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.
1. This is irrelevant to the discussion because it is a different situation. A civilian fleet that is drafted and re-tasked towards defense is not the institution that the state turns to for self-defense as a matter of law; Starfleet is.
2. When that civilian shift is drafted,
it becomes part of the military.
Planets within the Federation have been shown to have their own police forces and essential sovereignty over their own regions.
So? The State of Ohio has its own military force in the Ohio National Guard, which answers to the Governor of the State of Ohio as its commander-in-chief unless the President calls it into federal service. Ohio also maintains its own
Ohio Naval Militia, and many states maintain their own
state defense forces that cannot be called into federal service. And, of course, all states in the Union maintain sovereignty over their own territory and have their own laws with exclusive jurisdictions, which is why it's legal for gays to marry in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of Connecticut, but not in the State of Ohio or the Commonwealth of Virginia.
All you've proven here is that the United Federation of Planets practices
federalism. Which is pretty frickin' obvious, given that its right there in the
name.
The biggest threat the Federation has against a member is ouster.
That may be their most common or preferred weapon against a Member State that they object to, but it's not their biggest threat. The Federation President has the ability to declare martial law throughout a Federation Member State and to use Starfleet to enforce that martial law, as shown in "Homefront" (DS9). In point of fact, that's one of the biggest pieces of evidence for both Federation statehood and for Starfleet being a military. In arguing for a declaration of martial law, Sisko went to the Federation President to get him to do it with Starfleet. If the Federation was not a state and if Starfleet was not a military, then he would have gone to the United Earth President and Prime Minister and gotten them to do it with domestic UE forces.
TNG's "Force of Nature" also firmly established that the Federation Council can pass legislation that's binding throughout the Federation without the consent of the Federation Member State governments, just like, say, the Canadian Parliament can throughout Canada without needing the provincial governments' consent. This was re-enforced by
Articles of the Federation, in which things like the Transporter Improvement Act were being negotiated within the Council to upgrade transporters throughout the UFP and in which not a single Federation Councillor was depicted as needing the permission of his, her, hir, or its Member State government to take a position.
Obviously, Federation law trumps Member State law, legally, and far more coercive measures are available to the Federation government if a Member State is being a jackass. The Federation just doesn't like to use them, preferring to just kick out those Members that mis-behave -- no doubt arguing that being kicked out of paradise is punishment enough.
Grabbing a random starship and telling the captain, "Go here and protect Planet X" does not mean the caption or his organization are military.
No, but having a fleet of starships and corps of officers for whom "Go here and protect Planet X" are considered a regular component of their duties
is. Especially if, as DS9's "Paradise Lost" established, the Federation President as head of state is considered their permanent commander-in-chief. I'm sorry, but the fleet of the White Star Line that launch the
Titanic never considered the King Edward their commander-in-chief as a matter of course, but the Federation Starfleet considers the FedPrez their commander-in-chief as a matter of course. (And, as Mack established in
A Time to Heal, the Federation Starfleet Charter establishes that Starfleet must always defer to the orders of the Federation government, which is something that a civilian fleet need not do.)
And, as Mack and I have said time and again, the fact that the Federation Starfleet administers its own code of justice upon its members through a system of
courts-martial is yet another piece of evidence that the Federation is more than just the legal equivalent of a cruise liner fleet -- it's direct evidence that it's a military, because only a military can do that. Hungry Howie's Pizza doesn't get to throw a misbehaving delivery driver into its own private prison and try it in its own private courts; only a military can do that.
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.
No, the government cannot issue a binding order to a vessel without first calling that vessel into federal service during a time of emergency -- meaning that it has to do that to every vessel, not just that one. Otherwise, it can issue a request, but that's not binding.
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.
Sure, but they don't have the legal authority to take away someone's liberty. Kent State University has its own code of conduct including description of and punishment for infraction, and it possesses a Judicial Affairs process that can punish a student by removing them from the residence halls or by expelling them from the school, but KSU does not have the authority to try me in a court that can take away my liberty -- the most authority it has is for its police force to make an arrest and then transfer me to a civilian court of law.
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.
Yes, it does, if that exploratory organization is the organization that the state always turns to for self-defense.
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.
Which is why we're all arguing that in the context of the world in which he said that, it's a contradiction with both earlier and later episodes and the characters' statements in them -- including, mind you, Sisko's direct description of Starfleet as a military in "Paradise Lost" -- and should therefore disregard it.
In other words, sure, in the context of "Peak Performance," Picard was right. But "Peak Performance" is wrong in the context of the rest of the canon. Ergo, it should be regarded as a continuity error to be ignore, no different than characters claiming that anti-matter would destroy the universe in "The Alternate Factor" or the VOY characters concluding that transwarp will turn you into a newt in "Threshold" (which even Brannon Braga said was so bad that they didn't regard it as canonical during the rest of VOY and ENT).
In other words: Sure, Picard was right in the context that he said it, but the context that he said it was wrong in the context of the rest of the canon. It was a retcon when it was introduced, and it's been retconned out of continuity since then.
!) 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.[/quote
No, we have a third option:
3. We can recognize that the writers were being stupid when they said that and disregard the statement's existence in recognition of the fact that this is all fictional.
The Federation is not an analog for our society and the rules and definitions we use do not, necessarily, carry over to theirs.
Whether or not it's an analog to our society is irrelevant. The Federation fits the definition of a state -- a political association possessing a distinct territory over which it has the right to make law and in which it possesses the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. And Starfleet fits the definition of a military -- the organization armed by the state for defense in times of combat and capable of enforcing its own code of justice upon its members through a system of courts-martial.
Those definitions fit the Federation and its Starfleet to a
t. I'm sorry if you have an ideological bias against the concept of a state and of a military, but it's a fact.
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.
Yeah, bullshit. We're not collecting episodes with a mind to going through them on the off-chance of lifting out particular lines to support our assertions in this debate. We're recalling basic facts and traits about Starfleet and basic lines given by characters about Starfleet. I for one only own DS9 Season Six and the first, sixth, seventh, and eighth movies on DVD, and haven't looked at any of them since this debate started. I just remember basic facts from the show and was capable of citing them.
That you decided to make a claim and then refrain from citing more than one piece of evidence to support it does not give you license to then insult us by calling us more OCD than you.
Cite more evidence to support your argument or else we will logically have to conclude that the preponderance of evidence indicates that Starfleet is a military.
Picard made that statement to protest the decision of his Starfleet superiors to have the Enterprise engage in wargame exercises.
Which is bloody stupid of him, because a wargame exercise is hardly a belligerent act. In fact, given both the sheer number of conflicts the Federation became involved in in the mid-24th Century -- conflicts with the Cardassians, the Tzenkethi, the Talarians, and the Tholians, and major tensions with the Klingons and the Romulans according to
The Art of the Impossible -- and given the sheer number of hostile or potentially hostile states in 2365 (including the Cardassian Union, the Tzenkethi Coalition, the Talarian Republic, the Tholian Assembly, the Ferengi Alliance, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire), and given the fact that they knew at that point that the Borg were coming -- it's just
absurd on its face to object to doing wargames now and then. The probability of an armed conflict breaking out within two years of "Peak Performance" was simply so high that arguing against getting your crew practiced enough to handle a firefight is silly.
No. You have an officer, a field officer, a career field officer being told by his superiors that things in the organization have changed or are about to change and him protesting that change. Clearly he's saying, "This is the way it has been during my tenure and before." Not "the way I think it was for me" but "this is the way it is."
Thank you for enumerating yet another reason to disregard Picard's line in "Peak Performance" just as we would disregard Data's claim to have graduating from Starfleet Academy in the 70s or would disregard Wesley's claim that the Klingon Empire joined the Federation.
But, again, down the line [I must insert I believe due to no quoted corroboration at this time] we see multiple examples of Picard's description being born out and not only by ambiguous visuals or story points which would be open to interpretation, but by character speech. That would be people within the society describing it accurately, despite apparent (or even obvious) contradictions elsewhere.
No. Down the line, we see numerous examples of how Starfleet is not a belligerent, jingoistic organization. Down the line, we see numerous examples of the fact that Starfleet would always prefer diplomacy over combat, peace of war, compromise over antagonism. And that's good. It means that Starfleet is an organization whose goal it is to keep the peace, not start a war. It has, as you have argued, a peaceable ethos.
But none of that has anything to do with its legal status as a military organization. You only argue against this because you seem chronically incapable of accepting the concept that whether or not an organization is a military is a matter of law, not a matter of behavior, and seem incapable of accepting that a military need not have an inherently jingoistic ethos. Well, I'm sorry that you have an ideological grudge against the world's militaries today, but, I assure you, it has nothing at all to do with Starfleet.
You've gotta be frickin' kidding me.
