Revisiting the Starfleet officer:enlisted ratio

[Uraniun235]

That was probably a bad phrase to use... I had only been thinking about fleet yards and supply depots. Given time, they could rebuild and come back for a rematch. But, on the other hand, it could very well take them a long time - if for example their antimatter production facilities were destroyed along with the fleet yards, how long would it take to rebuild those? In the meantime, any local powers which might have been angling for a piece of the action can now raid and pillage the defeated empire with relative impunity, and any outlying worlds which may have been longing for secession can now do so with little fear of reprisal.

I would imagine that most interstellar states would choose to come to the peace table before their capacity to police and control their own worlds had been totally stripped from them - the costs of such a defeat would probably be unacceptable.

(Hmm... that's a possibility: big propaganda campaigns to effect Balkanization on a defeated enemy empire. By the time you're done, there's no longer a unified empire, but an assortment of quarreling rivals who spend too much of their resources fighting each other to be a threat to anyone else.)


But, that might be hopelessly naive of me.

[NetKnight]

*shrugs* It seems to have worked for the Trekverse. Their last general war* before the Dominion War was the abortive Federation-Klingon War that the Organians nixed (and for all we know that could have been a 'smash-and-grab' affair, destined for a quick negotiated peace), and before that, the Romulan War. Sure, the second-raters, like the Cardassians, kept trying to weasel their way into the Great Powers' club, and skirmishes continued between the big players, but both are examples of the sort of limited conflict that system could be expected to produce.

Hell, it took the Borg Incursions, Starfleet's subsequent (destabilizing) build-up, and the Dominion's intrusion into the power dynamic to provoke a big war, a war which seems to have been kept fairly limited and 'clean' nevertheless. That's a resilient system. Of course, with the Federation and the Romulans the only two major powers left after that war, the bi-polar future may hold something different from the multi-polar past. Not that there's anything in the canon about post-Dominion War Federation-Romulan relations, right?

On a related note, do we have any indication of how many troops the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor actually entailed? The Bajorian Resistance wasn't sponsored by any government that we know about, after all, and yet they survived a fairly intensive guerrilla war. Small Cardassian ground forces might go a long way toward explaining this.



*That we know about. However, if there were other Big Wars fought, they had confined effects, suggesting an early negotiated peace.

[Straha]

I think there's a different answer: Khitomer.

In the opening conference between the Top Brass of Star Fleet during Star Trek VI they talk about decommissioning the fleet and the federation bases along the Neutral Zone. When asked if that means mothballing Starfleet the CinC says that the scientific and exploration programs will be unaffected and then gets cut off. It's clear from the meeting that the fleet has to be cut to give the Klingons reassurance for the Federation's good will.

Also, given that the Federation seemed to be buddy-buddy with the Romulans in the movie (letting their ambassador sit in on the proposed strike plan to rescue Kirk) I don't think the Federation had any real enemies at the time. So they probably significantly cut the military side of Starfleet and only kept the scientists. Which meant, in practice, cutting the enlistees and keeping officers, as I doubt anyone with proper scientific credentials wants to be a mere rating.

[Gandalf]

I think there's a different answer: Khitomer.

In the opening conference between the Top Brass of Star Fleet during Star Trek VI they talk about decommissioning the fleet and the federation bases along the Neutral Zone. When asked if that means mothballing Starfleet the CinC says that the scientific and exploration programs will be unaffected and then gets cut off. It's clear from the meeting that the fleet has to be cut to give the Klingons reassurance for the Federation's good will.

That's a good idea.

It would also go a fair way to explaining why the Starfleet seemed to grow so much between Wolf 359 and the Dominion War. Perhaps the treaty allowed for expansion of military forces with the presence of a mutually agreed upon outside threat?

We know that the Klingons had a great fear of the Dominion, as per their invasion of Cardassia. The Federation cold have been expanding the Starfleet since the destruction of the Odyssey. They knew a war would be likely, so they spent the next few years trying to postpone any war until they had their war pants on.