Odo is a single voice among a few billion xenophobes, the fact the disease was bioengineered by the solids..specifically a group of solids who "claim" to be 'peaceful and nonviolent', Odo will be drowned out by the great link.FaxModem1 wrote: What's the future of the Dominion?
While the FKR Alliance views the war as over, the Great Link just views it as a cease fire and an opportunity to rebuild (likely a process well underway after their reinforcement fleet was devoured by the wormhole.)
One could hypothesize that the retardation of Federation-Romulan relations (restoration of the Neutral Zone and trade embargoes in 'Nemesis' ) was a Dominion design to fracture the Alliance (one could also say that the Dominion supplied the Remans with the Scimitar and Thaloran generators. The Hobus Supernova, obviously was unnatural as well.)
The Klingon's were bled dry by the Dominion War doing the brunt of the fighting...and picking up the slack after the Breen rendered Federation and Romulan ships vulnerable, inline with Sloan's assessment they wont be a force to contend with for decades. The Romulan sare now down for the count after their government was decapitated by Shinzon and the Hobus event wiped out the remnants of a fragile government.
Starfleet is now spread very thin, rendering humanitarian aid to remnants of the Romulan state, aiding the Klingons in territorial defense (the weakened state of the KDF makes the Klingon frontier vulnerable to foreign conquest.) There is very little to be spared to monitor the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion is now free to fully ramp up their war production.
Only one thing gives them pause, the wormhole. They may lose another 2,000 ships in a crossing, but no doubt the Dominion is working to address that problem (the Thaloran generators and the Hobus weapon being byproducts of a Anti-Profit weapon program...and/or they could be working on a transwarp drive.)
The Second Dominion War is nigh, and where as the First Dominion War stripped the Federation of it's more naive pacifist ideals, this new war will radically alter Federation culture as Thaloron sterilizations will have to be answered with Genesis Devices, Hobus Events answered with Trilithium torpedos, Soliton Wave generators, weaponized Omega particles. And as the war drags, photon and quantum torpedoes would be phased out in favor of Tricolbalt devices.
This will be a truly total war, only ending when the last Founder, the last Vorta, the last Jem'Hadar are stricken down.
The galaxy will forever bare the scars, whole civilizations extinct, star systems annihilated changing the constellations. And in the aftermath "A" Federation stands, ideals of peaceful exploration completely stripped away, olive branch diplomacy withered and wholly replaced with gunboat diplomacy, optimistic 'non-interference' is replaced with cynicism/espionage/reconnaissance, treaties are replaced with preemptive strikes. It may still be called 'The United Federation Of Planets' and 'Starfleet' still it's champion, but it will resemble nothing like the Federation that Picard advocated or what even Kirk championed.