The Design and Mission of the U.S.S. Titan Seems Inappropriate
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and by the way, even today's naval forces can do more than just blow shit up real pretty. after that hurricane hit Burma, the USN, RN and the French had ships ready to provide aid. the USN and the French had even been doing an exercise in providing humanitarian relief when it happened. shame the stupid ass Burmese dictators wouldn't let them help out.
and the RN was doing a disaster relief exercise earlier this year when Prince Wiliam was in the Caribbean assigned to an RN warship as part of his tour with them, a tour that also included law enforcement missions, interdicting drug smugglers...
and the RN was doing a disaster relief exercise earlier this year when Prince Wiliam was in the Caribbean assigned to an RN warship as part of his tour with them, a tour that also included law enforcement missions, interdicting drug smugglers...
No, he's expressing an opinion based on the interpretation of the word "military" that he prefers. As this thread has made obvious, different people can have different impressions of what the word "military" means, and some of those personal impressions differ from the dictionary definition of the word. You don't have to be delusional or lying to have a subjective or technically inaccurate impression of what a word means.
I see it more as rationalization than delusion or deception. How does a peaceful man who just wants to do science reconcile himself with the bizarre hybrid that is Starfleet, an organization that's at once scientific and military? How does he rationalize joining an armed force? By convincing himself that it isn't really a military, just an exploratory body that uses military forms. Plenty of people in this and similar threads have used the same rationalization, the same splitting of hairs, to argue that Starfleet isn't military. Are they delusional or lying? Of course not. They're just interpreting the terminology in a way that suits their preferences.
Before this thread, I might've agreed with them. I've never liked the military side of Starfleet, so I prefer to de-emphasize it and focus on the exploration. But Sci and Penta have ably argued that militaries have historically had many roles beyond combat, including exploration, diplomacy, administration, medical and humanitarian missions, and everything else we've seen Starfleet do. (Indeed, Starfleet was pretty much inspired by the British Navy of the Hornblower era.) So I've changed my position -- or at least my terminology -- in the light of compelling argument. Starfleet isn't primarily a combat organization; I stand by that, and I believe that it's what Picard actually meant when he said the words in your sig. But that doesn't mean it isn't a military by the technical definition.
That's one hell of a lot of parsing and back bending to change the obvious meaning of a simple declarative statement made by someone who was designed to be precise, accurate and honest to a fault. The simplest and therefore proper explanation is he knew what he was saying and said what he meant. No more, no less.
When we had this discussion before I sat down to begin cataloguing the number of times someone said what Starfleet was and wasn't. Then I realized how insane that was. It was also WAY too much work for something so silly. Just batting it around is more fun.
I have my one unequivocal line (only because I'm too lazy to dig for more) but there are none that say Starfleet is a military organization. Zero.
Starfleet is an organization whose purpose is exploration in a universe where alien species may try to kill or eat you just for showing up. It would be monumentally stupid for them not to arm themselves.
Whenever anyone challenges the "Hey, we're just out here looking around" line with "Yeah? So what's with all the guns and shield technology?" the answer is always a uniform, "They are for our own defense. Why don't we both stand down and talk about this?"
This is the activity of an exploratory/diplomatic force. (Is the Vulcan space fleet a military organization? Nope. But they also have defensive an offensive capability and they come from a pacifist culture.)
If you have such an exploratory force spread out across known space and its frontier and your civilization is attacked it is, again, monumentally stupid not to retask the explorers for defense of that civilization. Again, this uniformly how Starfleet's actions are depicted in the canon material. Part of the reason the Dominion and Cardassians gained so much ground so quickly in the war was due to the retasking process of switching a fleet of explorers to a fleet of fighters. They had to actually build new vessels dedicated to the purpose of warfare. A military organization wouldn't have needed to play catchup that way. The fleet would have simply gone to permanent Red Alert status and that would have been that.
Even after the first Borg incursion, during which so many lives were lost, Starfleet doesn't go into military mode. They do not redesign their vessels or rework their "soldier" class to be a military, they do not seek out and atack the attackers who were not beaten so much as driven out. No. After it's all done, Starfleet immediately reboots to the default position- exploration. Either they are, again, monumentally stupid, or they have a different cultural ethos driving their actions than any evidenced on modern day Earth.
Contrast that with Klingons and Romulans. Both are essentially martial cultures that engage in expansionist practices through the use of force. Their spacefleets are militaries and they were both specifically created (by the writers) to be a contrast to the methods and ethos of Starfleet and the Federation. We can easily define a thing by knowing its opposite.
So that is three clear strikes (3.5?), within the canon, against the pro-military argument. Extra-canonical data is not relevant.
If you apply the Razor to these facts, Starfleet emerges as an exploratory organization with a paramilitary internal structure.
That is the simplest definition that fits the available canonical data.
When we had this discussion before I sat down to begin cataloguing the number of times someone said what Starfleet was and wasn't. Then I realized how insane that was. It was also WAY too much work for something so silly. Just batting it around is more fun.
I have my one unequivocal line (only because I'm too lazy to dig for more) but there are none that say Starfleet is a military organization. Zero.
Starfleet is an organization whose purpose is exploration in a universe where alien species may try to kill or eat you just for showing up. It would be monumentally stupid for them not to arm themselves.
Whenever anyone challenges the "Hey, we're just out here looking around" line with "Yeah? So what's with all the guns and shield technology?" the answer is always a uniform, "They are for our own defense. Why don't we both stand down and talk about this?"
This is the activity of an exploratory/diplomatic force. (Is the Vulcan space fleet a military organization? Nope. But they also have defensive an offensive capability and they come from a pacifist culture.)
If you have such an exploratory force spread out across known space and its frontier and your civilization is attacked it is, again, monumentally stupid not to retask the explorers for defense of that civilization. Again, this uniformly how Starfleet's actions are depicted in the canon material. Part of the reason the Dominion and Cardassians gained so much ground so quickly in the war was due to the retasking process of switching a fleet of explorers to a fleet of fighters. They had to actually build new vessels dedicated to the purpose of warfare. A military organization wouldn't have needed to play catchup that way. The fleet would have simply gone to permanent Red Alert status and that would have been that.
Even after the first Borg incursion, during which so many lives were lost, Starfleet doesn't go into military mode. They do not redesign their vessels or rework their "soldier" class to be a military, they do not seek out and atack the attackers who were not beaten so much as driven out. No. After it's all done, Starfleet immediately reboots to the default position- exploration. Either they are, again, monumentally stupid, or they have a different cultural ethos driving their actions than any evidenced on modern day Earth.
Contrast that with Klingons and Romulans. Both are essentially martial cultures that engage in expansionist practices through the use of force. Their spacefleets are militaries and they were both specifically created (by the writers) to be a contrast to the methods and ethos of Starfleet and the Federation. We can easily define a thing by knowing its opposite.
So that is three clear strikes (3.5?), within the canon, against the pro-military argument. Extra-canonical data is not relevant.
If you apply the Razor to these facts, Starfleet emerges as an exploratory organization with a paramilitary internal structure.
That is the simplest definition that fits the available canonical data.
I and others have cited numerous instances in which Starfleet is described as a military, not the least of which are "Court Martial" -- only a military has a court-martial; that's why they use the term "martial," after all -- and "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost," where Leyton's attempt to put Starfleet in charge of the Federation government is described as an attempted military coup. That you keep denying that these instances exist is the HEIGHT of irrationality on your part.
Sure. And there's nothing about that behavior, or about Starfleet also being an exploratory/diplomatic force, that invalidates its legal status as a military.
Yes.
Oh, yeah, real pacifists, those Vulcans, what with the decades-long cold war with the Andorians, tendency to dominate the internal affairs of less-developed cultures (i.e., Earth), tendency to use puppet governments as proxies in their conflict with the Andorians (Coridan), and their habit of launching preemptive invasions on the basis of hearsay and innuendo.
Not, not a militaristic culture AT ALL. Never. Nor even a military of their own!
(Yes, I'm aware that Vulcan culture is dynamic and evolved, but to claim that "pacifistic" is a uniformly accurate way to describe their culture is patently inaccurate.)
Yes. And the instant you do that, that exploratory organization becomes simultaneously the state's military.
No one is questioning the validity of the decision to arm Starfleet. You seem to be implying that calling Starfleet a military is a criticism -- it is not. (I say that because you use language that implies that you are defending the choice for Starfleet to be armed for the defense of the Federation as though from criticism that it is a bad thing -- "It would be stupid not to," etc.) It is simply an observation.
I don't recall that ever being established. Could you point out the DS9 episode that established that?
The United States Navy played major catchup after the attack on Pearl Harbor; it was thoroughly unprepared to be a player in a major Pacific war. That Starfleet was not thoroughly mobilized does not invalidate its legal status as a military.
Um, yes it does. It develops the Defiant class, Prometheus class, and the Sovereign class, all of which are obviously designed for combat. They develop nadion pulse cannons, a technology with absolutely no peaceful application whatsoever. According to Ronald D. Moore, the practice of putting civilians and families on capital ships ended. They develop entirely new types of phasers, and develop quantum torpedoes.
Of course they don't. One, it's impossible because the Borg are in the Delta Quadrant, and two, it would be suicidal to do that.
A cultural ethos has nothing at all to do with whether or not Starfleet is a military. The only criteria by which an organization can be said to be a military organization is whether or not it constitutes the state's armed forces. Starfleet does, and we know this because it's Starfleet that fights the Federation's wars, not the Federation Department of Agriculture.
This has nothing at all to do with Starfleet's legal status. As I and others have said before, whether or not Starfleet has a militaristic operational ethos or behavior has nothing to do with its legal status as a military or non-military organization.
Only if you ignore every single piece of evidence that contradicts yours in favor of the one that supports your argument, and only if you ignore the objective definition of what a military is in favor of an ideologically-colored evaluation of the organization's "cultural ethos."
To put it another way:
Here is the definition of a military as a noun:
Right there? See. "Armed forces." If you like, we can get even more anal-retentive and look up the definition of "armed forces.":
A regrettably circular definition, but the meaning is clear:
A military is the organization that the state arms to protect itself.
That's it. It doesn't prevent the military from also serving other functions. It doesn't mean that the military is aggressive or violent or jingoistic. It doesn't mean the military possess any particular cultural ethos at all; all it means is that it is the organization that the state turns to to defend it and its citizens in times of conflict.
Starfleet is very obviously the organization the Federation turns to to defend the UFP and its citizens when they are threatened -- whether by the Borg, the Klingons, or what-have-you.
Now, let's examine this bit of logic.
"It is a fact that an organization is X if it possesses Y trait. It is a fact that Institution A possesses Y trait. Ergo, Institution A is an X institution."
A very simple bit of logic there.
Your logic against it has been to go, "But Institution A possesses Z trait and therefore cannot be an X institution. And it was described, once, as not being an X institution."
Well, I'm sorry, but whether or not Institution A possesses Z trait in addition to possessing Y trait is irrelevant, because being an X institution does not disqualify it from also possessing Z trait in addition to Y trait.
No, Geoff, you're the one who's doing a mind-boggling amount of bending to avoid what is a glaring, obvious truth supported by 40 years of canonical material: PICARD WAS WRONG.
Sorry, Geoff, but no. You can't claim to have scads of evidence and then say it's too much work to produce it. But it would be irrelevant if you did, because for every line in canon of someone claiming Starfleet is not a military organization, there is another equally valid line in canon that demonstrates unequivocally that it is.
Geoff, either you have not been paying attention to Sci's posts, or you are now behaving in a deliberately obtuse manner because you don't want to acknowledge that he has cited specific lines of dialogue, as well as a preponderance of evidence.
Absolutely, completely, totally irrelevant.
None of what you've described has anything to do with whether Starfleet is a military organization. All of the functions you've described have been, and even today often are, performed by military organizations.
The definition of military has --- say it with me, Geoff -- absolutely nothing to do with the principal mission, purpose, or ethos of an organization. The status of an organization as a military is defined by two unique characteristics:
1. Charged with and authorized to use violence on behalf and in defense of the national state
2. Administers its own code of justice through courts-martial
A possible third characteristic is that it is capable of imposing martial (i.e., military) law on the state.
These are characteristics not shared by any paramilitary, quasi-military, semi-military, or simply scientific organization that just happens to have weapons. Your local and state police do not hold courts-martial when their members screw up: they stand trial in civilian courts. When you disobey your superior at NASA, you get fired, not sent to Leavenworth. Some members of the U.S. Park Service carry weapons and wear uniforms, but they don't defend the border in times of war; you want to know why? Because they're not in the military.
First of all, this is demonstrably not true. Look at the Dominion War, Geoff. Starfleet did start retooling for a war footing. It did plan counteroffensives. It did take the fight to the enemy.
But again, you are missing the point. You keep insisting that the ethos or philosophy of an orgnization must be belligerent in order for it to be a true military, and as we have proved multiple times in this thread, it's not true. You are proceeding from a false assumption.
They are not opposites, merely different styles. And this is what is known as a straw-man argument, Geoff. It is a logical fallacy and not acceptable. We are not talking about the Klingons or the Romulans, we are talking about Starfleet.
It is nothing of the kind, Geoff. Sci has already given you canonical evidence that contradicts yours, but that's not even the point. Since individual lines and episodes contradict one another on this matter, one must look at the whole body of canon and analyze the facts. When one does so, the on-screen evidence is overwhelming:
Starfleet meets absolutely every criterion for a military organization, up to and including: it holds courts-martial, which only a military body can do; it can impose martial law on the state; its members have described themselves as soldiers, in both TOS and DS9; it fights wars when called upon to do so; and even Federation civilians have referred to it as "the military" in TWOK.
Completely, utterly, mind-bogglingly wrong, Geoff! Paramilitary organizations do not hold courts-martial, cannot impose martial law, and do not serve as the principal defensive apparatuses of national states.
You have failed to present any evidence that refutes the argument, based strictly on canonical evidence and the definitions of words in the English language, that Starfleet is a military organization, and your claim that it is merely a scientific body with "paramilitary" trappings is demonstrably false and absurd on its face.
Stop trying to tell me that black is white, wet is dry, and the Starfleet is not a military organization, because I know better, Geoff.
I would be negligent not to point out that David Mack has outlined a second trait that defines a military, the ability to administer its own code of justice upon its members through the use of courts-martial, which Starfleet also possesses. If I were to add that to my logic formula above, I might define an X institution as one that possesses Y trait and W trait, and Institution A as possessing both Y and W in addition to Z.
Do we have to shoot Picard through the chest with an arrow? He's not the Lord Almighty, and not every word that falls from his lips is meant to be carved in stone.
And if that's not good enough... well, then, let's just say the scriptwriter fucked up. That way, we can recognize the blinding obvious, and still venerate His Holiness Jean-Luc I.
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Yes, he said what he meant, but what people say isn't always a recitation of received dictionary definitions. People employ words in ways that suit their perspectives or agendas. And sometimes the usage of a word is ambiguous enough that different people can employ it with different nuances and intentions without being ignorant or deceptive. The very debate over the definition of the word "military" in this thread proves that it's possible for different people to ascribe different meanings or nuances to the word. To paraphrase Will Riker, "When has language ever been as simple as a dictionary?"
Just because those specific words haven't been used doesn't mean the concept hasn't been definitively established. Jim Kirk has explicitly described himself as a soldier, and a soldier, by definition, is "a person engaged in military service." Several Starfleet characters have been court-martialled, and a court-martial, by definition, is "a court consisting of military or naval personnel appointed by a commander to try charges of offenses by soldiers, sailors, etc., against military or naval law." Admiral Leyton imposed martial law on Earth, and martial law, by definition, is "temporary rule by military authorities."
Yes, a military organization whose purpose is exploration. As others have stated, many militaries in the past and present have engaged in scientific research and exploration. Starfleet is different in that exploration is its primary goal rather than a secondary goal, but that has no bearing on whether it qualifies as a military.
Going back to the dictionary, let's consider the etymology of the word "military." Does it intrinsically mean an organization that engages in combat or wages wars? In fact, it does not. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary:
So intrinsically, "military" just means a group of regimented personnel. The purpose of that group is not implicit in the definition of the word. Calling Starfleet a military does not mean it's a combat organization.
This is the root of your problem. You're interpreting this as "Is Starfleet a warlike organization or not?" But that's not under debate here. I think we all agree that Starfleet's purpose is exploratory first, defensive second. The real question under discussion here is, "Stipulating that Starfleet's primary function is exploratory, can the word 'military' nonetheless be validly applied to such an organization?" And the answer to that is yes.
It just sounds odd to the average person to think of a military organization whose purpose isn't warlike - but it does happen. The Coast Guard since 9/11 has struggled, I'm told, to get its members to think of themselves as warriors, not just seaborne cops. NASA is in many ways civilian only in outward appearance - many (if not most?) of the astronauts are in fact active duty military personnel, on detail to NASA's astronaut office from their respective services the same way others are detailed to CIA, NSA, and other agencies. Indeed, the only reason NASA was never put under DOD in the first place was to differentiate us from the Soviets, who did make their space program exist under explicit military control.
The classic Military Departments are just more upfront about being military, that's all.
The classic Military Departments are just more upfront about being military, that's all.
Check your facts again, namely the DS9 episode Behind the Lines in which it is revealed that the Dominion had a massive sensor array in the Argolis Cluster. This was why they gained ground so quickly, they could track Federation/Klingon ship movements across multiple sectors.
True or false:
A nation may, in times of war, draft or otherwise conscript ANY vessel under its control and task it for military purposes, including all personnel necessary to operate said vessel. Meaning a fleet designed for exploration and diplomatic greetings may be retasked for war without being a military organization before or after.
Planets within the Federation have been shown to have their own police forces and essential sovereignty over their own regions. The biggest threat the Federation has against a member is ouster. Grabbing a random starship and telling the captain, "Go here and protect Planet X" does not mean the caption or his organization are military. Nor does telling the same Captian, "Since you're out there anyway, go take a look at what our enemies are doing close to our border."
Those things can be done to ANY vessel at any time by our government should the need arise.
Paramilitary organizations may and, in fact, do have their own codes of conduct including the description of and punishment for infraction, separate from the rules of the larger society.
Having soldiers as a permanent part of an exploratory venture does not make the venture a military mission or the organization running it a military.
It's not that I think Picard is holy. I actually have little feeling for the character one way or another. But, within the context of the world he's been set to inhabit, it is impossible for him to make such an unequivocal statement about the fundamental nature of the organization of which he's a member and then claim it's false without it being shown he was intentionally lying or otherwise compromised. It's simply not possible, in that context for him to have made that "error."
Given that we have two options.
!) we can take the character as written at his word and come up with plausible reasons for why subsequent inconsistencies really aren't.
or
2) we can assume he's an idiot, has no idea of his job or what his organization is and come up with stories to prove that.
The Federation is not an analog for our society and the rules and definitions we use do not, necessarily, carry over to theirs. It's something we aspire to and its Starfleet is not the same as our militaries even if it occasionally does the same job. We know this because they keep saying so.
I don't need to love the character of Picard to know he doesn't screw up that way.
And, while I do watch the eps with some regularity, collecting them with a mind to going through them on the off chance of lifting out particular lines to support my assertion in this debate is beyond even my admitted OCD.
I will promise that, as I see them, I will write them down for the next time we get into this.
They certainly pop up often enough for that.
A nation may, in times of war, draft or otherwise conscript ANY vessel under its control and task it for military purposes, including all personnel necessary to operate said vessel. Meaning a fleet designed for exploration and diplomatic greetings may be retasked for war without being a military organization before or after.
Planets within the Federation have been shown to have their own police forces and essential sovereignty over their own regions. The biggest threat the Federation has against a member is ouster. Grabbing a random starship and telling the captain, "Go here and protect Planet X" does not mean the caption or his organization are military. Nor does telling the same Captian, "Since you're out there anyway, go take a look at what our enemies are doing close to our border."
Those things can be done to ANY vessel at any time by our government should the need arise.
Paramilitary organizations may and, in fact, do have their own codes of conduct including the description of and punishment for infraction, separate from the rules of the larger society.
Having soldiers as a permanent part of an exploratory venture does not make the venture a military mission or the organization running it a military.
It's not that I think Picard is holy. I actually have little feeling for the character one way or another. But, within the context of the world he's been set to inhabit, it is impossible for him to make such an unequivocal statement about the fundamental nature of the organization of which he's a member and then claim it's false without it being shown he was intentionally lying or otherwise compromised. It's simply not possible, in that context for him to have made that "error."
Given that we have two options.
!) we can take the character as written at his word and come up with plausible reasons for why subsequent inconsistencies really aren't.
or
2) we can assume he's an idiot, has no idea of his job or what his organization is and come up with stories to prove that.
The Federation is not an analog for our society and the rules and definitions we use do not, necessarily, carry over to theirs. It's something we aspire to and its Starfleet is not the same as our militaries even if it occasionally does the same job. We know this because they keep saying so.
I don't need to love the character of Picard to know he doesn't screw up that way.
And, while I do watch the eps with some regularity, collecting them with a mind to going through them on the off chance of lifting out particular lines to support my assertion in this debate is beyond even my admitted OCD.
I will promise that, as I see them, I will write them down for the next time we get into this.
They certainly pop up often enough for that.
I have to stick in my two cents here.
It really is pretty simple.
Picard does not believe himself to be a soldier, but a diplomat and explorer, and his line in Insurrection sums it up as he bemoans the fact that they are once again fighting. "Does anyone remember when we used to be explorers?"
Other Starfleet officers may have come from naval families from centuries before and see Starfleet as essentially the same as their ancestors saw the Navy, as a military, and that's that. In Picard's case, it is a personal belief rather than an unequivocal fact. And he's extolling the virtues of his career choice/the Federation Starfleet.
It really is pretty simple.
Picard does not believe himself to be a soldier, but a diplomat and explorer, and his line in Insurrection sums it up as he bemoans the fact that they are once again fighting. "Does anyone remember when we used to be explorers?"
Other Starfleet officers may have come from naval families from centuries before and see Starfleet as essentially the same as their ancestors saw the Navy, as a military, and that's that. In Picard's case, it is a personal belief rather than an unequivocal fact. And he's extolling the virtues of his career choice/the Federation Starfleet.
IIRC, one of the Nitpicker's Guides by Phil Farrand had a sidebar with competing quotes on this issue, so it might save some time if someone has a copy and can post the quotes used in that sidebar...
"Sidebar, your Honour"
True. But if the head of the North Star Shipping Fleet or whatever takes over the country by armed force, they wouldn't call that martial law. Admiral Leyton, a Starfleet officer, imposed martial law on Earth. He wasn't drafted or conscripted.
I see. And what's your position on looking, walking, and quacking like a duck? If Starfleet isn't the Federation's military, it certainly looks and acts enough like one that it's an academic distinction.
As I've said, the very fact that we're having this debate over the definition of the word "military" is in itself a disproof of that assertion.
Or, we can assume that he's a fictional character whose words are written by multiple different authors, and that the author of "Peak Performance" put words in Picard's mouth that in retrospect have proved inaccurate (or more likely, Roddenberry put those words in Picard's mouth in order to promote his utopian vision of the future). Was Data lying or compromised when he said he was "Class of '78"? Was Deanna lying or compromised when she said she'd never kissed Riker with a beard? No, it's simply that different scriptwriters made different assumptions that sometimes clash. The causes of the inconsistencies are metatextual and the characters can't be blamed for them.
Or, keeping it within the text, we can assume that he simply had a difference of opinion with others about the nature of the organization. Your whole argument is predicated on this one line of Picard's, but you're ignoring its context. Picard made that statement to protest the decision of his Starfleet superiors to have the Enterprise engage in wargame exercises. That suggests that Picard's superiors disagree with him about whether Starfleet is a military organization. Since his opinion was overruled, I don't think you can cite it as an unambiguous truth.
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Sorry, the Dominion is too busy to answer your call...
But in all seriousness, that wouldn't have helped.
Not enough time for the SCE to think up anything either... for them to use.
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