Are the Maquis doing the right thing?
Thanks for the lively discussion all! My take is that the sci fi elements mean you can’t cut and paste their experiences onto our morality exactly, but it makes the feeling of conflict relatable, at least emotionally.
No.
The Maquis are trying to undermine a peace treaty full of compromises. Basically, any time you think the Maquis are doing the right thing, think of what would happen if the compromise the Cardassians would ask for is to have Bajor back, and turn Kira Nerys’ favourite planet back into a slave run industrial wasteland.
In the vast emptiness of space, there are plenty of planets that aren’t contested. Get the colonisers (which is what these fucking people are) to go there. You have fucking replicator technology, and transporters, you don’t need to be hellbent on these random ass planets to the point where you start bombing planets inhabited by sentient beings.
Also, Ira Steven Behr is an edgelord on purpouse, and put up these kinds of divisions and polemics just to make Star Trek not a utopia. Any dilemmas are made just to push established visionary boundries, just to make a “no paradise is attainable” point.
You could say the exact same thing about the Cardassians.
I don’t see any good way to fill in the blank where “forced relocation is fine when _____” is the sentence.
Yes you could. Which is why they ended up with a compromise for both the Cardassians and the Federation, to create a fragile peace that can be maintained if both parts accept the compromises each on ceded.
“forced relocation is fine when you (are colonisers who) set up base there about 20 years ago, you will get more than handsomely rewarded with an equal or bigger piece of land on a different planet and not be inconvenienced, and it is to stop an interplanetary war.”
EDIT : Added parts in brackets
For the sake of argument, how many years is the cutoff that flips it from “fine” to “evil”?
Citation needed? I don’t think that was ever stated, and “Journey’s End” is actually pretty clear about a new home having not even been identified.
The Federation and the Cardassians were not at war when the treaty was signed…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis_(Star_Trek)#Storyline
Bruh we’re on an internet board. You really want to split hairs about the fine details of fake politics?
Multiple lifetimes having passed. As in, two sentient lifebeing lifespans, to the point where the original migration is completely removed from living memory. This isn’t “all the colonists knew from the moment they were born” this is “We set up that well 10 years ago, and we barely got to use it”. You worked as an agreement with an organisation, that has now had to adjust to harsh realities, and you also need to do so.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Journey's_End_(episode)
My interpretation of the events is that eventually the butt of a Cardassian rifle is going to welcome it’s new home in the heads of one of these native american settlers, and they are going to lament their choices.
It’s sort of the point of the thread, so it seems a little odd to suddenly try to make it sound silly.
This interpretation is completely correct, but it sidesteps the two fundamental questions.
Do the colonists have the right to refuse to leave (I think you’ve made your position in that clear), and if so, do they have the right to defend themselves when the Cardassians violate the terms that they agreed to and tried to drive them off those worlds?
When you word it like that, they deserve to defend themselves if/when the Cardassians violate the terms of the treaty they reached with the former UFP/Current Cardassian colonists.
Which is the key term here. AFAI remember, they agreed to be subjects of Cardassia, which means the planet belongs to the Cardassians, which means they are probably going to mine the shit out of every natural resource on there.
However, if they have specific details they hammered out with these descendants of native americans, I don’t think was specified in the episode.
I understand and appriciate that, my point is more that they arrived at “a peace treaty” I don’t know if it was to stop a war, prevent a war or whatever, just that “A peace treaty” was made, and the circumstances are irrelevant to the matter of the right/wrongness of Maquis behaviour.
Like, putting a peace treaty at risk presumably would cause a war, or “bad things”. That’s what I mean. The Maquis are putting peace at risk by throwing their tantrum, regardless of how or why the peace treaty was needed.
There was an agreement made with Gul Evek - as you said, for them to be under Cardassian jurisdiction, if not full citizens:
However, that’s not the way things went down:
Those are the events that led to the Maquis as a resistance movement - before that, there were no Maquis, just colonists who stayed behind.
OK… but it very much feels like a protracted escalation that is to lay at the feet at the Colonists refusing the fucking leave, and the Cardassians acting, predictably like assholes.
I mean, this nails the fucking thing on the head. Bill wanted to take advantage of the hard work he did, which is fair. He was warned the Cardassians owned the planet now, and that if he wants to stay safe, he needs to leave, and that the Cardassians are assholes. He says no. Ok. The federations says “Look, we have this treaty, but we aren’t going to do jack to enforce it. You’re on your own”. He says OK. The Cardassians act like assholes. Shock , horror. Now Bill is mad, that the people he was told was going to fuck him over , fucked him over.
Let’s pan over to somewhere else now.
Imagine you are a Cardassian Colonist, and you are working on a terraforming mission. You’ve been on Unnamed Planetopia for 15 years and worked on a mine so that your family in Cardassia could afford a house or fucking whatever. Then, some human asshole bombs your planet with cobalt diselenide, and you gurgle to death as your lungs turn to liquid.
Your Cousin on Bill’s planet hears the news about yet another human acting like shit on an planet owned by Cardassia, and how you , and your entire colony was wiped out by that fearsome maverick, Michael Eddington, and he has enough of that poison to kill every Cardassian in the DMZ.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/For_the_Uniform_(episode)
Do you really think that this shit is making things any better for anyone? Does anyone expect Gul Generic to act civilised towards Bill getting in his face when his cousin and the entire fucking colony choked to death in agony?
Obviously, the tales in Star Trek, are morality plays based on things in history. The problem is that the federation is meant to be fair, just and able to provide everything people need.
It boils down to a few ideas :
Personal risk management
The colonists accepted the risk that the Cardassians would treat them unfairly, and the risk came out badly for them. Just like when people go skydiving or rock climbing and sign waivers to accept a personal risk, the colonists accepted the risk that the cardassians would treat them like shit. The federation can try to rescue them, and I’m sure the cardassians would let them flee, but they want to fight, and they fucking ask the federation for assistance. Bruh, fuck off. There are more controversial ways of looking at this, but , if you choose to take risks, don’t act out cry “unfair” when the risks don’t go your way. There are people like this IRL that gamble or make risky choices, and cry foul when it goes sour; it’s part and parcel of that risk. I’m not saying those people shouldn’t be offered assistance after, but insisting on validation that they didn’t make a mistake and to continue whatever lifestyle they want is bullshit.
Post war border settlements and their adjustments to the new borders
In IRL there are places that end up in the “wrong country” due to a settlement post war/conflict/treaty. The well being of those places are almost always dependent on what happens between the two countries in the following years. Some examples can be seen on wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_divided_cities
Some places of note to think about :
One of the weirdes enclave/exclave situations were set up in the border between India and Bangladesh, which literally lead to people dying and services being completely busted and inaccessible to local people. Its exact opposite would be Baarle-(Hertog/Nassau), where due to the Schangen agreement and the peace and co-operation between Belgium and the Netherlands, life in the village is peaceful and largely indifferent to the notions of enclaves and exclaves.
Alsace(–Lorraine) was a disputed territory between france and germany, especially during WW1, and a thorn in the side for negociations for peace. At present, similarly to Baarle, due to the peace between france and germany and the EU, things seem to be going all right for them. Same goes for Tyrol and Austria/Italy. There are contentions, but no one is getting blown up over it.
The “inevitability of the federation”
While this is not something that’s part of IRL, it is an interesting idea I saw in a video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbys9HJvSXA (this fucking things is half an hour long)
Bottom line : The federation is too damn efficient for other cultures to not eventually make peace and trade with it instead of being a pain in their ass. They will inevitably stop wars with you, and start being your allies, one way or the other. It happened to the Klingons, and it “is happening” to
spoiler
the Romulans and the Ferengi.
NB: I am not talking about post burn. Fuck you, I’m not going to cover an entire millenia of fake history.
Eventually, the federation will settle the disputes with cardassia, and establish more amicable relationships with them. Then the DMZ will be pacified, things will get bettter for the inhabitants of planets in and around the DMZ, both federation and cardassian.
But you gotta let go man. Diplomacy can’t continue when you’re polluting entire fucking planets and harming civilians on either side.
I’m tired. What was the question again?
I actually think habitable planets in the Star Trek universe are pretty rare. That is the easiest explanation as to why they go so far out of their way to not destroy habitable planets, despite clearly having the technology needed to just blow up planets willy-nilly like the Empire can in SW.
IDK, the universe is pretty vast, and they seem to be tripping over M class planets. Also, there are several other classes of planet available and they do some terraforming, it wouldn’t be too far fetched to say they took a “not quite M-Class” planet and did a little terraforming and had that up for grabs.
Did any terraforming happen after Project Genesis and Kahn? I haven’t watched since Voyager, but I don’t remember them explicitly mentioning it in either TNG or DS9
They do plenty of terraforming adjacent tasks in TNG, mainly for planets that have recently joined the federation, or are undergoing some kind of collapse prevention. I think the issue with Project Genesis and similar is that they were “bombs” that would instantly overwrite the ecological system on a planet with a predetermined one, wiping out the existing ecological system in the process, to put plainly, killing everything.
The terraforming I’m talking about is stuff like earthquake mitigation, adjusting “atmospheric conditions” to stop greenhouse effects or similar, etc. And it’s all signed off in triplicate from the federation etc, not just lobbing a terraforming bomb at a planet on a whim.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Terraforming
New head canon: Project Genesis is the actual origin of Exterminaus in WH40K, and during the Dark Age of Technology they forgot how to do the terraforming bit, so it’s just a bomb that completely wipes out a planet.
Ireland would like to have a word.
yeah, you wanna explain the good friday agreement to me? Or do you just want all the protestants off the island?