Romulan Mischief

[Photon]

Starfleet seems to let serious Romulan transgressions go.

1) Romulans attempted to blow up DS9 (successfully in another timeline)...in Visionary
2) Romulans attempted to shut down the wormhole, see above
3) Romulan Tal Shiar tried to steal the Prometheus on SD 51462 and got into a shooting battle w/2 Defiant classes and 1 Akira, while negotiating a non-aggression pact w/the Dominion (prior to SD: 51721.3
4-175) Romulan transgressions in TNG.

I just don't get letting bullies bully when there's a chance to bloody their noses and make them stop.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Because they don't want to go to war or close the door on diplomacy.

Remember what Romulan tactics were in TNG. They wanted to goad the Federation into making a hostile move so they'd have a pretense to start a war with the galaxy on their side. The Romulans want a bloody nose, that way they can draw their guns.

Yeah the Treaty of Algernon was dumb.

 

[Photon]

Because they don't want to go to war or close the door on diplomacy.

Remember what Romulan tactics were in TNG. They wanted to goad the Federation into making a hostile move so they'd have a pretense to start a war with the galaxy on their side. The Romulans want a bloody nose, that way they can draw their guns.

Yeah the Treaty of Algernon was dumb.

 

[Photon]

I agree that's the reason and yeah, Feds do horrible treaties.

 

[Spot261]

Except we don't really know anything about the treaty except the stipulation about cloaks, we don't know what the federation got in return, what the circumstances were, who was the aggrieved party was or what specifically prompted that clause.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Of course events of Discovery retroactively make the Treaty of Algernon seem even dumber.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

There are lots of reasons to agree not to develop cloaks.
The Romulans might have given up strategically important worlds, maybe Algeron itself.
Or it was tied to a disarment on the Romulan side, like Subsprachen weapons or those nasty Plasma torpedo tech.
And since the Federation successfully stole a Romulan cloak they were able to develop countermeasures not only against Romulans but Klingons as well, since they traded the cloaking techs against ships.
It gave the Feds an edge back.

 

[Timo]

And of course, "giving up" on developing invisibility is not that big a New Year's promise... Getting caught on reneging on that one would be pretty unlikely, that is, easily denied.

Indeed, if one can make the enemy believe one does not have invisible ships, then one is much better off in every respect. One can then send one's invisible ships against the enemy with less risk - or one can skip the tedious chore of building invisible ships and have the suspicious enemy still worry himself to an early grave about one's great fleet of invisible ships one doesn't admit to having, ships the enemy cannot detect no matter how hard they try...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I really wish the Romulans got more focus. It's a shame they never kept Sub-Commander T'Rul around as a recurring character so that we could start to get some insight onto their culture, it may also have tempered all the Klingon episodes we got--plus who wouldn't want to see T'Rul and Worf go toe-to-toe?

 

[tomswift2002]

It’s to bad that we never got to see Sela on DS9.

 

[TrickyDickie]

Well, somebody was up to some Romulan Mischief with these bagels....

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Starfleet seems to let serious Romulan transgressions go.

1) Romulans attempted to blow up DS9 (successfully in another timeline)...in Visionary
2) Romulans attempted to shut down the wormhole, see above
3) Romulan Tal Shiar tried to steal the Prometheus on SD 51462 and got into a shooting battle w/2 Defiant classes and 1 Akira, while negotiating a non-aggression pact w/the Dominion (prior to SD: 51721.3
4-175) Romulan transgressions in TNG.

I just don't get letting bullies bully when there's a chance to bloody their noses and make them stop.

Look at the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 30s and that was overlooked in the name of peace. In that instance it didn't work, in this one it did.

 

[DarKush]

Of that list, I thought about the Romulans trying to take the Bajoran moon as well. Not sure if that would fall under the purview of a Starfleet issue since the Bajorans had signed that nonaggression pact with the Dominion.

I was thinking that there should've been more of a fallout from the attack on Prometheus. But I guess the prerogatives of winning the Dominion War was more important with the Federation wanting the Romulans to join them.

One thing that I always wondered about was why did the Romulans allow the Defiant to keep the cloaking device, without T'Rul or another Romulan present, or not raise any fuss about them using the cloaking device in the Alpha Quadrant? I also wonder why Starfleet just didn't get a cloaking device from the Klingons in the first place?

 

[trekfan39]

To me it didn't really make a lot of sense to have her at DS9 just for the cloaking device, I mean what is she going to do the rest of the time? I always just thought she was there to make sure they knew how to work it and that it would work fine on the Defiant and maybe the Romulans wanted to send someone on that mission because they knew for sure they were going to make contact with the Dominion. As soon as she went home and reported that they killed her in the simulation the Romulans probably figured they better just let the Feds take all the risks or maybe that's when they decided to blow up DS9 so they wouldn't station someone there if they were planning an attack.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

3) Romulan Tal Shiar tried to steal the Prometheus on SD 51462 and got into a shooting battle w/2 Defiant classes and 1 Akira, while negotiating a non-aggression pact w/the Dominion (prior to SD: 51721.3

I would argue that the operation approved of in Pale Moonlight is a response to this incident. We simply aren't privy to the internal discussions that went on in SF, only to Sisko's internal dialogue.

 

[kkt]

To me it didn't really make a lot of sense to have her at DS9 just for the cloaking device, I mean what is she going to do the rest of the time? I always just thought she was there to make sure they knew how to work it and that it would work fine on the Defiant and maybe the Romulans wanted to send someone on that mission because they knew for sure they were going to make contact with the Dominion. As soon as she went home and reported that they killed her in the simulation the Romulans probably figured they better just let the Feds take all the risks or maybe that's when they decided to blow up DS9 so they wouldn't station someone there if they were planning an attack.

I thought she was there to make sure it was working, but more importantly to make sure Starfleet engineers weren't learning any more than absolutely necessary about how it works, and weren't taking it apart so they could replicate it.

Neither explanation really explains why they didn't need her anymore, though.

 

[Timo]

Well, the secrets she was expected to keep would have been compromised already with the other enemy capturing the ship. Locking the barn doors after the horse has been eaten and all that.

Although T'Rul could always have been dispatched purely to spy on the initial mission into Gamma, and the Romulans then decided it was better to send agents to spy directly on the Dominion rather than on the Feds spying on the Dominion...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

1) Romulans attempted to blow up DS9 (successfully in another timeline)...in Visionary
2) Romulans attempted to shut down the wormhole, see above

Since they're the same incident, I grouped them together.

In this case, the Romulans were trying to close off the only route than an enemy of the entire Alpha Quadrant could use to enter their space, during a time of war. I'm sure their logic was that the ends justified the means, and that during wartime, the station's destruction would be classified under "friendly fire" and not meant to be an act of war against the Federation.

3) Romulan Tal Shiar tried to steal the Prometheus on SD 51462 and got into a shooting battle w/2 Defiant classes and 1 Akira, while negotiating a non-aggression pact w/the Dominion (prior to SD: 51721.34-175) Romulan transgressions in TNG.

That was a Tal Shiar operation, not sanctioned by the Romulan government. And since most of the Tal Shiar were wiped out prior during the ill-fated attack on the Founder's homeworld, I'm sure the Romulan gov't denied all involvement since it was probably the work of just a few individuals working on their own.

 

[TheQman]

Starfleet seems to let serious Romulan transgressions go.

1) Romulans attempted to blow up DS9 (successfully in another timeline)...in Visionary
2) Romulans attempted to shut down the wormhole, see above
3) Romulan Tal Shiar tried to steal the Prometheus on SD 51462 and got into a shooting battle w/2 Defiant classes and 1 Akira, while negotiating a non-aggression pact w/the Dominion (prior to SD: 51721.3
4-175) Romulan transgressions in TNG.

I just don't get letting bullies bully when there's a chance to bloody their noses and make them stop.

I feel that the Federation is similar in many ways to other nations that have been through 'cold wars' throughout history. Because of the nearly universal mutually assured destruction that is possible during these cold wars, various aggressive and/or possible sabotaging events go unpunished. It is no different with the Federation (if not allied) and the Romulan Star Empire. They would likely have ended up in a stalemate with much death on both sides. So, they likely felt it was best to avoid war over 'relatively minor' infractions. Obviously, not canonical, but my two cents.

 

[kkt]

Since they're the same incident, I grouped them together.

In this case, the Romulans were trying to close off the only route than an enemy of the entire Alpha Quadrant could use to enter their space, during a time of war. I'm sure their logic was that the ends justified the means, and that during wartime, the station's destruction would be classified under "friendly fire" and not meant to be an act of war against the Federation.



That was a Tal Shiar operation, not sanctioned by the Romulan government. And since most of the Tal Shiar were wiped out prior during the ill-fated attack on the Founder's homeworld, I'm sure the Romulan gov't denied all involvement since it was probably the work of just a few individuals working on their own.

I don't think the Dominion would be impressed with that argument. Kill 'em all, let whatever the Romulans use for a god sort it out.