What do you think the Typhon Pact represents?

[Rojixus]

Now that you mention it, forceful reintegration would do more harm than good for the Federation. It may drive the Andorians into the arms of the Typhon Pact as well as any other Federation members currently sitting on the fence as well as drive off any potential members from wanting to join the Federation. I take it back. However, the Federation should still be on guard lest the Typhon Pact decide to intervene in Federation internal politics.

 

[rfmcdpei]

The United States has lasted as long as the Federation and we haven't lost a single state yet. (There was this rebellion back in the 19th century but we took care of that one.) What does that say about the UFP?

That the Federation never had any member-states who were devoted to the practice of slavery or other like atrocities?

(UFP 1, USA 0.)

 

[Rojixus]

The United States has lasted as long as the Federation and we haven't lost a single state yet. (There was this rebellion back in the 19th century but we took care of that one.) What does that say about the UFP?

That the Federation never had any member-states who were devoted to the practice of slavery or other like atrocities?

(UFP 1, USA 0.)

What about Ardana?

(UFP1, USA 1.)

 

[Deranged Nasat]

However, the Federation should still be on guard lest the Typhon Pact decide to intervene in Federation internal politics.

Oh, definitely. I'm sure we all agree on that. Certain factions in the Pact have, after all, been meddling all over the place - with the UFP, other parties like the Talarians, etc.

 

[Ian Keldon]

I am behind on the Typhon Pact books...could someone tell me if they followed up yet on the hints dropped through various other post-Borg Invasion books that some of the Federation's current members might be considering breaking away and/or changing allegiances to the Pact?

I think the Pact represents yet another result of the Federation's massive complacency pre-DW/BI. They let threats fester that could have been relatively easily solved one at a time...now those individual threats have amalgamated into a much more serious problem with much less obvious solutions.

 

[rfmcdpei]

The United States has lasted as long as the Federation and we haven't lost a single state yet. (There was this rebellion back in the 19th century but we took care of that one.) What does that say about the UFP?

That the Federation never had any member-states who were devoted to the practice of slavery or other like atrocities?

(UFP 1, USA 0.)

What about Ardana?

(UFP1, USA 1.)

The Ardana that, as soon as it was discovered to be practicing a caste system, instituted reforms aimed at eliminating the split between the cloud-dwellers and the troglytes without the threat of force being applied?

The states that seceded from the United States did so because their claims to not only own human beings as property, but to have these claims recognized even in states where slavery was illegal and to actively expand the domain of slavery domestically and abroad, were being contradicted. It took four long years of war, culminating in the unconditional surrender of the seceding territories, to force the seceding state to get rid of the legal institution of slavery.

The Federation never included such poor choices as member-states. (Bajor's caste system would have prevented that world from becoming a member-state of the Federation.) Even the bad cases, like Ardana, were fundamentally more tractable.

(UFP 1, USA 0.)

 

[Rojixus]

No, the Ardanans only started on talks to reform their caste-system, no actual reforms were stated to occur. The Stratos City-Dwellers were quite devoted to their caste-system, that's not going to go away over night. Apparently, the Federation was so lax in its admissions policies that it let a planet that has an apartheid-like system into its ranks without even having it fill out a questionnaire. You wouldn't catch the US making such a rookie mistake.

(UFP 1, USA 2)

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Shall we just accept that any and all nations or alliances, whether fictional or actually existing, are less than perfect and can be controversial at times, while also having many positive attributes?

That would include the Typhon Pact.

 

[Ian Keldon]

The United States has lasted as long as the Federation and we haven't lost a single state yet. (There was this rebellion back in the 19th century but we took care of that one.) What does that say about the UFP?

That the Federation understands the concept of state sovereignty, unlike the US[/politics]

 

[rfmcdpei]

No, the Ardanans only started on talks to reform their caste-system, no actual reforms were stated to occur.

Again, the initiation of talks on reforming the caste system was more than any of the pro-slavery states in the US could have accepted. If anything, the tendency was to extend slavery throughout the antebellum period despite outside pressure, with the plight of free blacks and abolitionists steadily deteriorating.

The Ardanans were tractable in a way that the Federation was not.

You wouldn't catch the US making such a rookie mistake.

That's right. It admitted slave-owning states into the Union from the very start, indeed on the very condition that the rights of people in these states to hold others as property be respected and protected.

The Federation did better than that.

 

[Rojixus]

I was not aware that blatant ignorance of a potential member-state's social system was in any way a good thing. It's not like the Ardanans even tried to hide what they were doing, a simple visit would have exposed them for what they were. At least when the United States admitted a slave-state it actually knew the state would be a slave state. The US didn't accidentally stumble on their dark little secret decades after the fact. Who knows how many other member-states have similar "secrets"?

 

[Christopher]

Regardless of their actual importance, the secession of the Andorians was a symbolic blow and sets an ominous precedent for the future. If a founding member of the Federation decided to secede, where does it end? It wouldn't have mattered if it were the Bolians or Grazerites seceding, the Andorians mattered only because they were a founding member. It only takes one well-placed blow to a building's foundation to send it tumbling down.

It bewilders me that so many people seem to look at a simple change in the astropolitical status quo as some kind of harbinger of apocalypse. Why is the Typhon Pact so much scarier than the Klingons and Romulans and Cardassians and all the other political rivals the UFP has been dealing with for centuries? Is it just that the books' decision to change the familiar status quo of Star Trek has left some people feeling a lack of certainty?

What bewilders me more is when people talk about the situation as though it were some real-life political situation that could turn cataclysmic without anyone being able to stop it. You do remember, right, that these are stories we're making up for fun and profit? Nothing happens in the books unless we choose to make it happen. Naturally we want to tell stories that pose challenges and risks to our heroes, even to their civilization, because that makes things interesting. But we wouldn't actually tear down the entire Federation, because then we couldn't tell Star Trek stories anymore, and that would be a bummer. Not to mention that, while CBS has given us remarkable freedom to make changes in their franchise, I doubt they'd approve a story that destroyed the whole Federation.

No, but the way the Gorn feel about Cestus III and how the perceive the Federation as getting the planet implies that the Gorn aren't exactly seeing the Federation as a friend.

Cestus III was over 110 years ago at this point. Picard and Data saved the Gorn ruling caste from extermination less than a decade ago. I think that would earn a lot of good feeling.

 

[Rojixus]

I would take all this hoopla as a complement actually. You and the other authors have created such realistic and engrossing stories that the reader feels as if the story has come alive for them. Also, what separates the Typhon Pact from other political rivals is that it's the Romulans, Tzenkethi, and all the other old rivals combined! That's the gimmick here so to speak, all the Federation's old enemies united in some alliance created seemingly to challenge the Federation. That's enough to make some weary of the Typhon Pact.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Andor wasn't the first Federation world to secede, was it? Others have done. Maybe not founding members, but if it's happened before, and the Federation survived that, they'll survive this. And I would hazard a guess that Andor could even rejoin the Federation later, if it chose. It is still a democracy, isn't it?

OTOH, I think the Federation would be well within its rights to attempt to stop Andor from joining the Typhon Pact. Andor's location deep within Federation territory would be an unacceptable security risk should Andor join the TP. There'd be movements of troops, supplies, intelligence, etc. which the Federation would naturally, and justifiably, block.

And having a TP member so close to other Federation worlds...there's potential for Pact espionage there, I'd think, if not outright attack. Cuban Missile Crisis, anyone?

 

[Christopher]

Also, what separates the Typhon Pact from other political rivals is that it's the Romulans, Tzenkethi, and all the other old rivals combined! That's the gimmick here so to speak, all the Federation's old enemies united in some alliance created seemingly to challenge the Federation.

Uhh, no, because the big enemies were mainly groups like the Klingons (now allies), Cardassians (now allies), Borg (now gone), Dominion (now gone), etc. Most of the old enemies aren't there anymore, which is why the Pact was introduced to replace them.

And the goal was not to create a Legion of Doom out of top villains, but just the opposite -- to take civilizations that have been underdeveloped in the past and give them an overdue turn in the spotlight. The Romulans were included as a more familiar group to anchor the rest, but the Breen were deliberately kept mysterious on DS9 after having been just an extended in-joke for years, the Tzenkethi were only mentioned infrequently and never seen, the Gorn and Tholians were only seen a couple of times and occasionally name-checked, and the Kinshaya were an obscure throwaway name from a couple of Klingon-related books written decades apart. These were the minor players, being given their day in the sun at last, because most of the heavy hitters are no longer in the game. That's why the BRICS and European Union analogies work well -- these are the powers that were formerly marginalized by the big superpowers, and now they've united to become a first-tier player themselves at last.

 

[Rojixus]

If you didn't want to have the Typhon Pact come off as a Legion of Doom pastiche, you shouldn't have packed it with powers with a history of hostility towards the Federation.

 

[CaptainDonovin]

Yeah, and I don't know about anybody else, but I am alot more interested in the continued development of the different pact governments/races, and their relationships to each other, than I am to any potential conflict with the Federation. Honestly, based off of what we got in the TP books so far, I would not be at all upset if we got books with just the TP appearing and no Federation appearances at all.

Same here. While I was happy with the Romulan War (for the most part), the Dominion War, & the events that lead to the formation of the Typhon Pact, there already is a franchise called Star Wars & id rather Trek didn't become that.

I would love for the story line to continue without a full scale war, bringing the UFP allies closer & some more cloak & daggar between the two powers.

I would love to see a Pact only novel.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Andor wasn't the first Federation world to secede, was it? Others have done.

Vulcan almost seceded in "Spock's World".

And, according to Peter David and "Gateways: Cold Wars", the Caitians have been in and out several times. Yes, when they were out, they wanted to be in. And when they were in, they wanted to be out.

 

[JD]

The Selelvians were kicked out of the Federation in New Frontier.

What bewilders me more is when people talk about the situation as though it were some real-life political situation that could turn cataclysmic without anyone being able to stop it. You do remember, right, that these are stories we're making up for fun and profit? Nothing happens in the books unless we choose to make it happen. Naturally we want to tell stories that pose challenges and risks to our heroes, even to their civilization, because that makes things interesting. But we wouldn't actually tear down the entire Federation, because then we couldn't tell Star Trek stories anymore, and that would be a bummer. Not to mention that, while CBS has given us remarkable freedom to make changes in their franchise, I doubt they'd approve a story that destroyed the whole Federation.

Well, not in the main novelverse anyway. I could easily see a Myriad Universe story about the fall of the Federation. Things got pretty apocalyptic in KRAD's MyrU Dominion story, didn't they?

 

[Sjaddix]

yeah how are they not going to look legion of doom like. The Romulans already help but the Breen sacked Earth and were best buds with the Dominion and unlike the Cardassians were not crippled. Not to mention the TP basically comes into existence when we have a serious void in credible threats. Cardassians are crippled, Klingons are best friends, Dominion not active, Borg defeated. No Big Bad is left.

And yes the Andorians are significant. I mean imagine if one of the Five Permanent members of the UN just walked out and quit. Or we actually let another State secede.

still obviously the federation will not fall. This is Fiction, the Heroes always win in the end even if they go through a hundred or a thousand years of darkness. So I don't see the Federation totally dissolving into nothing or getting seriously crippled for long at least. Although I could see some coups and a lot more secession but as long as the Khitomer Alliance stands the Typhoon Pact is not much of a problem. They don't have a unified enough military to present a threat of course that could change.