I'm thinking, as everyone has already said, Cardassia-Bajor. Except, it's not.
Well, it's not insofar as Cardassia never re-invaded Bajor after having previously recognized Bajor's independence the way Russia has re-invaded Ukraine after having previously recognized Ukraine's independence. But with both Cardassia/Bajor and Russia/Ukraine, you have a clear example of a regional hegemon and a colonized nation victimized by the hegemon.
There's nothing in mainstream Trek history to suggest that Cardassia went through the tumultuous times that Soviet Russia did in the twentieth century.
As others have said, this is false.
It's just a military society not much different from the Klingons.
... No, the Cardassian Union pre-2372 Detapa Council uprising was
profoundly different from the Klingon Empire.
The Klingon Empire is a deeply fractured, feudalist society where the primary form of political organization and loyalty is actually to the various aristocratic Houses rather than to the Empire as a shared political project. The Klingon Defense Force as a unifying, Empire-wide organization loyal to the Imperial government rather than to any particular House seems to be a relatively recent development (no indication it existed during the 2150s (we never see KDF uniforms in ENT), and ships are referred to as being loyal to various Houses rather than to the Empire as late as the 2256-57 UFP/Klingon War, suggesting the KDF may not have even existed as late as the 2250s. Klingon culture is extremely individualistic, and high-level politics is very personality-driven. The Empire was originally organized as a monarchy, and even though the Chancellor has to share power with the High Council, it is very clear that the Chancellor is the individual leader of the Empire. The ruling class prizes ritualized violence, but the Empire does not seem to be much of a surveillance state (they didn't detect proof of House Duras's Romulan alliances for decades, for instance).
By contrast, the Cardassian Union is very different. The state is a highly-developed institution and loyalty to the state is inculcated in Cardassian culture from an early age.
Family is extremely important, but the idea of aristocratic Houses as a basis for political organization appears absent from their culture. The state seems to function on a sort of collectivist principle -- not in the Soviet or leftist sense of the means of production being communally owned and managed or in the sense of nominal equality of the classes, but simply in the sense that power seems to be shared by groups of powerful members of the ruling class rather than monopolized by individuals. We never hear of one dictator of Cardassia, or one leader of the Detapa Council, or one leader of the Central Command -- Enabran Tain's status as a singular leader of the Obsidian Order seems to be anomalous given how group-centric other ruling Cardassian institutions are depicted as being. We never really know who's ultimately the leader of the Cardassian Union before Dukat's coup. The government is nominally divided between the Central Command, the Obsidian Order, and the Detapa Council; the Council is virtually powerless over the Central Command in real life, and the Central Command seems to control Cardassian foreign policy and most levers of power, with the Obsidian Order as its only real rival for authority. There is a pervasive surveillance state, with the Obsidian Order maintaining a totalitarian system of control over the population. Cardassian culture is fixated more on a colonialist need to accumulate wealth and resources than on the kinds of highly-individualistic ritualized violence that preoccupy the Klingon ruling class. Overall, Cardassia reads as far more colonist capitalist to me than the Klingons.
But Russia-Ukraine-US does NOT equal Cardassia-Bajor-Federation.
Nobody claimed the parallel is exact. But Cardssia/Bajor does equal Russia/Ukraine in the sense of the former being a regional hegemon that invaded, occupied, colonized, and oppressed the latter until being forced to withdraw.
Since you already mentioned it, the Maquis are obviously important. Throwing the equation out of balance. It's the perfect vision of resistance.
Not really. A conflict between the UFP and a secessionist faction on its border with the Cardassians does not make Cardassia any less of a colonizer to Bajor, nor does the absence of a U.S. civil conflict make Russia any less of a colonizer to Ukraine.
No,
the Jem'Hadar are the ones who finally defeat the Maquis after Dukat brings Cardassia into the Dominion.
Yet. Like a ghost, Kira Nerys.
.... that is not a sentence.
Is Ukraine Bajor? No.
Bajor is Iraq.
I think that very valid arguments could be made comparing Bajor to both Ukraine
and Iraq.
