Why not? Vulcans have been shown through out the various series to largely have a "Vulcan Prime" philosophy towards Humans and other species. The Vulcans make the Earth Prime people look like rank beginners.
When, post-Reformation, have the Vulcans ever tried to expel all non-Vulcans from their system by threatening mass murder?
Hardly a reason not to have a species in the CoP.I think more what the OP said, a United Nations that works. A intergovernmental organization, and less a all encompassing world-wide single nation/state.
That idea contradicts the canonical evidence.
We know from "Attached" that by 2150 -- aka, one year before ENT starts -- there is a world government.
We know from "Broken Bow" that Soval is the Vulcan Ambassador.
We know from "The Forge" that United Earth operates an embassy on Vulcan. We also know from "The Forge" that when they died, members of something called the United Earth Diplomatic Corps had their caskets draped in the Flag of United Earth.
We know from real life that it is sovereign states that employ diplomatic corps, operate embassies, exchange ambassadors, and drape their fallen service members' caskets in flags.
Seems pretty clear to me that United Earth pre-UFP is a sovereign state. I'm sure it practices federalism and has a constitutional arrangement that protects a great deal of autonomy for its constituent polities -- running an entire
planet almost necessitates that -- but it is clearly (pre-UFP) a sovereign state, as is, say, the Andorian Empire.
Kind of like the current "world government" that meets in Dubai every year.
There is no world government, and there is no world government that meets in Dubai every year.
Perhaps you are thinking of the
World Government Summit. But the WGS is not a world government; it is a non-governmental organization that seeks to facilitate intergovernmental cooperation for the future.
As I understand it, Starfleet (the Earth Starfleet, anyway) is a subdivision of the United Earth Space Probe Agency. There may be other services that are also part of UESPA, but Starfleet is the only one we know of for certain.
Where the MACOs figure into all this, we have no idea. Although I guess it's possible that both Earth Starfleet and MACO are part of UESPA...would make sense, actually.
I always assumed that the Military Assault Command Organization was a special operations division of a larger United Earth Army which was itself part of the United Earth Ministry of Defense, and the United Earth Starfleet was a division of the United Earth Space Probe Agency. I figure the MACOs were seconded to Archer's command. But that's just my speculation.
As for taking orders: When (Minister) Nathan Samuels was aboard in the Demons/Terra Prime arc, he couldn't give orders to the crew. This probably means he wasn't the Prime Minister, because if he had been, then surely he'd have been Commander in Chief.
Not necessarily. I want to give a bit of background on something pertinent to this issue, so bear with me. One of the things to remember about parliamentary systems is the consequence of dividing the roles of
head of government and
head of state. This concept can be a bit foreign to Americans, but I think one of the clearest ways to think about it is this: it's like the difference between when the U.S. President is pursuing her partisan agenda, and when the President is acting as the common leader of all Americans. Sometimes, the President is saying, "We must pass this particular tax reform because it will be better for
X;" and sometimes the President is saying, "We are all Americans and we all believe this."
Parliamentary systems often divide those roles between the Prime Minister (or analogous office) and the President or Monarch, with the President/Monarch being the mostly ceremonial, nonpartisan office everyone respects and has in common. The personal embodiment of the unity of the state. This in comparison to the Prime Minister, who represents the temporary administration of the day.
So often, you have a situation where the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the state is not
actually the Prime Minister. So, for instance, the President of the Republic of Austria is the commander-in-chief of the Federal Armed Forces, even though it is the Federal Chancellor who is the head of government who makes real decisions; the President of the Italian Republic is the commander-in-chief of the Italian Armed Forces, even though the real leader is the President of the Government of the Italian Republic; the Queen of the United Kingdom is the commander-in-chief of the British Armed Forces, even though the legal exercise of her royal powers with regards to the armed forces falls to the Minister of Defense (and the Queen is of course expected to follow the advise of her Prime Minister). Etc.
So it is not at all implausible for the Prime Minister of United Earth to attempt to issue an order in the heat of the moment to the commanding officer of a United Earth Starfleet vessel, only for that commanding officer to point out that, yes, legally-speaking, the Prime Minister is not part of the legal chain of command. In fact, as I understand it, if the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom were to attempt to issue a direct order to the commanding officer of, say,
HMS Queen Elizabeth, that commanding officer could quite accurately reply that the Prime Minister had no legal capacity to issue such an order, and that she would only obey an order from the Queen or the Minister of Defense via the correct Royal Navy channels.
Presumably, if this arrangement is how U.E. operates, then the correct procedure for a Prime Minister Samuels to follow would have been for him to either order the United Earth Minister of Defense or Minister of Space Exploration to herself issue the order to the United Earth Starfleet admiralty who would themselves issue the order to acting commanding officer Sato, or for Samuels to advise the President of United Earth to issue that order to the admiralty.
Although in the novelverse he WAS the Prime Minister, so maybe there's something else at play here.
In fairness, the ENT Relaunch novels are ambiguous as to whether or not Samuels was Prime Minister during the Terra Prime crisis. He is Prime Minister in the books set after that crisis, but it is possible he was only part of the cabinet at the time. I always figured he was Foreign Minister of United Earth during "Demons/Terra Prime," myself, though I like the idea that he becomes Prime Minister of United Earth after that.
