Other Fed Worlds
- Thread starter Photon
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Since Vulcans are supposed to be pacifists, the only time I've ever heard their ships referred to are scientific or diplomatic ships. Also, during the Dominion War, a detachment of Star Fleet ships was there to protect it. Betazed fell pretty quickly, IIRC, but they were not portrayed as great warrior-types. Ferenginar had ships, but I don't think much mention was made of them in the war effort. Perhaps others can add to this thread with additional and more concrete information.
Before the foundation of the Federation...
We've not seen explicit reference to any member-specific fleet. However, tangential evidence might be a reference to Vulcan Internal security and Vulcan ships (albeit seemingly transports) in Unification.
If Starfleet is supposed to be more of a scientific and exploratory organization, it would be more likely that each member world was responsible for keeping the peace/defending their home system. Since the Fed doesn't approach worlds without warp drive capabilities, each member would have to have their own ships coming into the organization, for defense, commerce, and exploration.
In The Outrageaous Okona we saw Altec and Straleb security vessels, not very impressive though. One of the novels dealt with the Andorian Home Fleet, but I don't remember the details.
In theory it would have been cool to see different ships from different cultures working together in the big pitched battles against the Borg and in the Dominion War, but in practice Starfleet takes on a military role and all the ships have that Utopia Plantitia look.
In The Outrageaous Okona we saw Altec and Straleb security vessels, not very impressive though. One of the novels dealt with the Andorian Home Fleet, but I don't remember the details.
In theory it would have been cool to see different ships from different cultures working together in the big pitched battles against the Borg and in the Dominion War, but in practice Starfleet takes on a military role and all the ships have that Utopia Plantitia look.
Did not Spock himself refer to Vulcan's horrificly violent past? I have read myself on this board back and forth in the ENT area re: how the Vulcans would only divulge some of their technology to Terrans lest they develop too quickly for their own good.
For my own purposes, I stayed glued to the television for Vulcans armed with phasers, phaser rifles or standing at weapons stations to blow the Cardassians, the Jem'Hadar or *anybody* for that matter to smithereens.
Yes, Tuvok, the exception that proves the rule. He had not yet gone through The Exercises or Disciplines or whatever they chose to call it in VOY. The other Vulcan on board is...an engineer.
I do not know if you would call that inductive or deductive reasoning, but I just haven't seen enough celluloid evidence to indicate to me that large numbers of Vulcans enter Star Fleet Security Forces...
Just as they are not all vegetarians perhaps they are not all pacifists, either.
Agreed. Not everybody in the Federation wants to join Starfleet, so it stands to reason that any ships a planet may have had prior to joining the Federation, would continue to serve locally, perhaps, under the administration of the Federation outpost or embassy on the planet.
Well, just to get really anal retentive, I don't think that they'd serve under the administration of the local Federation Embassy. For one, why would the Federation have an embassy on one of its Member States? That would be like the United States having an Embassy in Sacramento. I mean, yeah, California kinda exists in its own little world, but there's still not a US Ambassador to the State of California!
And I think that having the local Member State's fleet serve under a Federation outpost's administration kinda defeats the purpose of their not being in Starfleet. The whole point is that the Member State gets to retain some authority and power over its own defense, so obviously it would need to be serving under its Member State government and not a Federation outpost. Similarly, the Ohio National Guard doesn't serve under the US President's authority unless it's called into federal service; the rest of the time, its commander-in-chief is the Governor of the State of Ohio, not the President of the United States.
Not trying to be argumentative, but wasn't Sarek the ambassador from Vulcan to Earth/Terra in ST:VI? In the scene where there was also two other ambassadors representing non-Federation worlds: Klingon and Romulan.
Other duties of embassies include: trade negotiations, visas, and non-violent activities (although at this time in Terran history, you can bet your last dollar a fair amount of spying still goes on...)
Other duties of embassies include: trade negotiations, visas, and non-violent activities (although at this time in Terran history, you can bet your last dollar a fair amount of spying still goes on...)
Sarek was only ever described as "The Vulcan Ambassador." We do not know who he was ambassador to. Since we know from "Zero Hour" that Vulcan is one of the founding Federation Members, I tend to interpret that as being Sarek's nickname -- he's no doubt one of many Federation Ambassadors, but he's become the most famous and most accomplished because of his Vulcan temperment, so he's known as "the Vulcan Ambassador." Just like Reagan was called "the Great Communicator" because of his training as an actor, or how Margaret Thatcher was called "the Irony Lady."
But that's just me.
The presence of the Klingon Ambassador to the UFP made sense, since the Federation President was trying to negotiate with them. The presence of the Romulan Ambassador to the UFP made sense for part of that scene, since President Ra-ghoratreii no doubt wanted the Romulan government's take on things later on. The continued presence of the Romulan Ambassador in the Presidential Office during the Starfleet briefing on a plan to invade Klingon space did NOT make sense, because Starfleet would never want to leak that to a hostile foreign government.
In any event, there were also non-ambassadors and other aides present. Sarek's being there could just as easily have indicated that the President was seeking his counsel, just as the US President might today seek the counsel of a US Ambassador.
To put it another way: If President Bush were to call in David Wilkins, the United States Ambassador to Canada, to advise him on US-Canadian relations, this does not mean that Ambassador Wilkins is functioning as the Ambassador of the State of South Carolina to the United States, even though he's from South Carolina. So it's no more reasonable to assume that Sarek was representing Vulcan in advising President Ra-ghoratreii.
Yes. And embassies between the Federation and its Member States, and between the Member States, would be as defunct as the US Embassy to Texas, or as a Kentucky Embassy to Colorado.
But apparently the Federation does. Else why insist on this in the case of Bajor?
The creation of local militia forces in the US Federal setup was with the explicit intention of allowing the States to wage separatist war if they didn't like something the Feds did, now wasn't it? Not all Federal setups would choose to cater for civil war. "If the member world doesn't accept a defense force loyal to the central government, it doesn't get a defense force at all" sounds like an effective system for maintaining internal as well as external security and stability...
OTOH, if Romulus were a friendly foreign government, and a key ally in the planned war with the Klingon Empire, then having their representative present in a war council would make good sense.
Sure, the Feds would want to keep a few secrets. But we might just as well say that Romulan cloaks were a key ingredient in Colonel West's plan, and in the associated plan of Admirals Cartwright and "Bill" to invade and defeat the Klingon Empire. The Romulan Ambassador would then have the perfect excuse for being present, as a necessary gesture of utmost trust.
That would be the simple and sensible approach. Then again, there's this bit from DS9 "The Sound of Her Voice":
What is that UFP Embassy doing on Andor, a well-established member world?
I can see the use for UFP "outlets" on member worlds, for purposes of interacting with the Federal government. But to call them Embassies seems to suggest a system different from the US Federal setup - and might give new meaning to the occasions where we hear member world Ambassadors acting on what seem like internal UFP affairs (the fact-finding mission in "Journey to Babel", Sarek's counsel to various UFP leaders).
Timo Saloniemi
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Member worlds will no doubt have system defence ships which all share the same Federation design, Starships are probably utilised for more strategic purposes, its no good having a Federation fleet protecting the Trill homeworld and Earth only having system defence ships when its blatantly obvious the Dominion wants to attack Earth most of all and the Borg always go direct for Earth.
One could see Star Trek as the ultimate battleship playground. Back in the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, battleships would be the only "strategic weapon" worth mentioning, and the only surefire defense against them would be another fleet of battleships. Yet the battleships could also be torn to shreds by torpedo boats and mines - defenses that could not really move from place to place or hunt down battleships. The question facing the defender was a tricky one: does he buy battleships, which are hugely expensive and can't be everywhere at once - or does he buy local defenses, which as such aren't expensive but which have to be everywhere and thus have to be bought in great numbers?
Starfleet might swear in the name of the battleship approach, like the British and Germans did. Cardassians in turn seem to like local defenses more, French style. The local approach requires the player to trust the locals, which may be tricky for benevolent, laid-back Federations and dictatorial Unions alike. It also requires the player to exploit the locals for building and operating the defenses, which may pose challenges, too. Perhaps the Feds have learned the hard way never to give guns to their lesser members, lest those become too uppity, or too lax, or just plain shoot themselves in the foot?
Just as the Prime Directive apparently was adopted out of dire historical need (the Klingon first contact gone horribly wrong, as Picard says), the decision to disband or absorb member military forces might stem from valid precedent. It need not make sense to us today - any more than (just as an example) the US actively promoting torture would have made sense in the 1980s.
Timo Saloniemi
Starfleet might swear in the name of the battleship approach, like the British and Germans did. Cardassians in turn seem to like local defenses more, French style. The local approach requires the player to trust the locals, which may be tricky for benevolent, laid-back Federations and dictatorial Unions alike. It also requires the player to exploit the locals for building and operating the defenses, which may pose challenges, too. Perhaps the Feds have learned the hard way never to give guns to their lesser members, lest those become too uppity, or too lax, or just plain shoot themselves in the foot?
Just as the Prime Directive apparently was adopted out of dire historical need (the Klingon first contact gone horribly wrong, as Picard says), the decision to disband or absorb member military forces might stem from valid precedent. It need not make sense to us today - any more than (just as an example) the US actively promoting torture would have made sense in the 1980s.
Timo Saloniemi
Considering how vague that line was, I'm not convinced that the only possible interpretation of it was that the Bajoran Militia ceased to exist or automatically only became part of Starfleet. It could just as easily have referred to the operational issues of integrating it into the Starfleet heirarchy when the Militia is called into Federation service (such as when a state National Guard is called into federal service).
That's part of it. Part of it is just to ensure that the state retain a certain amount of authority. It's also there because, in the case of big emergencies or riots or natural disasters, it's unrealistic to expect the US Army to be able to get there and more realistic for a local force to get there. The National Guard is also there to help reinforce the regular federal armed forces in times of emergency, whilst the State Defense Forces remain under the exclusive jurisdiction of the state governments. State Defense Forces remain important because, in theory, they can provide for the national defense even if the vast majority of all the state National Guard troops are deployed overseas in federal service.
(I for one rest easy at night knowing that even if the entire Ohio National Guard were to be deployed in Iraq, the Ohio Naval Militia is standing guard to defend me from the sinister Royal Canadian Navy across Lake Erie...
)But a federal setup that's concerned with maintaining the rights of its citizens would create a setup that would allow its constituent polities to defend themselves if the federal government began to behave tyrannically -- say, if something like Leyton's coup were to happen. And, as I noted above, it is more practical to have local forces to deal with local problems, and allows for the retention of domestic defense if the entirety of the federal service must be deployed beyond the borders.
Sounds to me like a good way to create tension and political instability.
Except that there's never been any indication that the Romulans were a friendly government at the time -- and, plus, where are the Romulan military aides, if that's the case, to accompany the Ambassador?
It was just a bad creative decision on the director's part that we should ignore.
Hmm. You're right, that's odd. Normally, I'd be in favor of disregarding that, but then it occurs to me that there's a reference to a Federation Embassy on Betazed.
Three possibilities present themselves to me, then:
1) The Federation Embassies on Andor and Betazed are historical sites that are no more currently functioning diplomatic missions than, say, Independence Hall is still the meeting place of the US Congress. Starfleet still staffs people there for security and other purposes.
2) The Federation Embassies on Andor and Betazed are actually there to represent the Federation to foreign states that happen to be near Andor and Betazed but who do not themselves have permanent diplomatic missions from the Federation on their own soil.
3) The Federation maintains "embassies" on its Member States, and the definition of "embassy" has expanded to include governmental institutions that seek to promote cooperation and integration within the larger Federation government across the void of space. This may be similar to the offices that many US states have opened in the US Capital and abroad that seek to promote the interests of those individual states -- and federal offices located within US states that seek to promote the US federal government.
It's possible. But I think we've seen the Federation behaving like far too much of an integrated superstate in its own right to say that calling such outlets "Embassies" is an accurate use of terminology under the current definition of an embassy.
3) The Federation maintains "embassies" on its Member States, and the definition of "embassy" has expanded to include governmental institutions that seek to promote cooperation and integration within the larger Federation government across the void of space. This may be similar to the offices that many US states have opened in the US Capital and abroad that seek to promote the interests of those individual states -- and federal offices located within US states that seek to promote the US federal government.
This one sound the more plausible.
This one sound the more plausible.
Truly, I am not nitpiking, the federal offices located within the borders of the individual states do federal work. There's a huge one in my city. Substitute data pads for paperwork and subspace communications for faxes and you begin to get the enormity (is that a word?) keeping an organization like the UFP together.
Since Starfleet is more or less a military orginization designed to protect the United Federation of Planets, I'm sure each member world keeps their own "police force" of ships to deal with matters to trivial for Starfleet to get involved in.
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