The Federation's odd policy toward Bajor

[T'Girl]

Its fairly obvious the main Federation planets are very comfortable considering that you need to meet several criteria to be accepted into the Federation

Bajor was on the verge of being accepted into the Federation, and it really didn't sound like a very nice place. Ardana seem nice only for a portion of the population. Vulcan had some harsh social practices too.

A planet could be brought into the Federation for many different reasons, like wanting to protect it (Bajor), or because it possessed a unique resource (Ardana), or hypothetically because it had a large war fleet during a time when the Federation needed more than they had. Or as a political move against someone like the Klingons.

including having a single world government

But if your one government is like [insert bad Earth government here] then that's no promise of "nice."

 

[Anwar]

Food is one thing that the Federation should have no problem supplying to Bajor

Let's say that there are only a billion Bajorian left after the occupation, and they eat about the same as a average Human (not a average American). They will eat one point three million tonnes of food a day.

Only like 30 million bajorans died in the occupation, it always seemed to me that they shoulda made that figure higher.

The Cardassians weren't trying to exterminate the Bajorans, though. If the purpose was to annex Bajor and enslave the Bajorans, killing them all or a significant number of them defeats the purpose of the Occupation.

 

[DonIago]

Yes. Gul Dukat wanted the Bajorans to live, in order to see why they were wrong to oppose annexation in the first place. Heh.

 

[T'Girl]

I found it slighty strange that the Cardassians seemingly made no real attempt to colonize Bajor. Not exactly their climate sure, still no big block of the families that Cardassians base their culture on.

 

[DonIago]

I suspect they never went very far with colonization because the natives turned out to be far more hostile than they anticipated. Why would anyone want to move to a planet where the native population is a bunch of terrorists?

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, for Cardassia it was more about the resources than anything else. Colonizing the place would've increased their surplus population and counter-acted any benefits the Occupation was giving them.

I do wonder why they wanted Bajor back though, didn't they stripmine it of all real value? They were portrayed as being too pragmatic for it solely to be an "ego" thing.

Or was it because it would've gotten rid of the Federation presence on DS9 and made Cardassia the Gatekeepers of the Wormhole?

 

[Marten]

Yeah, for Cardassia it was more about the resources than anything else. Colonizing the place would've increased their surplus population and counter-acted any benefits the Occupation was giving them.

I do wonder why they wanted Bajor back though, didn't they stripmine it of all real value? They were portrayed as being too pragmatic for it solely to be an "ego" thing.

Or was it because it would've gotten rid of the Federation presence on DS9 and made Cardassia the Gatekeepers of the Wormhole?

I'd guess it would have to be about the wormhole. Whoever controls Bajor, controls the wormhole, and i turn controls the path to the Gamma Quadrant. Must be valuable.

 

[T'Girl]

Re-establishing control of Bajor would have prevented it from becoming a Federation member. The Federation and Cardassian Union were political opponents, and (my impression) Bajor was generally close to the Cardassian home world. Having the enemy right your backyard might have been something the Cardassian were unwilling to accept.

 

[Anwar]

Yes, the Bajor system and the DMZ were both quite close to Cardassia which would give them strategic reasons for wanting the system (as well as the Wormhole).

 

[Kords21]

It wasn't the will of the Prophets, end of story.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I got the impression that the Provisional Government only wanted the Federation there to keep the Cardassians at bay, at first. They accepted only basic help because they were a proud people and wanted to rebuild on their own. Then Sisko became the Emissary and they got used to the idea of becoming Federation members for mutual defense so if the Cardassians did try anything again, then they would get help that much faster.

Also, remember that DS9 was a Bajoran station administrated by Starfleet. The Bajorans could have asked them to leave at any time (and did during the Circle's coup d'etat) Picard told Sisko to do everything in his power, short of violating the Prime Directive, to get Bajor ready for Federation membership. Once Sisko became the Emissary the Prime Directive became a moot point because Sisko was a religious figurehead.

 

[Bad-Wolf]

Wouldn't a too big humanitarian help have significantly reduced the autonomy of Bajor ? I mean, they wanted, but also they had to learn how to be self sufficient again. If all they had to do was to wait for Federation's help, they wouldn't have learned how to rebuild their economy and would've been in another form of submission.
Not to mention that the Federation has it's own interests, and has other things to care about than supply for every needs of a under-developped planet. Ok, they're supposed to be kind, but not foolishly kind. And the DMZ rebellions showed the Federation's limit about what they could do about such issues.

(By the way, it's my first post and I'm not an English native speaker, so I hope my message wasn't too bad to read.)

 

[7thsealord]

Wouldn't a too big humanitarian help have significantly reduced the autonomy of Bajor ? I mean, they wanted, but also they had to learn how to be self sufficient again. If all they had to do was to wait for Federation's help, they wouldn't have learned how to rebuild their economy and would've been in another form of submission.
Not to mention that the Federation has it's own interests, and has other things to care about than supply for every needs of a under-developped planet. Ok, they're supposed to be kind, but not foolishly kind. And the DMZ rebellions showed the Federation's limit about what they could do about such issues.

(By the way, it's my first post and I'm not an English native speaker, so I hope my message wasn't too bad to read.)

Not too bad. You put your points across quite well.

 

[Timo]

Interestingly enough, the Genesis research in ST2 was conducted in the name of alleviating "cosmic problems of population and food supply". Turning a dead world into a food-producing one would alleviate those problems only if food were subsequently shipped from the farming world to the worlds in need; a farming world is also mentioned in TNG and DS9 in Worf's backstory.

If Genesis is assumed to be a solution in itself, then the transportation capacity might well exist, and Bajor shouldn't go hungry for technological reasons alone - there would have to be a political agenda there as well. However, we can just as well argue that if the UFP in the 23rd century did have problems, those might persist in the 24th, and the transportation capacity might remain a bottleneck even if the number of farming worlds could be increased.

Certainly the political arguments put forth appear sound: Bajor would not want to receive so much aid that it becomes dependent on the UFP, and the Feds would not want to give so much aid that Bajoran bellies get so full they no longer can bow to the ground in gratitude.

On that latter aspect, though, the Federation would probably be quite interested in pampering Bajor especially: it's a world right next door to a supposedly starving enemy empire, amidst a swarm of formally neutral cultures that appear hostile to the UFP and more or less loyal to the Cardassian Union. Making Bajor a showpiece world for the benefits of being a UFP friend would be a major propaganda victory, especially at a time when other sorts of victories cannot be afforded. All that would tend to suggest that if the UFP held back aid, it wasn't for political but practical reasons. Pressing needs elsewhere, bottleneck resources preventing the delivery of otherwise bountiful supplies, perhaps fundamental problems with "usual methods" (say, failure of an agricultural aid program because the Cardassians salted the fields).

We have to consider issues of viewpoint, too. Was Bajor really going hungry? It might be in their interests to say so, just like the Central Command was keen on insisting that Cardassia needed to wage war to fight hunger and poverty - even if there was very little truth to the claim.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[WarpCore]

In several of the episodes in seasons 1-3 we hear about supply shortages, droughts, famine and all sorts of problems on Bajor. Yet all of those problems should have been easily solved with advanced Federation technology. So why was the Federation holding out on Bajor? It was a candidate for Federation membership and none of its problems were of its own making. So why hold back the material assistance?

Looks like you answered your own question here. All sorts of problems after a decades long occupation, then 3 years after the Federation shows up lo and behold the problems are never heard much of again.

IMO, it would come down to logistics, time, or the prime directive. Even a 24th century Rome can't be built overnight. That would hold even more for a planet.

 

[Sandoval]

Why does T'Girl keep saying Bajorian?

 

[MacLeod]

To draw perhaps an analogy from history, the Marshall plan.

 

[T'Girl]

Did I use the term wrong?

The people of Bajor are Bajorian iirc. Just like the people of Brazil are Brazilian, the people of Britain are British, or the people of Spain are Spanish.

I'm pretty sure that Kira referred to her people as the Bajorian. Perhaps I misheard.

Bajori
Bajorish
Bajorese
Bajorn

Turning a dead world into a food-producing one would alleviate those problems only if food were subsequently shipped from the farming world to the worlds in need

If 24th century Earth were incapable of producing enough food, and you could turn the moon into a agriculture world, that would solve Earth's immediate problem. The Bajorian would have the ability with their existing technology to transport the food if there were a suitable body near their home planet.

 

[MacLeod]

^You didn't. You don't need the 'i' it's Bajoran

 

[T'Girl]

^ No offense, but are you sure? In terms of the way it was actually pronouced by the majority of DS9 actors, especially Avery Brooks and Nana Visitor, the demonym of Bajor is pronouced "Bajorian." Bajor'anne, not Bajor'ran, or Bajor'en. Alexander Siddig's pronunciation did seem to change episode to episode. Phonetically the suffix should be a -ian. I've seen it spelled differently on various transcript sites, Trek discussion sites, and on memory alpha.

In canon, I don't believe it was ever spelled out on a display screen.

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