Tallguy said:
Have you ever noticed that no force opposing the Federation ever incurred a declaration of war for treaty violations? Not even a teeny bit? Kill people, build bases inside Fed space, it's alllll good.
Except the time the Klingons did get a war. Of course, that one was provoked by the Federation.
Still, while admitting things got a bit goofy in the 24th century, in the 23rd century we don't have much clear-cut provocation: the Romulans attack Federation outposts in ``Balance of Terror'', and the attacking ship is destroyed for it, and evidently neither side really wants a war right then. The Federation provokes acts of war in ``The Deadly Years'', ``The Enterprise Incident'', and ``The Way to Eden'' but is forgiven the first two times and apparently not noticed the third.
The Gorn attack a Federation outpost in ``The Arena'', although it turns out that's also a matter of self-defense; likely the sensible people on both sides would want things kept calm once they know what they're fighting over.
In ``Friday's Child'' and ``A Private Little War'' Klingons are raising trouble among the native folks, but not apparently directly to the Federation. In ``The Trouble With Tribbles'' they do have a spy poison a grain shipment, but in a method that's probably fairly deniable (``Darvin? He must have gone insane!'') and under circumstances where fear of the Organians might keep things from expanding.
In ``Day of the Dove'', of course, the Enterprise destroys a Klingon cruiser without objective cause, and the Federation is just lucky the Klingons didn't respond more harshly to it.
``Journey to Babel'' sees an attack from Orion space pirates, but of course pirates are blasted hard to deal with.
In ``The Tholian Web'' the Tholians shoot first, but they also have a claim on the territory in which the Enterprise and the Defiant were.
The thing is that, unlike in the Civilization game, an attack isn't necessarily an act of war; it's only an act of war if both sides really want to have a war. There've been sadly many instances of people, sometimes allegedly responsible people, shooting at foreigners. Occasionally (as with most of the Anglo-American incidents) the leadership on both sides are horrified to learn of the incidents and try to settle them as quickly as possible. Sometimes (I'm thinking here of instances in the leadup to World War II where Japanese or German forces attacked United States ships it might (emphasize might) have been better had the United States taken the reason to go to war. It depends on the bigger circumstances.
We're in orbit around Gamma Hydra II...
