Drawing up the Neutral Zone

[Dînadan]

Something that occurred to me reading the thread for the review of 'TNG: The Defector'. The Neutral Zone between the Federation and Romulan Star Empire was established after the Earth-Romulan War and presumably was based on establishing the then boarders between the two nations. This would be fine except for the fact both are expansionist powers and would have spent the following years and decades continuing to grow which means that they would probably have come into conflict over new planets over that time period, but as far as I can recall 'TOS:Balance of Terror' implies that that was the first time in a century that the Federation had heard anything from the Romulans. So how did they avoid conflict over that time period?

Two hypothesies occur to me:
1) they established current boarders then agreed one would expand 'north' and the other 'south
or
2) they extended the boarder in a straight line at both ends and agreed to stay on their respective sides

Anyone got any other ideas? I suppose it's possible the Zone only exists along the boarder as it was at the end of the E-R War, but that would seem to defeat the purpose of a buffer zone between the two.

[TGLS]

Well, it could be that the neutral zone line was really far away from both powers, so they could both expand for quite some time until the neutral zone became important... But that makes it difficult to understand why the war happened. Either that, or the neutral zone isn't so much a line so much as a berth that they give planets the other side claimed.

[Dînadan]

Either that, or the neutral zone isn't so much a line so much as a berth that they give planets the other side claimed.

The way I've always interpreted it is that it's a 'band' of space between the two which neither is able to lay claim to and while it's possible they agreed to something like there must be at least X lightyears between a planet they claim and one already claimed by the other, the problem is the implication in Balance of Terror that there's been no contact between them for a century and they'd need contact to tell each other what worlds they've claimed since the treaty (although on second thought, I suppose they could place beacons at the edge of newly claimed systems that transmit a signal to say it's been claimed and for the other to stay away; so they'd still be able to track where the other one is but technically they wouldn't have had contact with each other).

[Dînadan]

Follow up question; presumably the Zone is large enough to contain entire systems (hence why it's called Zone and has volume rather than being an infinitely tall and infinitesimally thin 'fence', and why ships are always referred to entering it rather than crossing through it instantly) and presumably the 'Neutral' part means that neither side can claim the worlds within it. As such, if a species on one of those worlds became Warp capable, would they be rejected for application to the Federation? It's hard to imagine the Federation rejecting the application of an otherwise exemplary world, but if one of those worlds joined the Federation presumably it'd violate the Neutral Zone treaty*.


*side note, this would probably also occur with the Klingon Neutral Zone. The Demiliterised Zone along the Cardassian boarder on the other hand presumably wouldn't have this issue as presumably that just forbids either side having a military presence in that zone while still permitting them to 'own'/colonise worlds within it.

[SuccubusYuri]

Well, it seems more like a DMZ than a dead space. In some iterations the Feds put outposts along the old Romulan military bases to monitor them, and there are provisions that allow both factions to send ships in without permission. At least in the TNG days, it's hard to glean if that means anything in TOS since Algeron occurs between generations, and that whole blowing them out of the sky thing, though that did seem to be a challenge to the treaty.

Though since there are official works that fit the NZ in the Beta Quadrant, I've always interpreted it as a dog fence Earth put up to pen the Romulans away from their areas of expansion, being the victorious power and all. We also know it's far enough away for the Borg to waltz on in undetected from uncharted space.

Seeing all the tensions that spilled over the KNZ, and its heavy focus on it in the films, which was presumably made from two powers who saw themselves on equal footing, the RNZ being established with audio or written communications only was probably "Hey, Romulans, we blew up your shit that you used to war against us. We're occupying these systems with listening posts, don't ever cross this line", so it would make a lot of sense to be in spitting distance of Romulus.

[Archanubis]

Though since there are official works that fit the NZ in the Beta Quadrant, I've always interpreted it as a dog fence Earth put up to pen the Romulans away from their areas of expansion, being the victorious power and all.

I always interpreted the Earth-Romulan war to be more of a stalemate than a victory for either side.

[SuccubusYuri]

Well, I'm just going off memory-alpha, which puts many of the feddie outposts as "in the Romulan theatre of war", which would imply ceded ground like the bases in Okinawa and Berlin.

[technobabbler]

if i recall correctly, the galaxy arms are only 1000 light years thick. And given on-screen canon (the neutral zone is wide enough to hold numerous star systems), it's conceivable to view the neutral zone as a meandering curtain between Federation/Earth and Romulan space.

and like OP says, since canon says Earth met Romulan in the early days of 'primitive' space travel---an analogy could be like countries in Europe. UK = Federation goes west. Romulans = Norway goes east.