When they became members of the Pact, so they could show their worth to it.
That's not how I remember
Zero Sum Game. There, the Breen seemed rather contemptuous of the rest of the Pact and reluctant to share the fruits of their slipstream research with the other members.
Just like the Kinshaya, once members of the Pact, attacked and occupied for a small time a Klingon planet...
The enmity between the Kinshaya and the Klingons goes back generations. The Klingons had recently
destroyed the Kinshaya homeworld, so it's completely counterfactual to suggest that the Pact somehow provoked the conflict. The conflict already existed, and the Kinshaya acted on their own to occupy that planet in retaliation. And once that happened, the Pact sent ships to defend its Kinshaya allies from the Klingons.
And of course, what the fans who insist on this myth of the Black Hat Typhon Pact consistently ignore is that the first official act of the Typhon Pact was to withdraw the Kinshaya forces from the Klingon planet and
apologize for the aggression. The Kinshaya acted on their own; the Pact as a group pulled them back.
And the Breen did not act alone amongst the Pact. They had help from the Romulans and I believe from at least one other member.
As I said, there are both aggressive and moderate factions within the Pact. Yes, there is the potential for danger. But what's dead wrong is to assume that the Pact
only has aggressive intentions, or that it speaks with anything remotely resembling a unified voice. Even within a single member there can be conflicting agendas, as we saw with the Breen government and dissidents in
Zero Sum Game and with the competing Romulan and Gorn factions in
Rough Beasts of Empire and
Seize the Fire, and as we'll see with the Kinshaya in
The Struggle Within.
We are also not labeling the Pact as a Snydley Whiplash or the next big villain to replace the Borg. We are saying Starfleet would be ignorant and imprudent to not plan for a potential threat.
Of course they should. But in this case, the way to plan for the threat is to find ways to promote the more moderate voices within the Pact, the ones that don't want conflict and are able to hold the militants in check. And building more weapons is not the way to do that. Remember, most of the people in the Pact think
the Federation is the bad guy, the aggressor that wants to absorb them and wipe out their way of life. Try looking at it from their side. They
also think they need to prepare against a potential threat, so if the Federation makes itself look threatening by building more weapons and warships, that will provoke the Pact to do the same, and it'll start a cycle of escalation. It'll play right into the militants' hands, and thus will increase the threat, not diminish it.
Also, what united the Typhon Pact, a common fear and dislike for the UFP.
Mostly, but the Gorn have historically had good to neutral relations with the Federation. Remember, in
The Gorn Crisis, Picard and Data saved the Gorn ruling caste from a coup. The sitting Gorn government owes its existence to the Federation.
And yes, most of them
fear the Federation. Their goal is not aggression but self-defense. We convince them that we're not a threat to them, and they'll be less likely to start a fight.
That foundation doesn't give high hopes for its future. The UFP was founded on loftier and more peaceful intentions and ambitions.
The problem is that you're only seeing them from the Federation's perspective. You can't truly understand a society until you learn to see things from their own perspective. Imagine you're, say, a Klingon looking at the formation of the Federation in 2161. Would you see the lofty and peaceful intentions, or would you just see that four species you've clashed with in the past have just formed a powerful alliance that you need to be worried about? Whatever lofty intentions the UFP's founders may have had, they were also surely concerned about being militarily strong enough to hold off Romulans, Klingons, and the like. So the way the Klingons or Romulans would see the union from the outside would be very different from how the people on the inside would see it. By the same token, you can't assume that the way the Pact's formation looks from the Federation's perspective is the same way it looks from the perspective of the Gorn or the Kinshaya.
Yes, concern for the threat posed by the Federation is
part of why the Pact formed, but it's ethnocentric to assume it's the
only reason, that their entire mentality revolves exclusively around the Federation. They united because they learned from the Federation's example that they're stronger together than apart. They united because they see benefits for themselves in cooperation. It's true that the Tholians are there mainly out of their enmity toward the UFP, but that's not the only reason the others joined, because these are six very different civilizations with multiple different factions within each and every one of them. They all have internal concerns of their own that have little or nothing to do with the Federation. Every nation has domestic policies as well as foreign policies, which is why it's naive to think of an alien state's motivations solely in terms of its foreign policy toward the Federation. Part of the goal behind founding the Pact is to let its members improve things for themselves, for their population. The Romulans wanted to end their civil war and reunify their state. The Kinshaya wanted aid rebuilding their civilization after the Klingons went Vogon Constructor Fleet on their home planet. The Gorn probably just figured they'd be better off as part of a strong alliance than standing alone. There are a ton of motivations behind the Typhon Pact, and while some of them involve hostility toward the Federation, that's just one small part of the tapestry.
