Jeff the Baptist and Colossus of Rhodey are writing about what we can learn from Star Trek about political science. As every serious person knows, Star Trek is the starting point for all meaningful intellectual queries.The most commonly observed metaphor is US foreign policy. The original series was made during the height of the Cold War, when it was not controversial to call our world-enslaving enemies an "evil empire". Kirk was typical of the gunboat diplomacy necessary at the time. If you'd hit him, he'd hit back twice as hard. If you threatened Federation national security, he'd blow you out of the sky.
In contrast, sissy-boy Jean-Luc Picard of The Next Generation aptly resembled the modern wussified approach to national security seen in America today. One of the great horrors of the later seasons of the show was a potential outbreak of war with the Cardassians, a band of tyrannical pirate kings who had attacked the Federation a decade before. This conflict strangely resulted in an armistice, even though these murderous thugs lacked the capacity to resist a Federation invasion and had brazenly slaughtered Federation civilian colonists. The impotence of the Cardassians was on full display when one cruiser captain decided that he'd had enough of the Federation's pussy-footing and invaded the Cardassian system. All by himself. Just him and his ship blew the entire Cardassian Navy into scrap metal. Only the Enterprise could stop him, and did so. Then the Cardassians rebuilt their fleet and resumed fascistic expansion. The Federation was more worried about offending these terrorists than they were about permitting them to continue their raiding and plundering. The Federation had vast military resources and yet was constantly attacked by such pirates because it was unwilling to use that force, which would, of course, offend said pirates. Oh, horror of horrors!Sound familiar?
1 comment:
You've nailed how the Federation handled the Cardassians through all of TNG. They let this militarily inferior race walk all over them, even if it meant forcing the relocation of Native-Americans to honor a Cardassian treaty. But the Federation knew that going to war with the Cardassians would have been a foolish move because (even though they would have won) it would have been a drawn-out war costing many Federation lives and leaving the Federation vunerable to attacks from their threatening enemies--mainly the Romulans.
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