Federation and Pacifism

posted on August 10th, 2009, 3:11 pm

Would the Federation qualify as a pacifist state?

A section of the first paragraph at the Memory Alpha page for Pacifism includes a distinction between two types of pacifist, but I'm not entirely sure if the Federation would qualify.

Strict pacifists refrain from all forms of violence, while restricted pacifists make some exceptions, for example, in cases of self-defense.

posted on August 10th, 2009, 3:16 pm

Hmph... they are not Anti-fighting people. They just aren't the first ones to draw out their torpedoes.

posted on August 10th, 2009, 3:18 pm

Hmph... they are not Anti-fighting people. They just aren't the first ones to draw out their torpedoes.

Which would fall under 'Restricted pacifist'; They hate to fight and will only do so as a last resort.

posted on August 10th, 2009, 3:35 pm

the original series and movie era starfleet was definitely not pacifist.  the next generation starfleet is filled with a bunch of pansies but they still arent all pacifist.  the old starfleet was surrounded by enemies everywhere while the new starfleet only had the romulans and the borg to worry about and the borg were way off on the other side of the galaxy and the romulans were more schemers and such as opposed to outright fighters.

i would hope that the new starfleet would reconsider their priorities after the dominion war and realize that they need a much stronger military.  all this hugs and kisses stuff makes me want to puke.  imagine how many lives would have been saved if the feds had simply doubled their military budget.  with all the worlds and resources under their control the best they can do is muster up a military roughly equivalent to the klingons or romulans.  that is absolutely pathetic.

posted on August 10th, 2009, 3:41 pm

and jainway was not pacifist.  overall, I think it really depends.  In war, they were not, but in peace times it would seem that they would rather sacrifice their ship than fight sometimes.

[Tyler]

posted on August 10th, 2009, 3:47 pm

Last edited by Tyler on August 10th, 2009, 3:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's what it meant by 'Technical pacifist', they will fight under certain conditions (self-defense, no other option, ect) rather than the more 'Klingon' approach.

After all, the Federation would never be retarded enough to be absolute pacifists...

Nathanj, why is it pathetic to focus on more civilised endeavours when there are no serious threats around? Especially when Science/exploration ships like the Nebula can easily destroy warships.

posted on August 10th, 2009, 3:56 pm

Hm, in the Dominion war, they did not only defend themselves, they also invaded enemy terretory and willingly assaulted, accepting the death of civil personal (the yards for example).

I think the Federation itself follows guidlines that could be described as pacifism. But in times of war, Starfleet gets more privileges to act on its own, and they are bound to a - appearently quite old style - military structure.

The "technical pacifist" should work best, however i voted no, cause i think in certain situations they can act quite offensive, were there would still be peaceful solutions (or at least solutions that might get to a peaceful end)

posted on August 10th, 2009, 9:31 pm

If we compare the federation with empires of today, I'd say they are more pacifistic than the NATO, for example. They do not just invade foreign cultures because of ressources or different ideologies/beliefs, whatever.
The Prime directive plays an important role, as it forbids intruding into internal affairs of different species/cultures(DR China has the same in their constitution, by the way).
Sooo, they try to be a pacifist nation, but space is kind of unfriendly, has it's final frontiers, as we all know , so they can't always be friendly. Of course, they could have given the Dominion half of their territory and retreat, like Lenin, that would have been the pacifist way, however, they had the weapons and used them  .

posted on August 10th, 2009, 10:03 pm

In an ideal world the federation would not need to fight, but it´s not an ideal world. If you are at war, it is critical to not only defend yourself, but to take away your enemies ability to make war at you. So even "pacifists" have to launch some kind of preemptive strikes, like the feds did in the dominion wars.

posted on August 11th, 2009, 4:44 am

Nathanj, why is it pathetic to focus on more civilised endeavours when there are no serious threats around? Especially when Science/exploration ships like the Nebula can easily destroy warships.

if nebulas and such were adequate enough they wouldnt have gotten their butts handed to them by the dominion. 

by all accounts the federation numbers of personel and resources on their side.  there was a reference to quadrillions of beings in the federation and even the dominion said that the federation was a vast jewel.

they should have built up a significantly stronger military than they had.  there appears to be alot of retarded and frankly lazy politicians on the council currently that build up just enough of a military to meet the current status quo without any thought to future threats.  an example is the defiant.  supposedly the defiant was put "on the back burner" because the borg threat became less immediate.    WTF

how can the federation just assume that a species that can send a ship across the galaxy in a year all of a sudden becomes......not that big of a deal. 

of course this is the same federation that agreed to give up cloaking technology for a peace treaty..........this is what is infuriating about the federation.  they treat peace as the end all and be all without regard to any future consequences. 

they should be the dominant military force in the alpha and beta quadrants but they build up just enough to be on par with the romulans or the klingons......they are idiots, morons and and any number of other names you can ascribe to them.  billions of lives were lost because the federation got caught with their pants down.

one important distinction that probably should be made is the difference between starfleet itself and the federation overall.  im pretty sure that starfleet protested giving up cloaking technology,  i would also assume that starfleet is always wanting to build more warships,  however i believe that the federation political structure is more akin to the UN and unfortunately means it is relatively useless.
and since starfleet answers to the federation political structure, if a bunch of pansy tree hugging hippies are running the federation council then starfleet isnt going to be given the resources it needs for larger modern fleets of warships that it should have. 

so the best way to describe it is starfleet no, federation tree hugging pansy hippies. 

posted on August 11th, 2009, 10:58 am

I think what one should not forget is, that military is expensive. Even if there is no money in the federation, building up military and sopporting it always needs ressources. Ressources which, in time of peace are lost/ spent for nothing. The Sovietunion got destroyed because of their high military budget(and, of course, because it was sold by Gorbatschow ), the USA are facing the same problem today, because of unnecessary expensive wars with no ending.
In my opinion the federation is that rich and earth is Eden, because their economy is concentrated on civil issues, on improving life of its peoples. They got a military which is able to defend the territory, so that none of their enemys(in this case Cardassians, Klingons, Romulans, Tzen'Kethi ...) may try to conquer them. However, when facing unforeseen problems(Dominion, Borg) they are in a difficult position.

posted on August 11th, 2009, 11:28 pm

spending money on the military during peace time is hardly wasting money.  in fact thats the best time to develop new technology and try it out when there isnt a time constraint like in war.  one of the reasons that germany and japan were so succesful early on was precisely because they had built up a modern military while their neighbors rested on their laurels and in the case of the US we barely had a military to speak of.

as for the soviet union the problem they had wasnt the military spending........we outspent them by several times..........it was that they didnt have an underlying economy to support such massive spending while the US did.  a mistake china has learned from.  also, are problems today are not from the war they are from the massive stimulus package that is putting us into debt for a long long time and letting people buy houses that they had no business buying.  domesticate discretionary spending is far larger than the military budget including the iraq, afghan wars.

long before the dominion showed up the feds new about the massive threat that the borg presented.  they should have been building warships and training crews as fast as they could to deal with them.  had they been doing that they would have been in a much better position to deal with the dominion when they encountered them.

was focusing most of their attention on pansy stuff worth the billions of lives lost during the war and the destruction of betazed and the other planet that was captured.  im willing to bet that those people wished starfleet had been larger and more powerful.

when dealing with enemies......pansies send flowers, while real men send quantum torpedoes. 

posted on August 12th, 2009, 1:04 am

I think what one should not forget is, that military is expensive. Even if there is no money in the federation, building up military and sopporting it always needs ressources.

The klingons are rumored to spend almost all of their resources on weapons and ships and it a fair guess to assume that the romulans spend lots as well. while federation has to spend it on other things like exploration and various other peacful things. On a little bit a of a side note at this point in history are their federation marines?

posted on August 12th, 2009, 2:05 am

All I have to say is this. If anything the federation isnt afraid of a fight....its that they are afraid to get a bloody nose...then when they get the bloody nose they never want to get it again....so they try to be pacifist yet also be the "shining standard" that they expect the rest of the alpha and beta quandrants to adhere too. Now that i think about it the federation is more like the "i want to have my cake and eat it too" type....they dont want to admit that they cant have it both ways. the federation tries to be the "better" race by doing things that the "bigger" person would do to set a shining example for example giving up the pursuit of claoking tech. Also the defiant was put on the back burner...starfleet and the federation deemed the dominion such a huge threat that they sent ONE defective prototype warship back with sisko to help hold the line....what a joke......and we all saw how the federation let the klingons trampel the khitomer acords during the klingons invasion of cardasian teritory. Yes they did go to war but it was more like the klingons brought the war to the federation. So the feds had no choice. Starfleet isnt pansies...just their watchdog/overseere/plicticians/government are pansies/bigots/do-gooders/etc........

posted on August 12th, 2009, 2:46 am

i agree,  thats why i made the distinction between the federation and starfleet itself.  although as you pointed out even starfleet makes questionable decisions.  what got my ire up was how the shows treated section 31.  what section 31 did would be considered run of the mill intelligence operations today, setting up an opponent for failure and propping up someone who would be sympathetic to your cause.  why the show treated this as some massive crime against all of the universe is beyond me. 

intelligence is a messy dirty business and one of the reasons i love sisko is because of what he did in the "pale moonlight" episode where he and gerik framed the dominion for the deaths of the romulans.  he said he could live with it.  unlike the sanctimonious doctor bashir who would gladly watch more people die just so that he could pat himself on the back and tell himself that he was morally superior to section 31 and would never stoop to their level.      i hate people like that.