The economic fallacies of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor

[Xerxes1979]

What on Earth makes you think that these sorts of conquest schemes are rational? Or that economic considerations are the actual motivations?

Seems pretty obvious to me:

The object of torture is torture. The object of conquest is conquest. The object of power is power. The object of sadism is sadism.

The Cardassians didn't conquer Bajor because of economic desperation any more than the United States invaded and occupied Iraq because of national security. They did it because they could.

I brought up the economic angle as way of analyzing the how, not just the why. Lots of things in life are completely irrational but still have rules and patterns of behavior. If Cardassians are some variant of space Nazis or space vikings, I want to know what those staff meetings were like when they decided that for the benefit of raping Bajor they would proceed in in X manner.

Cardassians are intelligent and shrewd. Any disonance in their behavior would be a fascinating study of xeno-psychology. The whole angle of getting what you want and ways in which you both succeed and fail are worthy of discussion. The economic aspect is easy to debate in this respect.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Seems pretty obvious to me:

The object of torture is torture. The object of conquest is conquest. The object of power is power. The object of sadism is sadism.

These things require motivations. One doesn't engage in such activities as torture and sadism without a motivation, even if that motivation is not an external, quantifiable one (which it usually isn't). The motivation is rarely knowledge or anything like that. It's far more psychological, but it is a motivation. There are any number of insecurities, fears, hatreds and traumas motivating such actions, themselves motivated by any number of instincts, experiences, precedents, pressures emotional, social, and environmental, and the interplay of all of them. To say "the object of torture is torture" is to suggest it exists in a sort of vacuum, without purpose or intent, as though it simply...exists. Not only does that make no sense, it makes it near impossible to actually deal with such things. That which we do not understand cannot be effectively dealt with. Everything is connected. Actions and desires do not manifest from nothingness and such phenomena as torture and sadism are not closed circles existing in some sort of untouchable moebius loop.

You say "the object of power is power". But what is the point or purpose to power? What motivates and breeds the desire for power? How and why does it manifest? "The object of power is power" refuses to even address these issues, and thus gets us nowhere.

And I disagree entirely on the conquest example. While proving ones superiority is a motivation, so is fear and insecurity, the desire to control because what you control can't hurt you, the desire to prove oneself, the desire to keep safe and the desire for resources. While there is always far more at play within a society's cultural and psychological network than such a simple desire for resources alone (that in itself cannot lead to conquest and imperialism), it is quite simply a consideration. To move beyond such simple, evident reasoning to explore the underlying issues motivating conquest is essential, but at the same time to deny such simple, evident reasoning is an error.

I think you are entirely right to point out that "it's about resources" is not an adequate answer, and I understand you're pointing out that underlying such motives are a host of other, as you put it "darker" impulses, but they are all connected. I find it in error to suggest we can relate to phenomena like conquest, torture, sadism etc by saying "they exist because they exist", or that the "resources" answer is meaningless. It isn't. It was about resources...along with a host of other impulses, desires and motivations not so straightforward. Which is kind of what you're saying anyway, really.

 

[Braxton]

I think the best explanation is that the Cardassians were an expanding empire that needed the resources of Bajor in order to compete with their neighbors and hold their worlds. They could have been expanding for centuries and continually fighting wars to gain new worlds as well as maintain control of the ones they had. Such fighting would put pressure on the resources of any empire. As of a result of these wars, they finally reached the status of a superpower but it was at great cost. Bajor was still a somewhat 'primitive' power so they moved in to rape the world because they could and needed the resources it had. Turns out they were in a decline anyway and the occupation would prove to be a bad moment in their history after the Dominion War.

 

[Myasishchev]

The only rational intestellar conquest scheme I can paint for Aggressor is a plan to take over Victim, uplift their society to the point where they could actually productively contribute to Aggressor's (no doubt technology, service and innovation based, as our own) economy, but keep Victim from ever developing the means of becoming a threat and an aggressor in their own right.

What on Earth makes you think that these sorts of conquest schemes are rational? Or that economic considerations are the actual motivations?

Seems pretty obvious to me:

The object of torture is torture. The object of conquest is conquest. The object of power is power. The object of sadism is sadism.

The Cardassians didn't conquer Bajor because of economic desperation any more than the United States invaded and occupied Iraq because of national security. They did it because they could.

I don't want to get into a whole thing about Iraq, but whether one believes there were compelling reasons behind it or not, there were reasons, even if the reason was as simple as spite (which is not per se irrational).

At any rate, even when an eeevil nation invades another for reasons of pure conquest (which is still a reason) it ordinarily does try to utilize the new resources in a more-or-less rational manner, at least if it's modernist in outlook, which any self-made warp power is almost by default going to be.

Chattel slavery and work camp slavery are not really rational uses of an advanced society's conquered resources. Running a labor camp is likely to cost more than using machines to do the same crap work.

To be sure, the latter already has plenty of Trek precedent. Why would Bajor and Cardassia need to enjoy a special (pre-)historical connection when for example Klingons and humans interbreed without one? We already have a general solution (from "The Chase"), why try for a special one?

Because Card/Bajoran interbreeding is the only one I know of that can't be handwaved with medical intervention. <_< (Well, it can be, but you have to twist Dukat more than Season 7 did to do it.)

In terminology at least, Worf's old home Gault was a UFP farming world. And creation of worlds of that type was the goal of Carol Marcus in the Genesis project.

Maybe the Amish ran Gault. As for Genesis...

Firstly, it was before replicators (even if Genesis was, really, the apotheosis of replicator technology--maybe it's like the difference between an H-bomb and a Mr. Fusion), agricultural trade may have had a greater significance than later.

Secondly--and this is critical--taking the alleged fact as true, a stated intent to use the Genesis device to create farming worlds does not necessarily imply an interstellar agricultural trade. Even if the idea was to build world-farms to feed Earth, Genesis would be most profitably used on Venus...

Hey, why the hell didn't they test it on Venus? Is Star Trek II telling us that there is life on Venus? Europa? Titan? Interesting inference, I think.

The fact that relatively recently founded colonies tend to be agricultural is probably unrelated to the issue of "farming worlds", I agree. Then again, it could be that specialization does pay: certain colonies expand their original sustenance farming into an export business, while others export mineables and probably have to import foodstuffs as a consequence. Such export-dependent economies can only be abandoned after these colonies accumulate centuries of experience, wealth, population and infrastructure, after which we get something more like Deneva.

Well, the lithium miners probably don't grow their own food, I agree, but they probably also get their entire contract's worth of food in one go. It's not like they're ordering Domino's. It would be impossible to avoid the Noid at that distance.

You know, it may be interesting to point out that TOS had humans running automated or nearly-automated mining operations in the 23d century. Makes the Cards' insistence on relying on Bajie scum on Terok Nor, if not on Bajor itself, even more perplexing.

Now that's a hairier issue than the ones about minerals or food or slave labor...

How could Organia be "strategically placed"? Why would the Klingon Empire or the UFP covet a planet that can provide them with nothing except some bedrock and air?

Actually, you got me there. I just threw that in there because I was sure if I didn't you'd point out that they did covet Organia.

Even with dirt cheap warp drive, I find it hard to believe that even the most audacious exodus of Cardassian citizens would be anywhere as effective in controlling the population problems of Cardassia Prime as the least ambitious campaign of contraception. Colonization of space isn't a solution to population issues. It's a conquest campaign, a means of getting rid of the excessively eager, a way to reach raw materials, an issue of prestige. It's not a viable sink for great numbers of excess people.

You're devil's advocating here --warp drive can't be so cheap that it permits interstellar delivery of foodstuffs yet too expensive for colonizing efforts, can it?

Minerals. That's quite solidly established everywhere in Star Trek: certain substances only exist on certain planets, and by far the easiest way to get them is to go to those planets and extract them.

Replicators might get the same thing done, yes. But at greater energy costs, and at the expense of other things to be replicated. And if you manufactured your own dilithium, this would mean that somebody else would get to mine the dilithium from Motherlode IV. You can't have that sort of thing happening!

Overall buyable.

I wish they'd keep the number of unobtainiums to a mimimum, though. Dilithium is fine. The crazy made-up metals that to all outward appearances do the exact same thing as real metals gets under my skin a little. (Subatomic particles, too.)

 

[Arix]

Why use biological beings when you could use robots? Robots that never sleep, require no food or oxygen, oversight and can repair themselves? The administrative and resource requirements for staffing Terok Nor and Bajor with officers and security certainly came at a cost even if the labor drew no salary.

I suppose Bajorans are cheaper than robots. For every robot miner you build, you could have built a disruptor array instead. But Bajorans come free with the planet.

This.

They've occupied a world essentially to take all its resources (this is established in the series). Why would they use more of their limited resources to build robots?

Even if they could have built robots - what would the occupied Bajorans be doing? Sitting back and letting the Cardassians strip-mine their planet and steal their resources?

Forcing the Bajorans to work as slave labour was probably supposed to keep them pacified so they weren't able to form a resistance.

But this Memory Alpha article explains the Occupation in plenty of detail.