The Falklands war was between the UK and the Argentina not NATO and Argentina. Its possible to be part of a coalition but have your own local war. (Hello Vietnam)
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The United Federation of Planets centennial. 2161 - 2261
- Thread starter Shawnster
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Fair point.
I always took the name "Earth-Romulan War" to indicate Starfleet took the lead in fighting it, and because of that it put Earth and Starfleet in the position to be the capital for the Federation and the official military/armed services for the Federation.
Maybe United Earth started the war (e.g., a pre-emptive strike, which would fit with the backstory of the Romulans having a reputation for maneuvering in to a position where they can be reactionary)?
Also, it's interesting that if you go by the group of species assembled for the "Coalition of Planets" in Enterprise, only three of them join with Earth to form the Federation. So that could mean the Romulans were able to divide the Coalition at some point, indicating that Earth may have stood alone or with limited allies during the war.
Sisko has a line in Deep Space Nine's "Homefront" where he states the Dominion landing a Jem'Hadar invasion force on Earth would be "waging the kind of war that Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation."
JARESH-INYO: What you're asking me to do is declare martial law.
LEYTON: What I'm asking you to do is let us defend this planet. We don't know what the changelings will do next, but we have to be ready for them. Ben, tell him.
SISKO: Sir, the thought of filling the streets with armed troops is as disturbing to me as it is to you, but not as disturbing as the thought of a Jem'Hadar army landing on Earth without opposition. The Jem'Hadar are the most brutal and efficient soldiers I've ever encountered. They don't care about the conventions of war or protecting civilians. They will not limit themselves to military targets. They'll be waging the kind of war that Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation.
That kinda implies the Romulans may have launched a direct attack on Earth during the war. It's red-letter canon that Starfleet never (officially) saw a Romulan until TOS. But what if the Romulans sent the Remans as part of an invasion of Earth? There's nothing precluding the idea that the Remans were the foot soldiers of the Romulans during the war.
Maybe United Earth started the war (e.g., a pre-emptive strike, which would fit with the backstory of the Romulans having a reputation for maneuvering in to a position where they can be reactionary)?
Also, it's interesting that if you go by the group of species assembled for the "Coalition of Planets" in Enterprise, only three of them join with Earth to form the Federation. So that could mean the Romulans were able to divide the Coalition at some point, indicating that Earth may have stood alone or with limited allies during the war.
Sisko has a line in Deep Space Nine's "Homefront" where he states the Dominion landing a Jem'Hadar invasion force on Earth would be "waging the kind of war that Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation."
JARESH-INYO: What you're asking me to do is declare martial law.
LEYTON: What I'm asking you to do is let us defend this planet. We don't know what the changelings will do next, but we have to be ready for them. Ben, tell him.
SISKO: Sir, the thought of filling the streets with armed troops is as disturbing to me as it is to you, but not as disturbing as the thought of a Jem'Hadar army landing on Earth without opposition. The Jem'Hadar are the most brutal and efficient soldiers I've ever encountered. They don't care about the conventions of war or protecting civilians. They will not limit themselves to military targets. They'll be waging the kind of war that Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation.
That kinda implies the Romulans may have launched a direct attack on Earth during the war. It's red-letter canon that Starfleet never (officially) saw a Romulan until TOS. But what if the Romulans sent the Remans as part of an invasion of Earth? There's nothing precluding the idea that the Remans were the foot soldiers of the Romulans during the war.
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Only if the Federation is more like the United States (or Canada) and less like the United Nations. The UN allowed the dust to settle in the breakup of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, or Yugoslavia before admitting the newly formed nations to join the UN. Russia kept the Soviet Union's spot but the newly independent Baltic states had to join. Same thing for Czech Republic Slovakia, Bosnia, etc.. The newly formed nations applied for UN membership.
The UN does not try to keep the peace in the sense of keeping a country from breaking up, but it observes the results of whatever civil war occurs. See Vietnam and North & South Korea
I think it's already established that the Federation isn't very much like the USA either. It apparently allows members to withdraw (and be readmitted later on). Would the USA allow say, California, to secede if it turned out 95% of the Californians were in favor of that?
I mean, that's not possible, because no species is completely unified. There are multiple canonical examples of independent human polities that aren't part of the UFP or U.E. -- the entire Human species is not part of U.E. We also know canonically from DIS S3 that Vulcans and Romulans are the same species, so obviously the Confederacy of Vulcan is not a polity that represents the entire Vulcan species.
It's also impossible because migration within the Federation exists. We know canonically that there are Humans who live on Vulcan, and Orions that live on Earth, etc. Are you contending that Humans who have lived on Vulcan for four generations should have to be considered as United Earth citizens, get to vote in United Earth elections, receive no representation in the Confederacy of Vulcan's government, and be represented in the Federation Council by the Councillor for United Earth instead of the Councillor for the Confederacy of Vulcan?
I mean, sure, but that's still a question of political unity under a single polity, not a question of biology or geography.
I'm not sure what "Federation Memberworld separate from other humans" means. Do you mean a Federation Member polity that is majority-Human and is not part of United Earth?
I mean, if the Arcturians actually had that capacity, then Starfleet would not have had a manpower shortage during the Dominion War, now would it? So I doubt that bit of behind the scenes apocrypha from TMP is "real" within the canonical Star Trek Universe.
If it were real though, I still don't think sentient beings should be discriminated against as you suggest. I also don't think those clones would be as uniform in their thinking as you describe. Sentient beings have a way of refusing to fit into narrow parameters.
"Declare war?" Well that escalated quickly!
This is the sort of thing that would be decided on before the Council votes on whether to accept Arcturus as a Member. It would never escalate to such a dramatic level in the first place.
But again, I doubt this is even an issue because nothing about these supposed Arcturian abilities makes sense in the context of other ST installments.
"Ghosts of Illyria" and "Ad Astra Per Aspera" established very explicitly that a polity where genetic augmentation is practiced must ban such practices before it can be accepted as a Federation Member.
If Denobula is not a Federation Member State, then presumably a Denobulan citizen needs to meet the same legal requireents any foreign citizen must meet to become a Starfleet officer, as we saw with Nog in DS9. Since "Dr. Bashir, I Presume?" established that people who have been genetically augmented cannot be Starfleet officers, presumably this applies to foreign applicants.
You're presupposing a level of hostility between Federation Members that seems implausible.
You're also overlooking that, again, being the same species does not mean your interests are the same. We are talking about polities with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people -- if a former colony world is petitioning for separate Membership as a "plant" to give those two Members votes they can use against other members, the rest of the Federation will know and veto the Membership application because you're talking about too many people to keep something like that a secret.
That does not mean there can't be real, valid reasons why the interests of one world might diverge enough from the interests of its "mother planet" as to warrant separate membership. No one accuses Aotearoa New Zealand of holding separate membership in the U.N. just to give the U.K. another vote in the General Assembly, after all. Maybe there's a Vulcan colony world whose population have rejected the teachings of Surak and become v'tosh k'tur but want to stay in the Federation -- seems reasonable that maybe they would want to become a separate Federation Member in their own right.
Ah, but why do you assume being the same species means they're going to be a "similar population" in any meaningful sense? We all know how different and often conflicting different nations of Humans can be in real life, and we're all one species!
No, we have a Senate because the Framers chose to to protect slavery and class inequality from abolitionist and wealth redistributionist movements.
Which we already know it to be. The United Nations does not have a standing military; the Federation does, in the form of Starfleet. The U.N. does not have or confer citizeship; the Federation does. The U.N. does not possess territory over which it is sovereign; the Federation does. The U.N. Secretary-General cannot declare a State of Emergency and put New York under martial law; the Federation President can declare a State of Emergency and put Earth under martial law. The U.N. cannot per se make binding law; the Federation Council can.
There are some ways in which the UFP is like the U.N., mostly in the sense that Members are clearly very autonomous and likely conduct relations with one-another through the Federation. But in most ways, the Federation behaves more like a sovereign state than not.
But a sovereign state like the U.S. or Canada has the right to allow its constituent polities to secede if it wants to. The United Kingdom allowed Scotland to hold a referendum on independence just 10 years ago, for instance.
I mean, 95% of a state's population wanting independence is a level of political consensus that has never existed in the real world, so it's impossible to answer. But the U.S. has every legal right to allow California to secede if it wishes. So there's no reason the Federation can't both be a sovereign state and allow a legal process for its Members to secede.
^Of course that's quite possible. Such a process can even be invented on the fly, as we saw with the EU and the Brexit (even if the EU isn't exactly a sovereign state).
But not every sovereign democratic state allows it. For example, Spain tried to forbid the Catalans holding such a referendum, and declared it illegal when they held it anyway.
Not sure where the US would fall on that spectrum. I'll agree though that a 95% consensus to leave would be unrealistically high - just wanted to make the example unambiguous, beyond any 'reasonable' lower majority limit one could come up with (e.g. 'such a drastic decision should be taken only with at least a 2/3rd majority in favor').
But not every sovereign democratic state allows it. For example, Spain tried to forbid the Catalans holding such a referendum, and declared it illegal when they held it anyway.
Not sure where the US would fall on that spectrum. I'll agree though that a 95% consensus to leave would be unrealistically high - just wanted to make the example unambiguous, beyond any 'reasonable' lower majority limit one could come up with (e.g. 'such a drastic decision should be taken only with at least a 2/3rd majority in favor').
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No. The Constitution makes no provision for secession. It is illegal for any state to secede from the United States per the Constitution and confirmed as such by the Supreme Court. We even had a civil war to stop states from secession. It's legal for people to secede from the USA; it's called emigration.
Texas v. White, 74 US 700 (1868), does allow a process for a state to secede, but they need the consent of Congress and ratification of 3/4 of the state legislatures.No. The Constitution makes no provision for secession. It is illegal for any state to secede from the United States per the Constitution and confirmed as such by the Supreme Court. We even had a civil war to stop states from secession. It's legal for people to secede from the USA; it's called emigration.
Exactly. So the United States has the right to allow states to secede via a legal process it sets out. Similarly, the United Kingdom has the right to allow its constituent countries to secede via a legal process it sets out. Etc.
So the fact that the Federation has a legal process for Members to secede does not preclude the UFP from being a sovereign state.
I always took the implication of the “Coalition” in Enterprise to be the looser alliance that’s more NATO-like, where all of the members still have their own sovereignty and distinct governments.
And because of either the Coalition’s failures, shortcomings, or just Earth, Andoria, Vulcan, and the Tellarites realizing their shared interests working together, the Federation came into being as a new interstellar state as a successor.
In American history, the Articles of Confederation was the precursor framework to the US Constitution when the country was more an alliance of 13 states instead of a union of states that exist together as part of a single entity. The reason the US Constitution came into being were the limitations of having no central authority to enforce agreed upon standards, like the ability to enforce the collection of resources to raise an army.
I could see the Federation coming into existence for similar reasons.
And because of either the Coalition’s failures, shortcomings, or just Earth, Andoria, Vulcan, and the Tellarites realizing their shared interests working together, the Federation came into being as a new interstellar state as a successor.
In American history, the Articles of Confederation was the precursor framework to the US Constitution when the country was more an alliance of 13 states instead of a union of states that exist together as part of a single entity. The reason the US Constitution came into being were the limitations of having no central authority to enforce agreed upon standards, like the ability to enforce the collection of resources to raise an army.
I could see the Federation coming into existence for similar reasons.
It’s not about the unification of all members of a species everywhere but about the representation of each species in the body politic of the Federation. Non Federation humans are not represented by the Federation any more than Romulans are despite being of the same species as Vulcans. But if Romulus wanted to join the Federation it would have to reunify with the Vulcan. That does not mean that they would have to follow Surak, but they would have to unite with Vulcan (as Australia with the rest of Earth) and then send mutual representatives to the Council. As we saw in “Unification III.”
That they’re expats, yes, and can vote on House matters but not Senate. We’re talking about aliens with different biologies and psychologies. It’s not a 1-to-1 parallel to dealing with different nations of Humans.
Sure it would. The Arcturians could have been an early Dominion target or there could have simply been a lot of people dying in the war.
Nothing outside of canon is “‘real’ within the canonical Star Trek Universe,” including the Confederacy of Vulcan you cite in this reply or the many other items from the Treklit that you employ in your headcanon. Be fair.
That’s an interesting philosophy but not one I’d like to test in such a scenario. With time the physical and mental clones might distinguish themselves from one another but not immediately and likely not as much as non-clones. Such as they are, they’re an unfair advantage.
If they had been manipulating elections for a while or otherwise to the extent that they now possessed unfair advantages over other states that they were not willing to give up or make amends for, obviously war would be an option. Ideally with 149-to-1 it might take as long as Gulf War I.
Already addressed last reply. Trends arise from similar populations even with diversity within them and the vested interests of similar groups of beings are an inescapable reality. We believe in democracy because it serves us as well as those different from us. That through democracy we retain our rights to first life, then liberty, then to the pursuit of happiness. If another party is gaming the system to deny those founding principles, both amendments and revolution remain options — see Texas v. White below.
Aliens are more different still.
Why do you think there was a wealth redistribution movement in the Colonies?
Didn’t Texas v. White decided that a state couldn’t secede? Only if there were a revolution in a state could the rest of the union vote on whether or not to permit it.
That's basically correct.
The underlying case was about the Confederate government that controlled Texas during the Civil War selling US bonds which were owned by Texas pre-Civil War. The Reconstruction-era Texas government sued to reclaim ownership, saying the sale of the bonds wasn't legal since the Confederate government wasn't legitimate.
The Supreme Court ruled that unilateral secession by a state is illegal. Texas, and all other Confederacy member states, remained part of the United States even while in rebellion (i.e., citing Article IV, Section 4, the ruling bases part of its reasoning in that a state, as defined constitutionally, is distinct from its government and the acts of that government since the "guarantee clause" speaks of them separately and was the authority which allowed Congress to install a Reconstruction government). And, most importantly, all acts done by an illegal state government outside the bounds of the US Constitution are "absolutely null."
The opinion argues that Texas became part of a "perpetual union" when it joined the United States, and only if the other members of that union which now have interests in Texas agree can it secede. I don't think you necessarily need a "revolution" in a state, but hypothetically a state could petition Congress to secede in the same way a US Territory like Puerto Rico could petition Congress to become a state.
Right, it wasn’t revolution in the state but nationally I was thinking of.
Per Chief Justice Chase’s Majority Opinion:
When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.
Why?
Ex.
But... why? Why would representation occur on the basis of species rather than on the basis of polity? Especially since representation on the basis of biological identity rarely avoids becoming discriminatory in real life?
Why? If the Romulans are a separate culture with separate interests and do not inhabit the same planet, then why shouldn't they be eligible for separate Federation Membership if they so apply?
"Unification III" established that the Romulans chose to reunify with the Vulcans, and vice versa, and that the political entity created through this re-unification, Ni'Var, continued the former Vulcan polity's Membership. It did not establish that the Romulan polity was ineligible for separate Federation Membership.
Hold on. So you're saying that if you're a Tellarite whose family moved to Earth a hundred years ago, you can vote for Member of the Federation House of Representatives for United Earth, but not for Federation Senator for United Earth? Because what you are describing is discrimination on the basis of species.
It doesn't have to be a one-to-one parallel to be discriminatory for no clearly-articulated purpose.
The numbers of casualties we canonically heard were only ever in the billions. If the Arcturians have the capacity to clone and rear to maturity billions of individuals in less than a week, the Federation could have raised an army of hundreds of trillions in an extremely short amount of time -- long before the war ever started. This just does not add up.
But either way, on further thought it occurs to me that the Federation would probably consider such industrial-level cloning reproduction to be tantamount to genetic augmentation. As such, I think it's unlikely the Federation would consider the Arcturian polity as eligible for Membership.
I have only used the term "Confederacy of Vulcan" as a convenient name for the Vulcan polity. If you would prefer I only ever refer to the Vulcan polity as "the Vulcan polity," I can do that too. I'm not using the version of the Confederacy of Vulcan from the novels -- I'm only using the name. There is a big difference between using a convenient name from non-canonical sources for something that we know exists in canon, and using non-canonical details.
You mean, "equal rights under the law?"
Again, this would never happen. You could not "manipulate elections" by getting a colony admitted as a Member, because such a plot could absolutely never be kept secret. If a colony were to get admitted as a separate Member, it would be because the Federation government evaluated that polity and determined it was not going to be doing any such thing, that its interests were genuinely distinct from that of its "mother planet," that its cultural identity was distinct from that of its "mother planet."
I mean, if you're a warmonger, sure, but it's ridiculous to talk about war that could kill millions upon millions of people as a legitimate response to a hypothetical scenario that would never happen.
Yeah, no, repeating a claim without evidence does not make it true. We have numerous examples of people from the same species with radically different cultures, identities, and interests in the Star Trek canon (and in real life). There is no reason whatsoever to imagine that a former Andorian colony world must necessarily vote with Andor in the Federation Council a majority of the time.
All the more reason a former colony world might have extremely different interests than its "mother planet!"
Because there were. The Senate was explicitly described by the Framers as an institution whose purpose included protecting the property rights of the wealthy against those with less.
Texas v. White decided that a state may not unilaterally succeed. It left open the possibility of a state seceding with the consent of the federal government. Quoting the decision: "The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States." Bold added for emphasis.
So the United States has the legal right, if it so chooses, to establish a legal process by which it may consent to its states seceding, and that does not mean the U.S. is not a sovereign state.
Similarly, the fact that the Federation apparently has a legal process by which its Members may secede with the UFP's consent, does not preclude the UFP from being a sovereign state.
Because aliens are alien.
Culture isn't the issue. There are many diverse cultures on Earth, perhaps on Kesprytt among the Kes and the Prytt. United government is not about wiping out cultural diversity. It's about forming a government that is optimized for the whole of a people. The Federation is about forming a government that is optimized for all possible kinds of people. Assuming that a form of government that works for humans works for all kinds people is myopic.
There is no House and Senate. House refers to the areas in which there is similarity between species and Senate to which there is not. If a Bynar "couplet" equals one person what right do human immigrants to Bynaus or the overarching Federation have to vote to change the law so that each individual Bynar is counted in the human way as a person?
Maybe Arcturians are counted differently having to do with their cloned nature. Also, casualty numbers (computing numbers, fleet numbers, dates, etc) change all the time in Trek.
Often non canonical details find their way into the canon or are the basis for where canon goes. Arcturian cloning wasn't an idea from the fanon but from the background information form TMP. Future Trek stories could do anything with it, dumping for keeping it. With where the real world is likely to go in our mastery over biology I think keeping it would be wise as an avenue to explore future possibilities.
Committing voter fraud undercuts equal rights by breaking the law.
Name-calling is ridiculous; quit it if you want to keep talking. The scales of interstellar wars in these sci-fi shows do usually reach the millions or billions of casualties and those are often conservative numbers given the levels of technological sophistication stipulated for these peoples. There are 8 billion on this planet alone and we may yet count them all as casualties of war. All of these scenarios are hypothetical regardless if they would "never" happen or not and it's wise to never say never in the realm of politics if you want to make sure some of them never do. All that said, depending on the damage done by the Arcturians and — again — if they did not adequately make up for it, war is always an option and can be the most logical one.
Ignoring a claim does not make it false. I'm curious as to why you think the example of Australia was used in "Attached." It's rather arbitrary to think that polities should be limited to one a planet. Why shouldn't the Federation ally with the Kes?
Aliens are different still than humans, not each other within the same species.
So what? That doesn't make representation based on biology less discriminatory.
"A" people. Right there. If a former colony world has undergone a form of ethnogenesis whereby they adopt a different communal identity, then they are no longer part of the same "people" as their originating world. If the Andorian Empire founds the colony of Artoro, and the Artoroans undergo ethnogenesis and cease to consider themselves the same people as the Andorian Empire, then there is no reason to oblige them to remain under the Andorian Empire.
And so is assuming that people ought to remain under the government of their species's origin planet just because it's their origin planet.
Who said they would? Again, this kind of question would get negotiated in advance. When the Bynar polity enters the Federation, there would be a legal process already agreed-upon by both the Bynar polity and the Federation to determine how to count Bynar couplets for the purposes of determining civil rights and liberties.
You keep assuming these things wouldn't be worked out in advance and the assumption makes no sense.
Or maybe the idea that they clone billions of themselves overnight is silly and inconsistent with subsequent canonical productions.
The fact that non-canonical details sometimes make their way into canon does not change the fact that using the name "Confederacy of Vulcan" is not the same as using a substantive background detail. Do stay on topic.
Well, it's been forty years and they've never used it, and nothing about the concept makes sense in the context of later canonical productions. I think we can safely ignore it.
Let's review the conversation tree here:
Sci: If it were real though, I still don't think sentient beings should be discriminated against as you suggest. I also don't think those clones would be as uniform in their thinking as you describe. Sentient beings have a way of refusing to fit into narrow parameters.
Arpy: That’s an interesting philosophy but not one I’d like to test in such a scenario.
Sci: You mean, "equal rights under the law?"
Arpy: Committing voter fraud undercuts equal rights by breaking the law.
Your reply, as you can see, is a non sequitur. I explicitly advocated for legal equality for Arcturian clones, up to and including voting rights under the law. If someone says, "The law should allow for X," it is a nonsensical to reply, "No, X is illegal." 1) You have not clearly established that it is illegal, only that you think it ought to be; 2) You need to argue why X ought to be illegal.
In this context, you need to argue why it is that some sentient beings should not have equal rights under the law as other sentient beings.
No. This argument is absurd. War is not a legitimate response to non-violent action. At most, a criminal conspiracy to commit widespread voter fraud on the part of a Federation Member State would warrant expulsion from the Federation. At most.
Burden of proof is on you. Prove that species are so homogeneous that no colony world can undergo legitimate ethnogenesis as to warrant separate Federation Membership.
It's not arbitrary, because these are planet-based lifeforms we're talking about.
They considered it! And they determined that the Kes were too warmongering and xenophobic to accept as Members.
Which is pure nonsense, because we have seen, constantly, that there is enormous diversity within alien species.
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