TOS: A Taste of Armageddon

[bronnt]

Mind you, I think the message has changed a bit because we're getting much closer to the point of "forever wars" where small "acceptable" number of people are killed every day while the USA goes about its daily business as if nothing was happening. It's been sixteen years of war in Afghanistan and we now have drone strikes all over the world.

Not the similarity of Star Trek I'd want to see.

It's not just Afghanistan. Those same war on terror powers have been used to justify actions in Lybia, Yemen, and now Syria as well. It's all part of the same "War on Terror," but that's awfully nebulous and makes it difficult to evaluate what conditions mean we can finally bring the troops home.

[Robovski]

Mind you, I think the message has changed a bit because we're getting much closer to the point of "forever wars" where small "acceptable" number of people are killed every day while the USA goes about its daily business as if nothing was happening. It's been sixteen years of war in Afghanistan and we now have drone strikes all over the world.

Not the similarity of Star Trek I'd want to see.

It's not just Afghanistan. Those same war on terror powers have been used to justify actions in Lybia, Yemen, and now Syria as well. It's all part of the same "War on Terror," but that's awfully nebulous and makes it difficult to evaluate what conditions mean we can finally bring the troops home.

I would think by now it is clear we will not be. This is the new normal. Troops stationed all over the place is pseudo combat zones, it's like the cold war again but hotter and no supposed big bad Soviets countering us or to counter. Plus loads of just dropping drones on people or strikes from unmanned drones and all the usual civilian casualties. And people wonder why the Middle East hates us...

Sure was nice for that bit in the 90's though when we were closing bases and cutting back on troops and such. Shame that didn't last long.

[CareerKnight]

I don't think the premise is as weak as it first appears. There are enough real world rivalries where the participants have no idea what started it anymore that the fact these two planets don't seem to know why they are fighting isn't that big of a problem. As for the apparent lack of rhetoric and propaganda about the enemy that we would expect in a war, I think this can be answered with a simple thought experiment.
Imagine you're one of the representatives near the end of the actual shooting war. Both sides are on the brink of annihilation yet surrender or a true cease fire is still unthinkable to both of them. The simulation is the only solution both sides will agree to and therefore the only hope for your people. Given that, what is the one thing you want the generations that follow you to remember? Do you want them to continue with the war time propaganda about the enemy or attempt to learn the original cause of the war? God no, either could possibly result in angering them to the point that they resort to real attacks again and that would disastrous. No, the one thing you want to be drilling into their heads is that resuming the actual war would be devastating and likely lead to the total destruction of the race and culture.

[The Romulan Republic]

Mind you, I think the message has changed a bit because we're getting much closer to the point of "forever wars" where small "acceptable" number of people are killed every day while the USA goes about its daily business as if nothing was happening. It's been sixteen years of war in Afghanistan and we now have drone strikes all over the world.

Not the similarity of Star Trek I'd want to see.

It's not just Afghanistan. Those same war on terror powers have been used to justify actions in Lybia, Yemen, and now Syria as well. It's all part of the same "War on Terror," but that's awfully nebulous and makes it difficult to evaluate what conditions mean we can finally bring the troops home.

I would think by now it is clear we will not be. This is the new normal. Troops stationed all over the place is pseudo combat zones, it's like the cold war again but hotter and no supposed big bad Soviets countering us or to counter. Plus loads of just dropping drones on people or strikes from unmanned drones and all the usual civilian casualties. And people wonder why the Middle East hates us...

Sure was nice for that bit in the 90's though when we were closing bases and cutting back on troops and such. Shame that didn't last long.

Yeah, no Soviets. Hell, Russia hand-picks our President now.

[Riedquat]

I don't think the premise is as weak as it first appears. There are enough real world rivalries where the participants have no idea what started it anymore that the fact these two planets don't seem to know why they are fighting isn't that big of a problem. As for the apparent lack of rhetoric and propaganda about the enemy that we would expect in a war, I think this can be answered with a simple thought experiment.
Imagine you're one of the representatives near the end of the actual shooting war. Both sides are on the brink of annihilation yet surrender or a true cease fire is still unthinkable to both of them. The simulation is the only solution both sides will agree to and therefore the only hope for your people. Given that, what is the one thing you want the generations that follow you to remember? Do you want them to continue with the war time propaganda about the enemy or attempt to learn the original cause of the war? God no, either could possibly result in angering them to the point that they resort to real attacks again and that would disastrous. No, the one thing you want to be drilling into their heads is that resuming the actual war would be devastating and likely lead to the total destruction of the race and culture.

I can't see many people going along with letting themselves getting disintegrated whatever decision the leaders have come up with. And I find it unlikely that either side would accept a stalemate situation that still involves people getting killed. This really only works as an "explore the concept, don't think about the practicalities" episode.

There's an Iain Banks book with a similar idea, although no-one getting killed, where wars are fought in virtual reality. That had similar issues (although it wasn't about a deliberately engineered stalemate) - I can't see the losers accepting any real-world consequences.

[CharlesPhipps]

To use a TV tropes.org-ism, there's ALTENATE AESOP INTERPRETATION:

The moral is not, "Don't wage wars like video games" but "Don't have the hubris to believe you control a battlefield or the enemy fights by your rules." The two sides can fight forever because they are identical in many ways and understand each other. By attacking the Federation and Enterprise in particular, they've subjected themselves to new rules of war they don't understand and potentially could get their civilization destroyed because while they're so afraid of the Other SideTM they've missed the Enterpise is ALSO capable of wiping them out.

Which is an odd moral until you think about how blowback from US military operations made much of the War on Terror.

If it was the USA in space, Kirk would have them bombed until the hostages were released.

[CareerKnight]

I can't see many people going along with letting themselves getting disintegrated whatever decision the leaders have come up with. And I find it unlikely that either side would accept a stalemate situation that still involves people getting killed. This really only works as an "explore the concept, don't think about the practicalities" episode.

People wouldn't be ok with being disintegrated just cause their leaders said so but if they believed it to be both necessary and the moral thing to do they likely would. Culture has a strong impact on people in terms of what they find acceptable.

[Riedquat]

I can't see many people going along with letting themselves getting disintegrated whatever decision the leaders have come up with. And I find it unlikely that either side would accept a stalemate situation that still involves people getting killed. This really only works as an "explore the concept, don't think about the practicalities" episode.

People wouldn't be ok with being disintegrated just cause their leaders said so but if they believed it to be both necessary and the moral thing to do they likely would. Culture has a strong impact on people in terms of what they find acceptable.

I'm cynical enough to believe that what people believe is moral and necessary tends to rather closely align with whatever satisfies immediate short term desires.

[Formless One]

So been wondering something here and thought it might make for an interesting intellectual exercise. What if instead of Kirk's enterprise, it was one of the other crews and their spaceships we've gotten to know over the years? Everything is the same right down to the stubborn diplomat they've been saddled with, except the crew is different and the ship is different. How would they handle this situation?

I figure that if it were Picard, first difference is that he prefers to send other people on the away missions and stay in space himself unless there is good reason for him to go down. So I imagine it would be Riker and someone else who ends up being taken hostage-- perhaps Data and Troi. I do think that in this situation, Picard has the advantage of a larger command crew, considering that unlike Kirk his first officer is not also his Science officer. Data can probably figure out the nature of the simulated war quickly enough, if not faster than Spock did. What I don't know is how Riker and his away team would respond to the philosophy underlying the war, but I do expect that he wouldn't roll over and take it when told the Enterprise is now considered a casualty. One way or the other, he didn't sign up to be a part of the simulation. So once they have escaped-- I don't know how they would do it, but we know they train for capture-- I can see him blowing up disintigration chambers to prove a point and prevent them from being used to kill the Enterprise crew. Also, I don't know if he would make the same mistake as Kirk did in confronting the leader of Eminiar in his personal quarters.

There is the question of whether they would allow Fox to go down, either with the away team or at all for that matter. After all, in the actual episode, Fox had to deal with Scotty, but in this scenario he is most likely dealing with Captain Picard himself as well as Worf. There is moreover the question of whether Picard would pick up on the attempt to deceive him when the faked transmission from Riker comes in, and how Picard would deal with it. Not to mention being shot at. There is of course the Prime Directive question: would Picard realize that they are in too deep to stay out of Eminiar 7's business, or would he resolve to end the war as Kirk did? And how? He is the more diplomatically inclined captain, but we know diplomacy won't work with these people until you can convince them that their simulation is unproductive and dangerous. Would he attempt a rescue mission with tech-BS to get the away team out of dodge, and if so would that even work or just piss off the diplomat even more? If he did have to threaten the Eminarians, would he make it a threat of total annihilation? I'm sure if he did, Worf would have no problem with it. But how much would the Eminarians have to piss Picard off before he comes to the same conclusion as Kirk? And how much more speechifying would he do when he finally hits the off-switch to the Eminarian's war computer?

Sisko I can see coming to the same conclusions as Kirk as well as leading the away team personally. The man once dropped gas on a Maquis colony, after all. But he has a different crew to consider than Kirk did, who might react differently to this situation than Spock or McCoy. Again, there is Worf, who like Scotty probably isn't going to take Fox's shit and isn't above dropping photon torpedoes on a dishonorable enemy. But who would Sisko even take on the away mission with him? Kira? Bashir? Dax? Depending on who comes with, that makes the escape easier or more difficult. With Odo or maybe Garak it would be almost trivial. But Sisko has a disadvantage that is sort of the reverse of Picard's advantage: there is no promise that he can afford to take the entire DS9 command staff with him even if it is a diplomatic mission.

Janeway and crew... I don't even know. The way she reacts to this kind of thing varies so much from episode to episode, and its hard to guess how she would handle a diplomatic mission when the whole point of the show is that Voyager is trapped on the other side of the galaxy away from diplomatic matters. This would only be possible after they make it back to Earth, because otherwise Fox wouldn't be able to very well be on Voyager to begin with. I do think she is the most likely to feel like her hands are tied by the Prime Directive, though she is also quite likely to try rescuing the hostages as well. She does take her crew's lives pretty seriously, after all.

[The Romulan Republic]

My take on Janeway is that she believes in the Prime Directive right up until its going to get her crew killed, by and large.

But seriously, the enforcement of the PD is ridiculous inconsistent throughout Trek. A huge deal is made about it, but the Federation has violated it before out of naked self-interest (the Baku), and generally when its broken in-universe, if there's any half-decent pretext for doing so, the violating officer gets either no penalty, or a slap on the wrist.

Its like the Pirates' Code in Pirates of the Caribbean, at least in implementation: Its more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.

Edit: I think its probably like the speculation about the Federation's "bombard a planet into ruins" order as discussed previously in this thread. If you cause a major breach of the PD, and it comes to the attention of the higher-ups, you can expect an investigation/inquiry, and you'll have to have a good reason for it. But if you do have a good reason, they'll usually let it slide, or just give you a slap on the wrist.