Well it's not like the Jem'Hadar could return to their civilian jobs.
Besides, completely disarming the Dominion would leave them defenseless against revolting members of their Empire seeking revenge, rogue Jem'Hadar and such. How could they ever agree to such terms?
The founders would be back where they started, surrounded by solid enemies, a hunted species.
They could become a Federation protectorate. Heck, they could easily move the entire Link to the Alpha Quadrant, set up a quarantine ala Talos IV, given that they moved the Founder homeworld in a remarkably short time once already...
As for the Jem'Hadar and Vorta, the same could, if less readily, be done for them, shielding them from retaliation from a truly liberated Gamma Quadrant. Additionally, they don't have sex, and it sometimes appears that they have no great drive to perpetuate their artificial species--or indeed very many qualities at all that don't relate to serving the Founders--the Jem'Hadar and Vorta refugees might be a truly temporary problem.
Good ethical question: if the trillions of lives ruled over by the Dominion weren't freed when it was within the Federation's power to free them, is the Federation then responsible for their continued slavery?
Timo said:
But the Alphans had lost that leverage over the Dominion already: Odo had agreed to cure the Link. All the Feds could do to blackmail the Dominion now would be to imprison or kill Odo, who certainly wasn't at Starfleet's beck and call.
It seems unlikely that Sisko (pre-Space Jesus) would have imprisoned or killed Odo, but I surely wouldn't put it beyond Ross, who would have a professional and humanitarian interest in seeing the Dominion collapse. Nor Martok, who would have a personal interest in seeing the end of the Dominion (if not the end of their ruling species entirely!). Nor the Romulans, who would arguably have a political interest in destroying the Dominion. All of these decisionmakers' votes count for more than Sisko's, and a damn sight more than Odo's.
The Dominion would seem to hold all the aces no matter how things went - only excluding the option of letting the Link die. They could always agree to a surrender and withdrawal, then receive the cure, and then strike again with overwhelming force to avenge the dastardly blackmail.
Not if the Dominion's military is dismantled, which is a process that would have to be overseen by AQ observers capable of destroying Odo, Salome, and the cure in the event that things go awry. This shouldn't take too awfully long, weeks at most, at least if we're going the fast way, and self-destructing the ships.
Really, appeasing them by never attempting any blackmail would seem like the better way to proceed, as this might quell their genocidal urges for the time being, rather than reinforce them.
Appeasing them only permits them to reconsolidate their control over their stretch of GQ and rearm. If we learned anything from Versailles, peace must either be amicable or neutralizing. Versailles was neither, and an amicable peace with the Founders seems... perhaps unlikely. While I'm sure the fact that humanoids found a cure for their ailment will weigh in our favor during the congress of the renewed Great Link, I doubt they'll forget that humanoids were the ones who tried to destroy their entire species (before the war had even begun!) in the first place.
Still, if The Sisko really controlled the wormhole, Dominion revenge would be delayed by at least 70 years or so - so it might be worth the risks to force them to withdraw to Gamma initially. But in no case would there be a chance of continuing Gamma exploration and exploitation, then.
This is true. The Prophets might just decide that the Federation and Dominion should be permanently separated from each other, at least to the best of their abilities. Even so, it's important to remember that the Prophets' power over temporal affairs more or less ends at the mouth of the wormhole. If the Feds/Klings/Roms were adamant that they would not release Odo and Salome without permission to take a fleet through to oversee the disarmament and to keep the peace (and you take the fleet through
first, in the unlikely case that the Prophets are lying should they agree, and disappear your starships as they are wont to do!), The Sisko would be put in the position of convincing his Space Mom and Space Aunts and Uncles to permit the adversarial and linear AQ Alliance peacekeepers. The Prophets probably don't really care either way, but might be swayed by the notion that Bajor would be safer with the Dominion gone. The Founders would be retarded to try to stop the dissolution of their empire, since their existence literally depends on it. The Jem'Hadar and Vorta on the GQ side, for their part, would be extremely disloyal to their gods to do anything but destroy their fleet and march themselves onto the ark ships for resettlement.
At the end of the day, however, while I admit that it's a somewhat ethically suspect position, leveraging the possible destruction of the entire Great Link for the freedom of trillions seems morally correct, to me. Besides, even in the event of refusal, the
species survives, in Odo and Salome, and again it's debateable whether the Great Link counts as more than a single entity, and even if it isn't, whether it is not collectively responsible anyway.
