Starfleet is a Space Navy (military fleet)

Good to know that Starfleet is not an aggressive millitary and so will not fight a war in which millions will die. It is a peace loving, life affirming organisation of exploration..........
Unless you are a pre-warp species (in the TNG era) whose world is about to:-
1) Blow up
2) Be hit by a giant planet killer asteroid
3) Enter a thousand years of crushing ice age
Choose one!!

 

Only to the extent that law enforcement and military capability are usually kept separate because of the risk of the abuse of power.

But Starfleet, as an organization, is structurally (and in some ways, pathologically) immune to that kind of problem. Their non-interference directive strictly limits the situations in which they can actually use their military or law enforcement powers, and their non-military nature means their participation in defense is automatically limited. The more hawkish and militaristic political figures in the Federation would have a difficult time getting Starfleet to go along with an aggressive foreign policy, and being an exploration service would have a way of filtering officers with jingoistic tendencies out of the higher command structure.

Indeed, the fastest way to reach the Admiralty in Starfleet is to be one hell of a good explorer, and if you go off the rails and try to start a war, your subordinates will probably stun you and handcuff you to a folding chair (which Admirals Leyton, Cartwright and Marcus found out the hard way).

 

I tend to think that Starfleet's jurisdiction is somewhat limited to deep space, and that it must seek special dispensation to conduct law enforcement activities on actual Federation member worlds. This is consistent with DS9 "Homefront" wherein Admiral Leyton and Captain Sisko must seek authorization from the Federation President to conduct security procedures on Federation citizens living on Earth.

 

^ Yeah, normally law enforcement is the job of the Federation Security Agency (the guy in the bar who takes McCoy into custody in ST III).

And of course there was the cop on the hover-bike in ST09. He wasn't Starfleet.

 

I forgot about those guys. I also just now realized that Starfleet had to fake a planetwide emergency plus the prospect of an immanent Dominion invasion just to get permission to deploy Starfleet officers to the streets of Earth. A global power outage all by itself wouldn't have been enough, Leyton also had to make it look like the Dominion were coming through the wormhole in secret in order to really sell the con. That tells me that operating as Earth's first line of defense in the way they describe it isn't actually something Starfleet is normally supposed to do; they had to leapfrog at least two other organizations in order to gain that status in a State of Emergency.

And I mentioned upthread, the responsibility of having to occupy Cardassia plus the post-war issues with the Dominion, I'm pretty sure Starfleet will end up either going full military after DS9 (or at least bear a much closer resemblance to TUC) or will the Federation will bring MACO back. Or some combination of the two; that's basically my headcanon when I play Star Trek Online

 

FWIW, there was going to be a scene in Homefront/Paradise Lost which involved local Earth forces being "federalized" by Jaresh-Inyo to help deal with the crisis. But it got cut for time.

 

What is your handle?

Mine is @GabyBee

 

I think MAÇO is a non Starfleet organisation in STO. That's why we paid for their tech.

 

So this thread has gone on for 40 pages, and something that hasn't been brought up yet, and in fact is rarely brought up in these discussions in general. That's the fact that there is a civilian space exploration agency in the Federation, or at least in the 24th century. I'm talking about people we see in such episodes as Who Watches the Watchers, Devil's Due, A Matter of Time, Realm of Fear. The guys we see wearing the gray jumpsuits throughout TNG are clearly non-Starfleet, are unarmed, but conduct exploration on planets, even make contact with aliens, or observe the pre-warp ones. They usually lack rank structure, most of the ones use either Doctor or Professor for their titles. True, one of them was a Lieutenant, but as pointed out earlier active duty military officers are part of NASA, so maybe this guy was a Starfleet officer on detached duty. Actually, considering in this episode (Realm of Fear) they were using a Starfleet science ship, and he was the chief engineer, so likely when Starfleet loaned them the ship, a Starfleet engineer was assigned due to his familiarity with it

But anyway, there you have it, a Federation agency dedicated to exploration that truly is non-military in a very real and literal sense. And these guys don't seem to have any responsibilities outside of exploration, research or other science related duties. These guys are more of a 24th century NASA equivalent than Starfleet. Starfleet after all also has defense obligations, as well as general policing of Federation space, patrolling the borders, and oh yeah, fighting wars. Considering there is a civilian agency that conducts space exploration in a manner not remotely military at all, does this not lend credence to the idea Starfleet is indeed military?

 

As I mentioned earlier, what needs to happen is some sort of compromise on a term for what to call Starfleet that allows for Picard, Scotty, et al. statements to remain correct, yet also acknowledge that Starfleet's duty to defense of the Federation is one of its intended purposes - whether primary or secondary.

And as has been suggested already, I am in support of labeling Starfleet as a Federation agency whose purview covers exploration, diplomacy, colonization, scientific research, medical advances, and, yes, defense.

 

Still sounds like a military to me. Let's just call a spade a spade and be done with it. Who cares if Picard said that spade isn't a spade?

 

Why is it so important that it be called a military?

 

Because when you get down to it the only thing about it that makes it non-military is the fact that five people said it isn't. Like I said earlier, just call a spade a spade and ignore those who say it isn't a spade.

 

Best of my knowledge the police don't have anything like a courts martial, they stand trial in civilian courts.

New question, do any present day paramilitaries have courts martial?

 

Nope, a court martial is strictly a military thing. By the military, for the military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court-martial

 

Star Trek is 300 years in the future. Starfleet has no obligation to fit any 21st century definition.

 

Except for the fact that Star Trek is made for audiences in the 20th and 21st centuries and it generally helps if they have a common point of reference they can relate the matter to. Why else would Starfleet be modeled so closely after a military organization if it were not indeed meant to be one?

 

As i said. They aren't trying to reinvent the wheel.