Federation and Pacifism

posted on August 12th, 2009, 3:19 pm

@nathanj
Yes, Japan and Germany spent much of their ressources on war, so they had a strong military. Nevertheless they ruined their economy with that. Hitler had to start the war, otherwise the debts due to the military would have shown even more. Germanys economy was destroyed already at the beginning of the war, due to the fact that it was concentrated on war and nothing else.(The fascists killed the poor, so the poverty didn't show that much... )
You may develop technologies also concerning non-violent issues. Concerning military, technology and research is always focused on destruction, winning, killing... nothing good at least. The aim of the federation(and starfleet as the executive of that institution) is to improve the lifes of its peoples. You can't do that by developing new torpedoes, cloaking devices and so on. Of course you to be prepared and in my opinion is starfleet prepared. their weapons can mess up with the Ones of warrior races, because of Wolf 359 they invented al the New Shipclasses of First contact(and FO  ) and also built these ships. You can't prepare for the unknown. Look at the Klingons and Romulans: They weren't better prepared, although they may have spent vast ressources on military. In ST6 they were ruined because of their military budget (and the explosion of Praxis, of course. But Praxis exploded because of military development... at least rumor tell this  )

posted on August 12th, 2009, 4:13 pm

Well, it does seem that the federation will do everything to stay out of a war/ battle, but if it is unavoidable, they are not ones to back down.  They will fight with everything they have for what they think is right, but they detest killing for expansion. 

They might as well be pacifists, but only if that means that they would do everything to keep a confrontation from happening, but they are not Quakers, meaning they are not apposed to fighting.  They chose to fight in a war, to uphold the current state of power in their quadrant.  If the dominion had taken the alpha quadrant, the klingons, and leter the federation, and all the smaller factions would have been wiped out, resulting in more blood shead, and loss of life.  The federation did all they could to "pacify" this outcome, but did not pursue the dominion after they had left.  They also did not use this victory as an excuse to claim power and control.  They merely went back to their original peaceful mission.

posted on August 13th, 2009, 4:07 am

germanys economy was collapsed before hitler's build up because of the massive reparations placed on them by the allies after world war 1 and also the incompetence of the patheticly weak democratic leadership the bundestag or whatever it was called.  germanies economy greatly improved after hitler started his massive buildup. 

it was the same in the US.  we didnt get out of the depression till the early to mid 40s precisely because of the war spending.  the new deal did very little to help unemployment in fact when roosevelt ran again in 1940 unemployment was at 15%.  the lowest the new deal got unemployment was down to 13% for the whole decade and some it was being used.

the klingons made the same mistakes the russians did.  they spent alot of money on the military without the prerequisite financial base to support and build it.  both the klingons and the russians have a distrust of the market system.  for the russians it was because it was "evil capitilsim" and for the klingons.........well i just dont get the sense the little klingottes are told to grow up and become business owners and entrepeneurs.  as for the romulans im not really and expert on them but i got the impression that they faired better after the war than the klingons.  whether that is because they entered later on or because they are similar to the chinese in that they have a larger financial base that is controlled by a centralized government, im not sure,  maybe a bit of both.

war has developed more technologies that you use everyday in your peaceful life than you might realize.  plastics, internet,  without the germans V2s and their research we might have not made it to the moon for decades if we even bothered to go.  kraft and velveeta, cell phones,  gps navigators YEAH! for those, computers and so on.

and i hardly think that developing new torpedoes and weapons systems is a waste of time for the average federation citizen.  how many millions maybe even billions of lives would have been saved had the federation been more heavily defended.  if they simply doubled the number of ships or had more shipyards operational.  its all fine and dandy for pacifists to take the high and mighty road about the evils of military spending but whos going to listen to them when the enemies ships and soldiers start marching towards their homes.  this is why i try and seperate the pansys of the federation from what i hope are more realistic people in starfleet.

posted on August 13th, 2009, 7:52 am

"germanys economy was collapsed before hitler's build up because of the massive reparations placed on them by the allies after world war 1 and also the incompetence of the patheticly weak democratic leadership the bundestag or whatever it was called.  germanies economy greatly improved after hitler started his massive buildup. "

Most of it is historically wrong.  Yes, there were difficulties with the reparations and Hitler was able to stop that problem due to tricky politicy. The Republic of Weimar(with its Reichstag, by the way) was weak and filled with conservatives and fascists all the time. It made it possible for the nationalsocialists to take control. However, the economy did not really improve. Perhaps for a short time, between 1933 and 1936, in that time unemployment decreased, due to the fact, that the fascists sent thousands of people in their KZs. Humans died when building the highways, the economy was concentrated only on war and supporting the troops, the people suffered. Okay, the part of the population who was seen as Arier could improve their life. But who was counted as Arier? Not many. What improved was development of new tanks, plains and so on. Yeah, there were some good scientists at that time, Einstein, Zuse, and so on. But their talent had been wasted for military issues. Of course it enabled flying to the moon, but that is a non-military thing, isn't it? Hitler only wanted to fly around the world killing millions of Jews, Russians, communists and other democrats. After the war it was also difficult for Germany, due to the fact that the economy was concentrated on war, it had to be changed in order build up Germany again(doesn't matter wich one int that matter).

posted on August 13th, 2009, 8:50 am

lets see who of these who just brought this up are germans ... and talk about there history.
leave this stuff outta here please >:(

posted on August 13th, 2009, 9:52 am

if you want to talk about your political or economic views of the second world war, please open up a new topic in smalltalk. This topic was focused on the United Federation of Planets

Topic closed