If an organization "acts like a military" they are a military.
So, was Cochrane's warp drive concept something special, or wasn't it ?
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The Revenue Cutter Service was a civilian law enforcement agency established under the Department of the Teasury to enforce tariffs, not an explicitly military one as the Coast Guard was when created through merging the former with the Life-Saving Service (also civilian) in 1915. The fact that it fell to them to engage in the Quasi-War (it was called that for a reason) with France resulted from them being the only extant and available force that could, not because it was their intended purpose, much as I would argue that it fell to Starfleet to represent Earth's interests beyond exploration in the 22nd century.
Existence without even a single ship on the open water until 24 May 1798 when U.S.S. Ganges, a converted merchantman, set sail. "Tiny" is a bit of an understatement.
Paramilitary forces have the structures of militaries and can act as or in conjunction with military forces in times of war under the laws of war as they stand today. This doesn't mean they are to be considered military forces when they aren't. And at what point after Starfleet's establishment and prior to the Dominion War in DS9 do we have evidence of either United Earth or the United Federation of Planets having been in a state of "total war" at all?
The closest I can think of is Sisko saying the prospect of a Jem'Hadar invasion of Earth would mean "the kind of war that Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation" in "Homefront"; however, it should be noted that this doesn't have to mean the last such war was at or immediately prior to the time of the UFP's founding in order to hold true. (And it seems unlikely that the Romulan War actually came to ground conflict, since otherwise it would be very difficult to imagine "no human, Romulan, or ally" ever seeing the other as Spock describes.) Even if the last total war for Earth were WWIII, Sisko's statement would still be accurate. And even if the Romulan conflict were a total war as well, this would still post-date the timeframe covered by ENT, outside of its final episode, that to which the bulk of my comments made in this thread applies.
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Thanks. In response, all I can ask/say is:
1. and 2. Could frigates and destroyers be built and used by a non-military organization, or at least the names be reused for other ships? Starfleet does have a lot of naval traditions built into it.
3. Not canonical.
Then why do we have statements in canon that Starfleet isn't a military? Also, is it possible to have non-military organizations fight in wars?
While I agree, it should be noted that what is reproduced in the book is from the "writer's bible" used as a guide for writers on TOS, so it did inform the fiction even if it never was made explicit on the show and can thus be readily disregarded if one so chooses.
So, in Star Trek, we have an organization that does the military's job (some of the time) despite the fact that it's stated to not be a military? And I thought the time travel episodes were weird.
You're right. It is weird the characters claim Starfleet isn't military.
Why not, exactly?
Quite so.
Yes, although they become considered military while they are doing so.
It's not that weird, really. It could be as simple as they are military when acting as one and not when they aren't, although it isn't necessarily that simple.
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I was actually making a joke of sorts.
The terms frigate and destroyer have only been used for military ships ever since the terms have begun to be used. I don't imagine that ever changing.
Have you tried imagining harder?
If a frigate is sold off by the navy and bought by someone else to defend his private island, is it no longer a frigate?
"Frigate" is a term that comes in and out of use over the last 500 or so years. Usually is it a lighter armed vessel used for patrolling or escorting, but there have also been times were it was the most powerful ships in the fleet. So the definition is fluid even within naval terms. Even today the term is a bit loose between different navies within the span of a lifetime.
If an organization is using sailing style naming conventions to a point, the Galaxy-class would be their Ship of the Line, or First Rates, while something much smaller would be a frigate. But in sailing days, a frigate usually was capable of operating independanty for long periods of time on cruises. They were later called cruisers, which doesn't help in the naming convention sense at all, as then the old Constitution-class cruisers of Starfleet have distanct cousins in the sailing frigate USS Constitition.
My guess is that someone from the 24th century would say we are thinking in too narrow terms to understand why Starfleet is not a military. Similarly how Earth does not use currency being beyond our understanding.
If an organization is using sailing style naming conventions to a point, the Galaxy-class would be their Ship of the Line, or First Rates, while something much smaller would be a frigate. But in sailing days, a frigate usually was capable of operating independanty for long periods of time on cruises. They were later called cruisers, which doesn't help in the naming convention sense at all, as then the old Constitution-class cruisers of Starfleet have distanct cousins in the sailing frigate USS Constitition.
My guess is that someone from the 24th century would say we are thinking in too narrow terms to understand why Starfleet is not a military. Similarly how Earth does not use currency being beyond our understanding.
Again, you still haven't actually presented a case as to why starfleet wouldn't be considered a military, merely danced around it by discussing the role of paramilitary organisations in modern society and the history of the US navy.
The fact remains these are all strawman arguments as you haven't even actually addressed the question of why you don't think of starfleet as a military organisation. It's safe to say most of us will understand what a paramilitary is, but starfleet don't fill that role. They fill the role of a military, not the role of a supporting paramilitary. You have given an extremely strong case against the necessity of classing starfleet as a military but pretty much none against actually doing so.
The fact that countries have historically existed without a formal navy is meaningless, the UFP has one, starfleet. They are the primary, if not sole, warfighting body available to the UFP and even under conditions of prolonged existential war they continue to fulfill that role. Incidentally whether ground fighting occurs or not is irrelevent to whether a war is considered "total" in any time period. "Total war" requires there to be no restrictions on the manner in which the war is fought, not necessarily that every possible means was actually used. There's a strong case for arguing the Dominoin War crossed that boundary given the dropping or moral and diplomatic constraints throughout the conflict. Stealthed anti personnel weapons and concealed mines - yup. Subspace weapons - pretty sure asking the prophets for help with the Dominion reinforcements counts. Deliberate deception in diplomacy to commit a foreign power and their population - yup. Willingness from at least part of the command structure to commit genocide - yup.
So, why are starfleet not a military? Not "why don't they have to be one" or "does a nation necessarily have to have a military" or "can organisations exist with a military structure without being one" but "why aren't they one?"
Yes we have onscreen quotes saying they are not one, we have plenty saying they are. Individual characters opinions may well vary but it's clear that on balance there is far from a consensus. Not once in your (admittedly well structured and subtly evasive) posts have you actually given a straight answer.
That is itself a strawman. I am not saying "I don't think Starfleet is or has ever been a military organization, ever, full stop" to begin with, and never have been. Further, the question I am addressing is more why certain characters within the fiction don't think of it as a military organization, which is not necessarily the same thing as what my own views are, although I think the latter need to be reasonably based upon and account for what is presented within the fiction, and not contradict it without sufficient justification, in order to be valid.
Thank you, I appreciate your saying so, and I do not mean that in a sarcastic, snarky, or dismissive way.
Sadly, I can only think from this that you have not read my posts in this thread carefully enough, because I have never disputed that. I have been almost exclusively focusing on the historical period that precedes the UFP's existence in my comments, and thought I had repeatedly made that very clear. What you describe is undeniably the position in which Starfleet ends up by the 2370s. But I have been discussing where it started out in the 2130s, the general thrust of my argument being that it was not originally envisioned as being such, and I have endeavored to support this both through examples from within the fiction and from actual history.
Again, you have deeply misunderstood what I have said. The Dominion War was fairly evidently a total war, meaning one in which most or all of a society's resources and activities are dedicated in one way or another to the war effort, one whose direct effects permeate and pervade far beyond the immediate arena of fighting. I merely pointed out that it's the only one we actually have evidence of the Federation ever being involved in, and moreover that such has been more or less outright stated. They have had other wars and conflicts before—with the Klingons, the Cardassians, and the Tzenkethi, to name a few—but never one of this scale and intensity, insofar as has been described to us.
I should have thought it quite obvious from the point at which this thread branched off into this area of discussion—and apologies to @at Quark's if he or she feels it has been hijacked; I did try a couple of times to redirect it back to Cochrane—that the onscreen quotes you mention form the initial basis of the position. Multiple characters say that Starfleet is not military and go unchallenged (even in contexts where one might well expect a challenge to be presented, especially if we were supposed to believe, dramatically speaking, that a character was in factual error). Yet other evidence points to the contrary, at least insofar as the post-UFP era is concerned. Generally, I have sought to resolve this apparent inconsistency through creative interpretation of all the available information, and the more I've thought and written about it, the less inconsistent it actually appears to me.
We are all interpreting the internal "reality" of a speculative fiction here (which as @The Wormhole has pointed out represents the work of many different authors with differing views and thus exhibits some inconsistencies). Earlier you said that doing this through "presupposing that the language has changed to support one's notions about that future is not ideal" in your opinion. It's a fair enough opinion, I suppose, although it is patently obvious that such has happened within the fiction, not to mention in real life. To provide a mere few examples out of many possible, compare the use of the terms "torpedo" and "shore leave" and "money" in Trek against their use today. Without even needing to bring anything from outside the fiction into it, look at how the same detachment of personnel goes from being called a "landing party" in Kirk's time to being called an "away team" in Picard's. That language changes over time is a given, both without and within the fiction.
In my view, it is even less ideal to presuppose that "facts" which are cited by characters who from a dramatic standpoint are designed and intended to be seen as trustworthy authorities by the audience are simply wrong in what they say. Is it possible that this could be the case on occasion? Sure, they aren't portrayed as infallible. Yet generally speaking, when we as an audience are supposed to doubt a character's words or believe they are making a mistake, particularly if that character has been set up as one in which we and fellow characters place a substantial degree of deserved trust, this will be deliberately signposted, especially in the kind of "morality play" stories that are Trek's standard fare.
So, for my part, I am willing to go a certain distance in interpreting Picard's statements in "The Measure Of A Man" and "Peak Performance" as referring to his pure ideal of what Starfleet was intended to be at its inception, but I can not believe he arrived at that view without any factual basis. While a proponent of diplomacy who prefers to see himself as an explorer more than a warrior, Picard is not portrayed as an extreme pacifist who abhors the mere mention of the word "military" so much that he would fall into such blatant denial. He is captain of one of Starfleet's most powerful ships with a distinguished service record including (defensive) combat in which he himself devised a novel tactical maneuver, and with a proud family lineage that includes military men. (The one who shamefully participated in brutal slaughter of Native Americans mentioned in "Journey's End" was unknown to him before that point.) He also has an interest in history, being an avid student of archaeology. It is not as if he knows not of what he speaks.
I have argued that what is depicted on ENT, both in general and through the specific comments of other characters such as Admiral Forrest and Captain Hernandez, provides that factual basis for Picard's comments. It all fits together, more or less, in my eyes. Starfleet was not originally founded as an intendedly military force, but through necessity and convenience became one over time. I think there is plenty of onscreen evidence to support this view, and I don't think it is contradicted by much if any onscreen evidence. That's where I stand at this juncture. If others can provide evidence I have overlooked, and/or if future canonical Trek stories provide further evidence that conflicts with this view, I will re-evaluate my position and see if I arrive at a different conclusion.
(Whatever conclusion I arrive at, it won't be through willfully ignoring or dismissing out of hand onscreen datapoints merely because at first blush they appear to contradict others or go against what my personally preferred dramatic depiction would be.)
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Sure, but they were starting from scratch on the most high-tech project possible at that time, so it wasn't going to happen overnight. But the navy had an organization, it had funding, it had materiel, it had personnel. In the same way corporations can be formed before their product hits the market.
I suppose so, but if it's beyond our understanding there's really no point in discussing it. But I will define my terms, and others can disagree with the definition or the conclusion. I'll define "a military" as a permanent national fighting force. "Permanent" in that it is not disbanded and reorganized as circumstances require, and "national" in that it is controlled at the highest possible level of government (Some people may think of the Federation as supranational, but for this I count it as national).
As far as I can tell, Starfleet fits that definition. It exists permanently in peacetime as well as war, it is controlled by and protects and serves the whole UFP, and when there is fighting to be done, it is the organization that does it. The fact that it does other things besides that does not change how it fits the definition, and if Starfleet is not a military organization, then neither was the British Royal Navy for all but a few years between 1815 and 1914.
As did the Military Assault Command at the time of ENT, despite no evident presence beyond Earth except where they were ultimately carried by Starfleet's ships.
How about to provoke and exercise our imaginations?
And what of Starfleet before the UFP, and indeed before ENT even?
In order to illustrate what I believe may be the relevance of the historical points I posted earlier, I'll draw some rough and loose analogies, with emphasis on rough and loose because the circumstances and elements involved significantly and obviously differ in numerous ways. I mean the specific characteristic that follows the comma in each to be the point of comparison here, not necessarily any other:
-Whatever Earth forces fought the Kzinti in the late 21st century were like the Continental Navy, disbanded thereafter.
-The Vulcan High Command was like the Royal Navy before the Revolution, defending Earth's interests (insofar as they coincided with their own) with their superior forces so we didn't need to worry about handling it all by ourselves (and so they didn't have to worry about us maintaining forces that could potentially be turned on them or otherwise disrupt their interests).
-Earth Starfleet was like the Revenue Cutter Service, set up for a purpose other than military defense and fighting (exploration, in SF's case) but forced into that role because there was no (well-equipped) Navy.
-The Military Assault Command was like the nascent U.S. Navy, ostensibly tasked with defense and fighting but ill-equipped to do so on its own.
-UFP Starfleet was like the Coast Guard, ultimately merging the above (and others) into a combined service.
Again, these are NOT perfect/complete/exact analogies by any stretch, and I'm sure they will provoke a lot of quibbling, some of it no doubt justified. I may regret having posted them at all. As the Doctor would say, "actually, it's not like that at all, but if it helps..."
(Please be nice and try to see my point through the awkwardness of my making it by such imperfect comparisons. For instance, I know very well that the UFP Starfleet could be seen as more like the fully-developed U.S. Navy in wartime or Hornblower's Royal Navy in peacetime than the Coast Guard, but the point I mean to convey is that it was—as a plausible theory rather than something totally confirmed—created by reorganizing multiple predecessor organizations into one.)
-Whatever Earth forces fought the Kzinti in the late 21st century were like the Continental Navy, disbanded thereafter.
-The Vulcan High Command was like the Royal Navy before the Revolution, defending Earth's interests (insofar as they coincided with their own) with their superior forces so we didn't need to worry about handling it all by ourselves (and so they didn't have to worry about us maintaining forces that could potentially be turned on them or otherwise disrupt their interests).
-Earth Starfleet was like the Revenue Cutter Service, set up for a purpose other than military defense and fighting (exploration, in SF's case) but forced into that role because there was no (well-equipped) Navy.
-The Military Assault Command was like the nascent U.S. Navy, ostensibly tasked with defense and fighting but ill-equipped to do so on its own.
-UFP Starfleet was like the Coast Guard, ultimately merging the above (and others) into a combined service.
Again, these are NOT perfect/complete/exact analogies by any stretch, and I'm sure they will provoke a lot of quibbling, some of it no doubt justified. I may regret having posted them at all. As the Doctor would say, "actually, it's not like that at all, but if it helps..."
(Please be nice and try to see my point through the awkwardness of my making it by such imperfect comparisons. For instance, I know very well that the UFP Starfleet could be seen as more like the fully-developed U.S. Navy in wartime or Hornblower's Royal Navy in peacetime than the Coast Guard, but the point I mean to convey is that it was—as a plausible theory rather than something totally confirmed—created by reorganizing multiple predecessor organizations into one.)
Ok, given a certain amount of misrepresentation so far I'll try to be more careful in how I read your case.
The first thing that springs to mind regarding how starfleets role may have been intended around the start of ENT is to look at how the NX 01 and her crew were initially equipped and organised. What I would find difficult to explain in such a model is the way in which she was clearly set up for combat as best they could at the time - especially given her premature launch. Yes she got substantial upgrades in short order but that was due to a combination of factors, notably the availability of said upgrades and the shifting goalposts of risk assessment.
At no point did I get the impression the characters were saying "Oh our role has changed" - at least not till the Xindi incident, it was more "Oh we are woefully ill equipped here but, look! Starfleet had finally approved these new technologies for deployment in the field"
The change was not a paradigm shift, more a re assessment of the requirements of the role.
Of course pre ENT there is a certain amount of guesswork but again the nature of the NX 01 may well be more telling than we think.
Bear in mind she was a HUGE project, many years in the making. Where in the 2300s starfleet may be able to virtually mass produce such ships the NX herself represented quite possibly the single biggest investment of man hours and resources that the human race had produced in years . Thus we can presume that the layout, technical specs, organisational structure and a hundred other little factors would have been planned well in advance, doubtless drawing on existing navies for inspiration if not direct input and funding.
Therefore we can use her actual portrayal as an insight into the intentions of those who had set starfleet up years before, tellingly she has all the hallmarks of being a military vessel. She may not have initially been a match for common threats but she represented the closest to such a match humanity could produce.
Had defence NOT been in the minds of those involved in structuring SF pre ENT we then have to make sense of how she came to be such a formidable (by earth standards) military vessel based on the funding, R+D and design processes those people put into place in the preceding decades.
Her very existence required a well organised, centralised effort to pour maximal resources into a project which strongly suggests a defence platform. Thus to my mind we are led to the conclusion that even had SF been less coherent before, as you suggest, the goal being pursued had always been something more closely resembling the SF we know in later years.
The first thing that springs to mind regarding how starfleets role may have been intended around the start of ENT is to look at how the NX 01 and her crew were initially equipped and organised. What I would find difficult to explain in such a model is the way in which she was clearly set up for combat as best they could at the time - especially given her premature launch. Yes she got substantial upgrades in short order but that was due to a combination of factors, notably the availability of said upgrades and the shifting goalposts of risk assessment.
At no point did I get the impression the characters were saying "Oh our role has changed" - at least not till the Xindi incident, it was more "Oh we are woefully ill equipped here but, look! Starfleet had finally approved these new technologies for deployment in the field"
The change was not a paradigm shift, more a re assessment of the requirements of the role.
Of course pre ENT there is a certain amount of guesswork but again the nature of the NX 01 may well be more telling than we think.
Bear in mind she was a HUGE project, many years in the making. Where in the 2300s starfleet may be able to virtually mass produce such ships the NX herself represented quite possibly the single biggest investment of man hours and resources that the human race had produced in years . Thus we can presume that the layout, technical specs, organisational structure and a hundred other little factors would have been planned well in advance, doubtless drawing on existing navies for inspiration if not direct input and funding.
Therefore we can use her actual portrayal as an insight into the intentions of those who had set starfleet up years before, tellingly she has all the hallmarks of being a military vessel. She may not have initially been a match for common threats but she represented the closest to such a match humanity could produce.
Had defence NOT been in the minds of those involved in structuring SF pre ENT we then have to make sense of how she came to be such a formidable (by earth standards) military vessel based on the funding, R+D and design processes those people put into place in the preceding decades.
Her very existence required a well organised, centralised effort to pour maximal resources into a project which strongly suggests a defence platform. Thus to my mind we are led to the conclusion that even had SF been less coherent before, as you suggest, the goal being pursued had always been something more closely resembling the SF we know in later years.
It looks as if NX-01 was given lots of "fitted for but not with" weaponry, with more than a dozen gunports but just two guns that we'd know of.
Should we take that as indicating that installing guns of any sort would be one of the lowest priorities? Even if the plasma peashooters seen in action in "Broken Bow" were qualitatively the best Starfleet could do (and we know they weren't - the death rays were already aboard, in spares form, and potentially had been standard gear for the Intrepid for quite some time already), why only install two? (Or, alternately, why only fire two if others were available?)
Perhaps it was an NX class / exploration starship thing to have lots of empty gunports for emergency upgunning in times of war. Or perhaps NX was built at a time when it was known for certain that starship weaponry would change radically, but not yet known what form this new weaponry would take, so modularity and malleability was introduced even though "proper" warships never had modular gunports (see Intrepid again) and instead carried a relatively low number of the best big guns of the day in fixed, nearly invisible mounts. The next ship class after NX could again default to that, the Time of Change having passed and the next one not coming up any time soon (Kirk's ship would still be one of those non-modular ones).
NX and Cochrane's Warp Five Engine could be seen as a repeating motif in starship building, or a one-off aberration, a dead end in doctrine or technology. What can be generally stated is that NX being so special makes it a poor example of what Starfleet might be about, where it's coming from and where it would be going.
Timo Saloniemi
Should we take that as indicating that installing guns of any sort would be one of the lowest priorities? Even if the plasma peashooters seen in action in "Broken Bow" were qualitatively the best Starfleet could do (and we know they weren't - the death rays were already aboard, in spares form, and potentially had been standard gear for the Intrepid for quite some time already), why only install two? (Or, alternately, why only fire two if others were available?)
Perhaps it was an NX class / exploration starship thing to have lots of empty gunports for emergency upgunning in times of war. Or perhaps NX was built at a time when it was known for certain that starship weaponry would change radically, but not yet known what form this new weaponry would take, so modularity and malleability was introduced even though "proper" warships never had modular gunports (see Intrepid again) and instead carried a relatively low number of the best big guns of the day in fixed, nearly invisible mounts. The next ship class after NX could again default to that, the Time of Change having passed and the next one not coming up any time soon (Kirk's ship would still be one of those non-modular ones).
NX and Cochrane's Warp Five Engine could be seen as a repeating motif in starship building, or a one-off aberration, a dead end in doctrine or technology. What can be generally stated is that NX being so special makes it a poor example of what Starfleet might be about, where it's coming from and where it would be going.
Timo Saloniemi
I don't mind. There's only so much that can be said about the 'official' topic of this thread, and it's in the nature of many lively discussions to veer offtopic sooner or later. It's just that I don't particularly care for the is-Starfleet-military-or-not subject myself.
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