During the negotiations with the Cardassians on the Enterprise Riker loudly exclaimes “the Federation will not start a war.” Oh please, the Federation have started almost every war we know they’ve had. Especially the Dominion War.
Burnham started the Klingon war and Starfleet started the Dominion war.
Focusing on the Doninion War, Starfleet discovers a stable wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant and starts exploring it. Fine, fair enough.
However in 2371 the Dominion warns Starfleet to stay on their side of the galaxy, stop planting colonies and stop violating Dominion territory. Again, fair enough.
After all would the Fedetation allow the Romulans to explore Federation space freely? Of course they wouldn’t. But the Federation expects to explore the territory of others freely because Starfleet believes they have a RIGHT to explore the galaxy and if that means crossing borders then so be it.
The Federation then gets all pissy when the Dominion sees them as such a threat they ally themselves with Cardassians to establish a permanent presence in the Alpha Quadrant. All this happens outside of Federation space so they have no rights to interfere as per the Prime Directive.
But do they leave the Cardassians to run their civilisation as they see fit? Of course not. They mine the wormhole which starts the war.
So as far as the Dominion War goes, the Federation were the clear aggressors. And let’s not get into the attempted genocide of the Founders.
The Prime Directive is about not interfering with the natural evolution of non-spacefaring civilisations. It aims to not introduce advanced technology in less developed civilisations before they are prepared to handle it.
It absolutely does not apply to either Cardassia or the Dominion, especially given they’re already establishing such presence precisely to fight against the Federation.
Other than that I kind of agree with the rest of your post. Though personally I don’t consider Discovery canon so I’d discard that. I know a lot of people feel otherwise and they’re welcome to do so but I have no intention of debating this.
That’s ok. I don’t consider Picard canon.
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It applies to every non-Federation civilisation. Part of it does include not interfering with pre-warp planets but that’s just part of it.
Also they have no jurisdiction over Cardassians affairs.
But Prime Directive or not, the Federation started that war.
Lower Decks effectively rendered Discovery non-canon in its finale so now it takes place in an alternate universe.
It applies to every non-Federation civilisation. Part of it does include not interfering with pre-warp planets but that’s just part of it.
“Starfleet crew will obey the following with any civilization that has not achieved a commensurate level of technological and/or societal development as described in Appendix 1.”
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Prime_Directive (emphasis mine)
Also they have no jurisdiction over Cardassians affairs.
I don’t think they ever thought they did. They were going into war, not upholding law in their own territory.
But Prime Directive or not, the Federation started that war.
I have already agreed with that. 😃
Lower Decks effectively rendered Discovery non-canon in its finale so now it takes place in an alternate universe.
Haven’t watched it yet. Looking forward though!
Oh shit. Sorry for the spoiler.
All good! Won’t take anything out of the experience, no worries at all!
The Federation started the war with the dominion? Er, uh, I don’t think so.
In 1992 when that episode aired, I don’t think we had seen the Federation actually start a war. Later on the writers may have contradicted the earlier episodes, but at that point he was correct.
I’m not arguing against your main point, but it was the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar who started the war when they attempted to attack the Founder’s home world. Sisko, against Admiral Toddman’s orders, only went to fight to get Odo back because he was kidnapped.
The Dominion must have recognised that the attack wasn’t ordered by the Cardassian government or they wouldn’t have accepted them into the Dominion.
But again. If they had all stayed in the Alpha Quadrant as warned there wouldn’t have been as issue.
Season 4 Episode 1 and 2 (I haven’t gotten any further yet) was about how the Founders infiltrated the Cardassian government and staged a coup against Central Command.
I believe you’re right. It was either Improbable Cause or The Die is Cast (season 3) where the Founder that took the place of the Tal Shiar agent (Tovak or Lovok I think) told Odo that while it was Tain’s plan to attack them, the Founder infiltrators did everything they could to make it happen. Then in the episode you mention they explain more about it.
So…exploration is an act of war, but murdering colonists who don’t even know you exist isn’t? The federation didn’t even know the dominion existed before the latter started attacks. The first aggressive encounter they had was a rescue mission, half of which were children. Which ended with the Dominion suicide bombing a broken and defenseless federation starship… not because it was a last ditch effort to defend themselves against a superior foe… but because they could. It was a demonstration of power and fanaticism.
The only aggressive action the Federation takes against the Dominion is existing.
That was how I remembered it starting as well. The first offensive action against the Dominion by Alpha Quadrant powers was orchestrated by the Founders as a way to eliminate both the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order.
After that the Founders manipulated the Cardassians and Klingons into fighting each other, which later caused the Federation-Klingon war as well.
While one could argue that mining the wormhole led to open war, I would say the direct attack on the Odyssey and the bombing of the Antwerp Conference could both be the start.
The mining was also in response to the increased buildup of military power within the Cardassian territories by Dominion troops. You could argue that it was just about defensive capabilities (and they do), but there’s no direct way to know that. That’s really how the Dominion works, indirect action until they can use over-whelming force.
Exploring isn’t an act of war. But repeatedly violating another species borders after being warned away is very much an act of war.
They don’t even know what the borders are. The founders just tell the Federation “Stay on your side of the wormhole” with no other emphasis on what their border is. After that, the majority of the Federations explorations are in areas that they believe isn’t Dominion territory and defensive reconnaissance.
Their only interactions with The Dominion are fairly aggressive, if they sent peace envoys and attempted any kind of diplomatic contact, the Federation most likely would have agreed to limit activity in the Gamma quadrant. But as it stood, all they knew was that The Dominion was expansionist, aggressive, and xenophobic. Why wouldn’t they try to get as much info as possible in case of the strong likelihood that the Dominion would pre-emptively attack?
Hell, we can see with their infiltrations of various Alpha Quadrant military powers that they were already making aggressive movements. It was mostly about turning them against themselves, rather than direct action, but it was aggressive non-the-less.
