Why didn't the Federation help Bajor??

[WraithDukat]

It's always bothered me that the Federation did absolutely nothing to help Bajor, below are a few reasons (and dismissals of said reasons) I would like some input.

1) The Prime directive.
Yes but the prime directive doesn't apply, they're already way off their 'natural evolution' because of the Cardassian occupation, plus I think they already had Warp Drive?

2) Not wanting to antagonise the Cardassians and potentially start another war.
Fair enough, but surely they could at-least smuggle some food/medical supplies in to help a species that was literally on it's knees. I'm sure they could've done it.

I'm sure they could've even 'bought' Bajors freedom in some kind of treaty, we know they were there for the planets resources. I'm sure the Federation could've supplied the resources (given it's gigantic size) in exchange for pulling out of Bajor.

Thoughts>

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I'd assume it'd be a combination of both those reasons, as well as Federation resources needed elsewhere during the Occupation, including the Cardassian Wars, there were also conflicts against the Tzenkethi and Talarians, not to mention continued patrol of the Neutral Zone and all their other operations both within and outwith UFP space.

I'm sure the Federation would've denounced the occupation of Bajor, applied political pressure against the Cardassian Union, but with so much bloodshed already between the two powers it's doubtful they would do anything to ignite the situation for just a single planet. The terrorist tactics of the Bajorans may also have made the Federation Council nervous, not wanting to be seen condoning the actions of the Cardassians and supporting those of the Bajorans.

There may not have been any official support but I suspect there would be some citizens who would've done all they could to help, running supplies and intelligence, or even going to Bajor to help in the fighting.

Also, we don't know that Bajor is the only world the Cardassians have occupied. If it's not then the Federation would basically be seeking to break apart a foreign empire.

As with any situation there will be many factors that play small parts of a bigger picture, some that can be easier to identify and understand.

 

[Timo]

I'm not sure what this "not helping" refers to. During most of the occupation of Bajor, the UFP was apparently blowing Cardassian warships to bits and conquering (back) Cardassian planets, in these so-called Border Wars.

That they never quite got as far as Bajor is sort of understandable. Had they gotten to Bajor,
the Cardassian Union would be no more: Bajor is the next-door neighbor to the enemy homeworld! Starfleet liberating Bajor from Cardassians would have happened two weeks before Starfleet liberating Cardassia from Cardassians...

What could the UFP do in aid of the Union's very innermost conquest holding? Threaten the Union leadership? If open war fought with absurdly superior firepower doesn't do that trick, then what more could the Feds have done in the way of threats?

The war formally ended concurrently with Cardassia letting go of Bajor. We don't know if Cardassia maintained hold of some other conquests (as opposed to "honestly" colonized worlds), but we can readily speculate they did.Those just would happen to be behind the Cardassian backs rather than between them and the Federation, and therefore requiring an even bloodier fight.

The situation closely parallels the Pacific War, with Cardassians as the grossly inferior Japanese. Starfleet just never got as far as Bajor/Okinawa before realizing that the next step in this total war would entail killing pretty much every remaining Cardassian/Japanese in an utterly fanatical final confrontation. The two distinguishing factors here are that there's no A-bomb to bring military blackmail to the next level (the most basic low-intensity warfare in Trek already involves sterilizing of planets), and that this Japan cannot be totally surrounded and cut off from the holdings "behind its back" by a (cloakship?/)submarine siege.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paradise City]

The Federation seems to have a long standing isolationist policy. It's not diving headfirst into every quarrel in the galaxy.

The Prime Directive is just the centrepiece of a wider military isolationist posture. The Federation seems to try to keep Starfleet as a scientific, explorative and a border patrol force with lots of undeclared mini-wars and is always alarmed at the prospect of a generalised war.

The Federation spearheads its interests through a powerful and dynamic diplomacy. And it may have applied these techniques to the Bajoran situation but to little avail in that instance. There's discussions in Ensign Ro about diplomatic events for example.

Also Bajor might have technically joined the Cardassian Union via a corrupted/blackmailed Bajoran government. So whilst the vocabulary of occupation maybe common and is substantively true, in strict legal terms, it maybe legit . I can well imagine Federation officials having their hands tied for reasons of this sort.

Also the Federation border has perhaps only approached the Bajoran system long after the occupation has been consolidated and established as a fact. There may not be alot of information coming out from Bajor either.

 

[Kronos]

The Federation can't run around being the galaxy's police force.

 

[The Wormhole]

The Federation can't run around being the galaxy's police force.

This exactly. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that Bajor was a world which the Federation had no presence on and no jurisdiction in its space. It was not their place to step in and stop the Cardassians from occupying it. And while Bajor was under Cardassian occupation it is legally considered Cardassian territory, which severely limits what the Federation can do.

Besides, the Federation doesn't prevent their Klingon allies from conquering and enslaving non-Federation worlds, so why would they prevent the Cardassians doing the same?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

1) The Prime directive.
Yes but the prime directive doesn't apply

Actually, yes it does. @Paradise City and @The Wormhole have both explained exactly why this is so.

It's not RIGHT, of course. I'm sure the Federation would have gladly intefered in the occupation if they could legally have done so. But the sad truth of the matter is, they could not.

 

[Timo]

Jurisdiction obviously wouldn't be a problem - the Federation had no issue with waging war against the Union, or against a dozen other petty adversaries it could crush at will.

Jurisdiction thus doesn't make for a good excuse, either. The Feds don't challenge the Klingons because they can't crush the Klingons. Legally, there demonstrably wouldn't be any problems (cf. all the other opponents); even if some sort of a technicality existed, practical issues (say, every possible opponent out there always volunteering to attack first) would make those moot (cf. all the other opponents).

Is Bajor just a crybaby for not getting preferential treatment? Or a case in need of preferential treatment? I'd say the latter does hold true: it's no random Krios or Carraya to be popped out of the sphere of influence of the opponent of the day with little effort or consequence, but the very crown jewel of the Cardassian Union.

The matter still stands that Bajor got exactly what it wanted: the Feds came barging in and walloped the evil overlords till they let go. As a side effect, the Feds probably liberated every single conquered subject world of the Union first, before working their way down to Bajor. And we just never hear of those liberations because why should we? Everybody hates the UFP anyway, even if Starfleet is to be thanked for the locals like Kressari or the Xepolites or the Klaestron being independent rather than Union subjects nowadays.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[doylem1]

It might have been interesting if the treaty agreed between the Federation and Cardassians which led to the exchange of Colony Worlds and creation the DMZ and later Maquis was somehow tied into the Cardassians withdrawing from Bajor. So in liberating a world by giving up/exchange territory it led to the creation of the Marquis as they then felt betrayed by their Government by having their homes handed over to the Cardassians.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

It's not RIGHT, of course. I'm sure the Federation would have gladly intefered in the occupation if they could legally have done so. But the sad truth of the matter is, they could not.

Which is the whole point of the PD, to provide moral issues for our heroes deal with--what they want to do against what they can do. It may seem harsh, but if you look at the PD it was put in place for a very good reason, one that can't be dismissed easily.

 

[The Wormhole]

It might have been interesting if the treaty agreed between the Federation and Cardassians which led to the exchange of Colony Worlds and creation the DMZ and later Maquis was somehow tied into the Cardassians withdrawing from Bajor. So in liberating a world by giving up/exchange territory it led to the creation of the Marquis as they then felt betrayed by their Government by having their homes handed over to the Cardassians.

The Cardassians withdrew from Bajor over a year before they negotiated the treaty with the Federation which led to the creation of the DMZ.

 

[Timo]

In terms of in-universe logic and chronology, the connection between TNG and DS9 here would probably be the Central Command trying a last hurrah against the UFP in "Chain of Command"; failing humiliatingly; getting kicked in the groin by the Detapa Council when they get this rare opportunity, by being forced to leave Bajor (as Dukat laments in "Cardassians", although no doubt putting a bit of spin to it); and then getting the last word when it turns out Bajor was valuable after all.

The DMZ stuff would basically come after the Central Command bounces back and Detapa is humiliated. And the CC would get to play the "the previous government is to blame for this" card, and the "this is what you get for talking peace with the guys we tried to kill" card, and so forth, till Gul Evek basically runs the Union. But Bajor would no longer be a card to be played, having been squandered early on.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

The Cardassians withdrew from Bajor over a year before they negotiated the treaty with the Federation which led to the creation of the DMZ.

The DMZ treaty might have been being negotiated for years, it might only have been signed after the Cardassians withdrew from Bajor.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Though from what's been said the Federation seemed to have only a minimal impact on the decision to leave Bajor. The Bajorans believing they forced the Cardassians out and the Cardassians blame the Detapa Council for the decision to withdraw, which was probably facing pressure from the Federation (though I find it a little hard to believe that the Federation would demand just one planet be released from Cardassian ownership and leave any others at their mercy).

 

[Timo]

Then again, if other worlds were liberated, we'd hear little about them, with Bajor being the closest to Cardassia and subject to all the potential controversies first and foremost. If other worlds remained unliberated, there'd be grievances we would probably hear about.

Remarkably, the Cardassians themselves never really complained that the Federation would be cramping their style. Apart from the Maquis issue, there was nothing about, say, sanctions or blockades or tariffs or arms limitations or political pressure. It almost seemed as if (much as per Gul Madred's painting of a dark picture about the State of the Union) Cardassia had run out of oomph to actually do anything, so there was little point in complaining about being prevented from doing stuff. Not that such things would stop most regimes...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Wormhole]

The DMZ treaty might have been being negotiated for years, it might only have been signed after the Cardassians withdrew from Bajor.

Again though, why would the Federation care so much about Bajor's liberation to make it a treaty condition? They are literally okay with the Klingons still conquering and enslaving worlds as of TNG's fourth season, so are they two to three years later trying to convince Cardassians to get out of the game?

 

[velour]

The Cardassian occupation of Bajor took place before the nearby wormhole was discovered. Not knowing that a Bajoran wormhole existed, I doubt that the Federation would view Bajor as a strategic interest. So it wasn't worth risking war over.

There may have been sympathy in some segments of the Federation for the plight of the Bajorans.

On the other hand, in "Ensign Ro", we saw that there were elements in Starfleet Command that considered the Bajoran resistance as terrorists. Some were so hell bent on preserving the treaty that they didn't care what happened to the Bajorans. They were willing to appease the Cardassians.

I got the impression that the geopolitical realists, the appeasers, and those who viewed the Bajoran resistance as terrorists had the greater sway, over the Bajoran sympathizers, regarding Federation policy on Bajor and the Cardassians.

 

[tomswift2002]

I always got the idea that the Cardassian were meant to metaphorically be the former Soviet Union with Bajor being East Germany. And while things may have been "terrible" behind the "Iron Curtain" to those of us in the West, at the same time we couldn't do anything because it was an 'internal' matter. And I think that with the Federation-Cardassia and Bajor before Emissary, the Federation was in the position that they could argue things, they couldn't do anything because it was an "internal" matter.

 

[Timo]

What is common to all these rationalizations on why the Feds didn't want to go to war with Cardassia is that they are false.

The Feds did not want to avoid going to war with Cardassia. They went to war with Cardassia. They were at war with Cardassia for much of the occupation of Bajor. Including the bulk of modern Star Trek episodes taking place before the liberation of Bajor!

In episodes where our heroes interacted with Cardassians, they didn't appease. They threatened, they blackmailed, and on occasion they killed without much concern. If they held their fire, it was because the Cardassians were no real threat to them.

Which is why they could afford a "wait and see if they stop trying to hit us" policy in "The Wounded", too: there was no harm in doing so.

That Bajor remained unliberated didn't hinge on UFP not wanting to face the wrath of the Cardassians, then. The Feds could do anything and everything, because demonstraby they did: firing death rays at the enemy is just about the upper limit of possible measures imaginable. How could the Feds have upped the ante? By switching to stun so that they could slowly torture all their Cardassian captives to more horrible death?

Liberating Bajor just wasn't on the agenda. Or then it was, but the Feds saw no benefit in hurrying the inevitable.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

If they held their fire, it was because the Cardassians were no real threat to them.

If that were the case then "The Wounded" and everything that followed it wouldn't have been an episode because there would be no Cardassian Union as the Federation would've defeated them. The Cardassians are clearly enough of a threat to fight Starfleet to a stalemate if nothing else.

They also had a fourteen year war against the Klingons which seemed to end in a draw with neither side coming out victorious and, in their weakened post-Obsidian Order state, once the military became organised they were able to offer strong resistance to the Klingon invasion (which was roughly a third of their overall forces).