h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>no other nation, barring perhaps Germany and Dresden, can claim the distinction of having entire cities destroyed in conflict<<
Sorry to be pedantic but I think both the UK and USSR can claim this too, the UK suffered from massive aerial attacks and the USSR had German troops destroy cities.
However I wholeheartedly agree with the real point of your post

Thanks for your clarification, Iago. I see what you're saying and all that.

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Ah, but would he, Clive? Kirk was (will be?<winkeye) a soldier, a member of Starfleet - essentially the navy. Operating on the assumption that they don't have a draft in the 23rd century, he joined up voluntarily. What do you do in the armed forces really? Not seek out new worlds and new civilisations and boldly go where no one has gone before. No, you go to war and kill people and maybe get killed yourself. That's what the armed forces are for, right?

Good point. Perhaps I wandered off my original track by mentioning Dresden - I was thinking specifcally of the scale of destruction wrought on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - if other examples match that then so be it.

Also note that Japan is extremely pacificistic these days.

Being as the United Federation of Planets is a direct descendant of the United Nations, Starfleet, as an arm of the UFP is more akin to a hypothetical standing UN peacekeeping force rather than to the standing armed forces of a particular nation state. Volunteering for a peacekeeping force (as it is assumed Admiral Kirk did) is surely something a little different from volunteering for a nation state's potentially invasive armed forces.





(please replace all necessary past and present tense verbs in the above with appropriate future tense verbs)

I certainly see what you're saying, but it still remains that Kirk did volunteer for a type of armed forces, and with the possibility that he would see some sort of combat action, maybe kill people if necessary, and maybe get killed himself. The Federation does have its wars (Klingons, Romulans, Borg, etc.) and is not just a neutral UN-like thing. When, for example, the conflict with the Borg occurred (though that was after Kirk's time) ships were sent out with men on them to fight in battle just like we'd send troops out from our respective countries. The Federation was intended to be a UN-like organ, but in getting involved in such wars it really lost that status.

(I can't believe we're arguing about this!)

I don't even remember what the point of the discussion will be.

Me neither, really.

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Seems reasonable to me, anhaga..

What have I created?

The federation is not an awful lot like the UN.

The UN seeks to be an intermediary between nations whereas the federation is more like the UN in that it centralises a range of functions so they act as a whole rather than seperately.

If you really want to know what the federation is most like you ned to look at the old Soviet Union though.

Collectivised Effort a ruling military hierachy and with a centrally controlled econonmy.

You're right of course, but that seems almost hilarious in a way. Here they were in the 60s, trying to create this icon for Americans to look up to... and they create the Soviet Union!

....who created the Soviet Union?

I'd say that Roddenbury's creation of the UFP was a bit more complex than the UN.

*If full membership is to be permitted, further conditions must be met. Firstly the civilization must operate under a unified planetary government, additionally, cases involving any form of social or political ostracism, exploitation, slavery, or internal conflict is definitely not considered. Caste systems are also strictly prohibited.*

http://www.trekmania.net/diplomatic/federation.htm

Not all *that* a bad system, if obviously a fantasy.

a <-> bad

and

*Roddenberry*

Oops!

I didn't say that the UFP was simply the UN of the 23rd century -- I said that the UFP developed from the UN. The UFP is obviously an improvement on the UN.

Who's this Roddenberry character? Why are you pretending the UFP isn't real?

My thread has turned into a Trek convention My cup runneth over

Starfleet was... is... wioll haven be a military organisation. There was more than one ST episode where Starfleet were called 'the military', sometimes rather condescendingly, and a few episodes where diplomats were the central character, it being very clearly written that the diplomats in question were not part of Starfleet and were using the Enterprise purely as a means of transport, and a rather heavily armed one at that.

Starfleet and the UFP are seperate entities, if I'm not mistaken ... though Starfleet does seem to be an organ (a sort of Blue Helmet-type one) of the UFP.

I would have said the Federation was an evolved form of the EU, planetary governments creating a supra-governmental organisation while retaining a certain amount of sovereignty. Therefore Starfleet would be the equivalent of an EU army, if that ever arises.
Now how did we get onto this topic?

Clive's fault. post 20.

If you look at the logo of the UFP you will see that it is clearly derived from the logo of the UN.

http://www.sol6.de/startrek/logos/index.html

http://www.un.org/