Trek's VIETNAM

[RobertScorpio]

The Vietnam was an unpopular war and was seen as a quagmire. Did the Federation ever have one? The way the war with Cardassia is spoken of, at times, leads me to believe that it was. Do you get that vibe too?

Rob

 

[flandry84]

Seeing as none of the senior staff(apart from Picard and O'Brien)seem to have ever even seen a Cardassian before 'The Wounded',leads me to believe that the Cardassian war was a nasty piece of work fought a long way from anywhere by relatively small contingents of both sides.
Vietnam maybe but more like present day Afghanistan.

 

[RobertScorpio]

yeah, I could see that. I wonder if any of the books went into that more in a more detailed way. It gets glossed over on the series(s) but could have made a great book series...

Rob

 

[caisson2delta]

^It might have made for a wonderful, multistory arc of like 3 episodes. It could've featured O'Brien and the incident he spoke of, as well as the adventures of Captain Jellico. Could've been done in a flashback sort of way.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think the conflict between the Federation and the Cardassian Union was more of a straightforward dispute over territory than anything else. I think it was a series of fairly ugly border wars that went on for a very long time until it was resolved by treaty.

I think the closest onscreen analogy the Federation might have had to the Vietnam War might have been during the brief time prior to the Dominion War when the Federation and the Klingons were unknowingly manipulated into fighting each other over Cardassian territory. I don't imagine that conflict received a tremendous amount of support from the Federation public, and was probably viewed negatively in hindsight after it was ultimately revealed that it had all been orchestrated by the Dominion in the first place.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Yep..thats a good choice too. I guess that Siege at A7766 (or whatever it was called) was about the most raw Star trek war episode we ever saw...and yet, then again, there must have been a "vietnam' aspect to the cardassian stuff because so many Federation officers were willing to join the maquis...

ROb

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think the Maquis movement started because there was an amendment to the original Federation-Cardassian Treaty that redrew the borders between them, causing some Federation colonies to suddenly end up in Cardassian territory (and vice-versa). There were many Federation colonists who refused to give up their homes and be relocated. The Maquis came about to prevent the Cardassians from taking those colonies by force, IIRC...

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Exactly...the Maquis movement happened because the Federation betrayed and sold out its own people. Either you got kicked out of your home, or you lived under Cardassian rule. What kind of government treats its own people as pawns in that manner? One like the Cardassian Union. Which should say something very scary about the Federation, if you ask me.

 

[mattyhugh]

Exactly...the Maquis movement happened because the Federation betrayed and sold out its own people. Either you got kicked out of your home, or you lived under Cardassian rule. What kind of government treats its own people as pawns in that manner? One like the Cardassian Union. Which should say something very scary about the Federation, if you ask me.

To be fair, the option to remain in their colonies under Cardassian rule was a compromise. They UFP wanted to evacuate them first.

 

[Anwar]

And those people knew those worlds were disputed territory all along, so it's not like they were really 100% innocent victims. I'm sure the families of the Starfleet officers who died fighting the Cardies were thinking "Our loved ones died because those selfish fools settled worlds that weren't really theirs to begin with!"

 

[James Wright]

The Vietnam War was fought to keep communism from spreading.and it was a long fought war 20 years!
The governments around the Federation are stable, aren't they?
All the wars the Federation has fought have been brief, except the Romulan Earth War.
Something just occurred to me, the Vietnam War was fought between a modern military super power and its allies and a nation that wasn't a super power but which had allies too.
Because of tactics employed by the higher ups the United States lost the war.
If the Federation did have "its'" own Vietnam War would they have lost also?

James

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Exactly...the Maquis movement happened because the Federation betrayed and sold out its own people. Either you got kicked out of your home, or you lived under Cardassian rule. What kind of government treats its own people as pawns in that manner? One like the Cardassian Union. Which should say something very scary about the Federation, if you ask me.

To be fair, the option to remain in their colonies under Cardassian rule was a compromise. They UFP wanted to evacuate them first.

Forcible resettlement wasn't a sound option, either, and is very frightening as to what it says about property rights. Sure, there may not be currency, but if your possessions and your land aren't yours, there's something very wrong there.

And those people knew those worlds were disputed territory all along, so it's not like they were really 100% innocent victims. I'm sure the families of the Starfleet officers who died fighting the Cardies were thinking "Our loved ones died because those selfish fools settled worlds that weren't really theirs to begin with!"

And how do we know the Cardassian claim had any "legitimate" standing?

Uninhabited worlds, I can see trading those like playing cards. But once people have settled those worlds, unless they did it without the Federation's consent (which WOULD be selfish, if the Federation didn't allow it because they thought the Cardassians had a superior claim), those people need to be defended. Otherwise, where would one draw the line? And how could worlds further in the Federation, or that joined later, trust that they would be defended when THEIR backs got up against the wall? How would they know they wouldn't be the next concession? I know I'd be very worried about that if I were a Federation citizen, even if I weren't from a DMZ borderworld.

 

[Caliburn24]

The Vietnam analogy is a silly one to make. Every war is unique.

But if we want to ask if the Federation has ever fought an unpopular war and lost(or at the least did not win) said war, then it becomes a more interesting question.

We have very rarely seen Federation civilians during times of war, and I can't really recall anything aside from the DS9 "Paradise Lost" stuff that dealt with it directly. But that is meaningless because it was all evil shapeshifters and conspiracy stuff.

Has any Federation civilian expressed an anti-war sentiment on-screen? Not since David Marcus, and even that was just a general loathing of the military, not a specific war.

So moving on since Federation public opinion has not really been depicted. Which wars has the Federation not won?

None really, they've had partial victory in every war, and more often total victory.

So no, I don't think Starfleet has ever had a "Vietnam" type experience.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I think a closer example was YESTERDAY'S ENTERPRISE. That war wasn't going good for the Federation, and it would have been interesting to have fleshed more of that altern-universe's situation.

Rob

 

[Finn]

I think a closer example was YESTERDAY'S ENTERPRISE. That war wasn't going good for the Federation, and it would have been interesting to have fleshed more of that altern-universe's situation.

Rob

How so? How is that conflict closer to Vietnam?

 

[RobertScorpio]

Well, we don't know that it wasn't. Because after the events of THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY the Klingons shouldn't have posed a threat, and yet, they seem to be winning a war against the more advanced side..us. Yes, all of that is speculation, but since can't say either way then...you never know.

Rob

 

[Anticitizen]

You could make a case that the TOS episode 'Errand of Mercy' contained Vietnam-like elements, in the sense that the Federation was in conflict with the Klingons, and pre-emptively was willing to militarize the Organian planet in an attempt to prevent the spread of Commu... err, Klingonism... Not a perfect analogy, but it's the closest I can think of in Trek, in the sense that it's a struggle between two 'world powers' (galaxial powers?) involving a third-party country (planet) as the staging ground.

 

[aelius]

"A Private Little War" was a direct Viet Nam analogy.
The Federation and the Klingons were arming the natives of a primitive planet to fight a proxy war.
Yeah, the Klingons started it, but the Federation then started arming another faction on the planet.
Very clear violation of the Prime Directive with the justification of balancing the two sides.

 

[mtblillie]

Seeing as none of the senior staff(apart from Picard and O'Brien)seem to have ever even seen a Cardassian before 'The Wounded',leads me to believe that the Cardassian war was a nasty piece of work fought a long way from anywhere by relatively small contingents of both sides.
Vietnam maybe but more like present day Afghanistan.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean...this sounds like you are saying they had never actually seen a cardassian face to face before, but in the wounded both O'Brian and the captain of the Pheonix talked about fighting cardassians on the ground, face to face.

Unless of coarse you meant that they hadn't seen one since that conflict, in which case ignore the above.

I kind of thought of the Cardassian conflict as more of the Korean war. It was a fight over territory, (though the Korean war had more to do with Communism vs Democracy, it was still over which would win the territory of Korea), as was Vietnam, but Korea ended in a stailmate (SP?) between US/S Korea and China/N Korea, whereas in Vietnam after the US pulled out of the conflict the Communist regiem took over (which didn't turn out to be as bad as everyone thought it would). But in Korea, the US and China still both offer limited support to their respective side, and North/South Korea stand at arms on the border, which to me is a lot like when the Maqui problem first began, where both Federation and Cardassian civilians were fighting each other over the colonies on the border.

As far as "Vietnam" type conflict with almost no public support and fighting a battle that wasn't really ours to fight I don't know that I can think of any examples directly.

I always thought that the conflict between the Andorians and Vulcans was like our cold war.