Federation"s crew only included beings for just fourteen planets. If this is typical, then Starfleet's personnel may come from just ten percent of the Federation's species/races.

The Federation seem quite capable of adopting a aggressive stance when the occasion requires. While they might have had to be pulled from mothballs, or assembled from member planets indigenous fleets, during the Dominion war Starfleet was able to field a vast military force.

 

[Vanyel]

While the Federation is diverse, there are strong indications that Starfleet is not. During the episode Reunion, Picard revealed that the flagship of the Federation"s crew only included beings for just fourteen planets. If this is typical, then Starfleet's personnel may come from just ten percent of the Federation's species/races.

Not necessarily. Ship personnel could be grouped by races that can co-exist in similar environments. A race from a planet with a gravitational pull 10 times that of Earth would eliminate Humans from serving on that ship. The make up of the atmosphere that Humans, Vulcans, Klingons, Andorians, Bertazoids, Bajorans, Cardassians and Tellerities can tolerate could be poisonous to others.

We are seeing only the races that can exist in an environment similar to Earth.

It would be cool to see a race whose atmosphere is mostly methane, or another aquatic race

 

[Nick086]

So if an alien species decide to join the Federation they can keep their warship/ship?

 

[ngc7293]

technologies, but Starfleet ships/technology are too consistent in terms of design to be a compromise of 150 different design inputs. Just imagine the variety of ships, technology etc that you would get from 150 different viewpoints, it seems unlikely that they could agree on one.

Someone on another thread once suggested that ship design was based on warp field theory or something like that. It is possible that in Star Fleet there are all manner of races working on Ship designs but are limited because of what works and what doesn't.

Of coarse in reality the creators probably thought several odd ship designs would confuse the watcher. If the ship was exclusively Vulcan it had a shape. If it was flown exclusively by Andorians, then it had a specific shape (all this of coarse from Enterprise).

TNG and the movies probably had only one ship that looked like it could have been designed differently and that was the Oberth class. There were others that had a different shape, but the Oberth had those strange Nacelles and the short NCC number. It kind of suggested that who ever designed it was not an Earth Engineer (Who else would build such a weird ship? )

 

[The Wormhole]

Well of course the Federation is really uber powerful. It's the hero of Star Trek, so it's supposed to be.

 

[Vanyel]

So if an alien species decide to join the Federation they can keep their warship/ship?

I would say keep them, if they are equal to, or more powerful than, a Starfleet ship. Have their engineers start integrating crews as the new species learns Starfleets Command Structure/Procedure/Protocols and sutch. Integrate any ideas/designs that can be useful into Starfleet ships (Perhaps a new species has found a way to sustain higher warp speeds without using as much fuel.) And keep the old fleet together until it is obsolete.

 

[T'Girl]

So if an alien species decide to join the Federation they can keep their warship/ship?

The Vulcans did.

Well into the 24th century they continued to possess their own warships (Reunification, part two).

 

[Expo67]

Is the UFP too powerful?

It really depends on the various checks-and-balances of the Federation's government body and its various bureaucratic departments.

 

[USS Excelsior]

You would think by default the Federation would be more powerful having the combined forces of the Vulcans, Tellarites, Andorians, Humans, and many others. The surrounding space consists of empires of just one force with less than enthusiastic conquered races under them.

 

[Nick086]

You would think by default the Federation would be more powerful having the combined forces of the Vulcans, Tellarites, Andorians, Humans, and many others. The surrounding space consists of empires of just one force with less than enthusiastic conquered races under them.

True, the conquered alien species don't serve on the ship or military ground forces. I guess unless their planet is allow to have some kind of governing powers like the Dutch did for sometime in World War II

 

[T'Girl]

From Nenesis, we know that the Romulans employ Remans in their military ground forces, Very shortly following Shinzon's coup they were seen to be skillfully operating a Starship, suggesting that perhaps the Romulans employed them in this capacity as well. Shinzon himself (from Starfleet record) left the mines at so point, join (or was drafted) and rose to be a "capable" commander in the Romulan military.

If the Romulans use Remans (and one Human) in their military, we can infer that they incorporate the Empire's other races as well, like Shinzon also as officers.

At one point in the Earth's old Roman Empire, ninety percent of the military (including officers) were "non-Italians." Whenever the Romans would conquer a people, these people all became Roman citizens.

(Possible historical parallel)

From various Star Trek fiction, the Klingons utilize slaves aboard their starships. Some stories have the starships (except for the officers and security) entirely taken care of by slaves, the slaves being the engineers and the maintenance crews.

At various point in time in the Earth's old Byzantium Empire, slaves all but ran the nation, composing the government bureaucracy and the military, including senior positions.

 

[Hando]

Actualy the Federation is not as powerful as it should be.

Personel:
I can understand the lack of non human personel (SF is an Earth/human centric organisation, there is only 1 starfleet academy; 150 members of UFP, but most of them only discovered warp some 10-50 years ago so they are not yet up to date, ...)

Ships:
lack of ships (when ever there is an emrgency only 1 ship can respond, usualy Enterprise - see ST Generations and STTNG Reunion) they realy should build more
old ship classes (the Excelsior and Obereth classes are still in use in the 24th century even though they are a century old - see the fight against the Borg cubes and the Dominion wars)
no dreadnoughts/battlships (I understand the UFP is a peace-loving society, but shouldn there be atleast some, agains pirates, in emergency situations, also given the number of wars the UFP was involved in, they need some)

Policy:
appleasment - always the need to establish a neutral zone, demilitarized zone, see Cardassia
reastabishment of old borders - after every war there are no wins only old borders are set to old positions, with Klingons, Cardassians, ...
UFP never figts a war to the end, only to reestablish a status quo, then they fear a new war, because an old enemy could attack them again and they would have to fight a war on several fronts
no war economy - as we have no idea how the economy looks like, I can not evven say if it is possible or if it has any efect to change from a peace economy to a war economy, but there are no drafts, no war posters, no propaganda or rations for a UFP citizen during a war

some conclusions:
UFP vs Klingons - UFP loses, I have no idea why, but in both the comic Lost Generation and TNG Yesterday's Enterprise the UFP was defeated or being defeated by the Klingon Empire
UFP vs Cardassians - with a total victory they could have libarated Bajor and removed Cardassia from joining the Dominion

 

[Vanyel]

Policy:
appleasment - always the need to establish a neutral zone, demilitarized zone, see Cardassia
reastabishment of old borders - after every war there are no wins only old borders are set to old positions, with Klingons, Cardassians, ...
UFP never figts a war to the end, only to reestablish a status quo, then they fear a new war, because an old enemy could attack them again and they would have to fight a war on several fronts
no war economy - as we have no idea how the economy looks like, I can not evven say if it is possible or if it has any efect to change from a peace economy to a war economy, but there are no drafts, no war posters, no propaganda or rations for a UFP citizen during a war

some conclusions:
UFP vs Klingons - UFP loses, I have no idea why, but in both the comic Lost Generation and TNG Yesterday's Enterprise the UFP was defeated or being defeated by the Klingon Empire
UFP vs Cardassians - with a total victory they could have libarated Bajor and removed Cardassia from joining the Dominion

The Dominion Wart was fought to the end. The Founder did surrender and allow herself to be tried and imprisoned. Picard also seemed ready to force the surrender of the Lysians in Conundrum.

The Klingons and Romulans seem to be on equal footing, militarily and economically, as the Federation. Setting up Neutral Zones would allow both sides to stop fighting and prepare for a possible war.

Toreth and Admiral Jorak both seemed to understand that an all out war with the Federation would lead to destruction of both, a Pyrrhic victory at best. And the Neutral Zone between Penny and Leonard, I mean the Romulans and Federation, was set up between Earth and the Romulans. The Federation Council must have agreed to keep it intact.

The entire back story of the universe of Yesterday's Enterprise is not fleshed out. The Klingons in the "real" Universe seem quite capable of waging war against the Federation, and do so as shown in DS9. After the seeming abandonment of the Nerenda III colony by the Enterprise C, the Klingons could have gone on a massive rebuilding project. They could have moved the Council to another planet (I never understood how the ecological damage of one planet in an Empire could cause the whole Empire to collapse.) And by increasing the hatred of the Federation by using the 1701C's "running away" to spur the people into unprecedented rebuilding and war fervor. Also the 1701C comes from a time 22 prior to the events of YE. That should place the battle some 40 or 50 years after the events of TUC, again giving the Klingon's plenty of time to rebuild.

The Federation does seem to not care about increasing its borders by conquest, but it hardly seems to be ready to stop fighting if absolute victory is the only way to obtain peace.

 

[Hando]

The Dominion Wart was fought to the end. The Founder did surrender and allow herself to be tried and imprisoned.

This war maybe doesn't show much of UFP battle craft, as it was UFP + Klingons + Romulans vs Dominion (in Alpha quadrant) + Cardassians
and they only won because of the Prophets and the Changeling virus not because of the millitary might.

The Klingons and Romulans seem to be on equal footing, militarily and economically, as the Federation. Setting up Neutral Zones would allow both sides to stop fighting and prepare for a possible war.

Toreth and Admiral Jorak both seemed to understand that an all out war with the Federation would lead to destruction of both, a Pyrrhic victory at best. And the Neutral Zone between Penny and Leonard, I mean the Romulans and Federation, was set up between Earth and the Romulans. The Federation Council must have agreed to keep it intact.

The entire back story of the universe of Yesterday's Enterprise is not fleshed out. The Klingons in the "real" Universe seem quite capable of waging war against the Federation, and do so as shown in DS9. After the seeming abandonment of the Nerenda III colony by the Enterprise C, the Klingons could have gone on a massive rebuilding project. They could have moved the Council to another planet (I never understood how the ecological damage of one planet in an Empire could cause the whole Empire to collapse.) And by increasing the hatred of the Federation by using the 1701C's "running away" to spur the people into unprecedented rebuilding and war fervor. Also the 1701C comes from a time 22 prior to the events of YE. That should place the battle some 40 or 50 years after the events of TUC, again giving the Klingon's plenty of time to rebuild.

Romulans: originaluy equal with Earth while they are equal with the whole UFP. But I agree with you they are probably equal with UFP in term of military.

Klingons: my point exactly

Its just that those 2 are more militaristic and warlike which gives them the edge over UFP.

The Federation does seem to not care about increasing its borders by conquest, but it hardly seems to be ready to stop fighting if absolute victory is the only way to obtain peace.

I don't mean increasing their borders, but they somhow jump on the first peace offer and don't realy gain anything from their wars at all. What good is a peace treaty when the next leader just decides to attack (Romulans in TOS, Gowron, Shinzon, ...).

 

[Vanyel]

The Dominion Wart was fought to the end. The Founder did surrender and allow herself to be tried and imprisoned.

This war maybe doesn't show much of UFP battle craft, as it was UFP + Klingons + Romulans vs Dominion (in Alpha quadrant) + Cardassians and they only won because of the Prophets and the Changeling virus not because of the millitary might.

They won some breathing room because of the Prophets. Bio-warfare is a part of military might, granted not one most people agree with, but one that has been used over and over again in the history of the Human race.

The entrance of the Breen into the war turned the momentum of the war back in favor of the Dominion. It took a major fleet battle to win. The Romulan lines were crumbling due to loss of their flag ship. The Klingons and Starfleet were suffering heavy losses. It was the Founder's miscalculation of the Cartdassian military loyalty to their people, that caused the Cardassians to switch sides and help win the battle, and eventually, the war.

The Klingons and Romulans seem to be on equal footing, militarily and economically, as the Federation. Setting up Neutral Zones would allow both sides to stop fighting and prepare for a possible war.

Toreth and Admiral Jorak both seemed to understand that an all out war with the Federation would lead to destruction of both, a Pyrrhic victory at best. And the Neutral Zone between Penny and Leonard, I mean the Romulans and Federation, was set up between Earth and the Romulans. The Federation Council must have agreed to keep it intact.

The entire back story of the universe of Yesterday's Enterprise is not fleshed out. The Klingons in the "real" Universe seem quite capable of waging war against the Federation, and do so as shown in DS9. After the seeming abandonment of the Nerenda III colony by the Enterprise C, the Klingons could have gone on a massive rebuilding project. They could have moved the Council to another planet (I never understood how the ecological damage of one planet in an Empire could cause the whole Empire to collapse.) And by increasing the hatred of the Federation by using the 1701C's "running away" to spur the people into unprecedented rebuilding and war fervor. Also the 1701C comes from a time 22 prior to the events of YE. That should place the battle some 40 or 50 years after the events of TUC, again giving the Klingon's plenty of time to rebuild.

Romulans: originaluy equal with Earth while they are equal with the whole UFP. But I agree with you they are probably equal with UFP in term of military.

Klingons: my point exactly

Its just that those 2 are more militaristic and warlike which gives them the edge over UFP.

Being more militaristic doesn't always give you an edge. That's more of a scare tactic. The Federation has a powerful Starfleet, one that gives the Romulans pause. The Klingons seem ready to win wars by sheer force, while the Federation seems more interested in more Sun Tzu type fighting. Relying more on strategy and hitting weak spots . A smaller force can defeat a larger one, we only have to look back at Vietnam to see that.

The Federation does seem to not care about increasing its borders by conquest, but it hardly seems to be ready to stop fighting if absolute victory is the only way to obtain peace.

I don't mean increasing their borders, but they somhow jump on the first peace offer and don't realy gain anything from their wars at all. What good is a peace treaty when the next leader just decides to attack (Romulans in TOS, Gowron, Shinzon, ...).

What good is continued war if it leaves you drained and weakened? The Federation seems willing to conquer if it is the only way to stop the fighting long enough for it to rebuild. Ending the war with the Dominion without the Dominion's unconditional surrender would have not allowed the Federation and her allies the time they needed to rebuild.