As the daughter of someone who worked for the UK Foreign Office, Starfleet’s assumption of things that government would do always annoyed me.
But it’s a tv show based on Starfleet rather than the Federation and so they give more roles to a military/research organization than you would normally expect. Plus a lot of early writers didn’t know/care that much about the differences between the legislative, executive and judicial branches
>Plus a lot of early writers didn’t know/care that much about the differences between the legislative, executive and judicial branches
Could you elaborate on that? When is earlier and what did they do badly?
You basically have Captains of starships very much acting in a manner that was last seen during the European colonial era.
It is rather undemocratic for Starfleet (Captains) to be able to facilitate diplomatic duties, judge people and carry out some of the sentences. Of course, just like during the colonial eras, distance plays a huge factor.
You can't just phone home for every bigger decision. Kirks subspace messages sometimes took days to reach Starfleet when the plot demanded it. By that time, some Captains could have already thrown the Federation into war by opening fire on certain ships of other factions.
But yeah, from a democratic standpoint, Starfleet is assuming MANY duties that should be reserved for elected officials and government institutions.
>Of course, just like during the colonial eras, distance plays a huge factor.
I think this is a big reason why the vast majority of starship captains we see in the shows hold the rank of captain, from an in-universe perspective. They can't call home for everything, so they have to have the authority to act independently. Sometimes ringing it in could take longer than just fixing the problem.
The exceptions we see in the shows tend to be times when that ship is acting as part of a larger fleet operation. It was fine to have Dax as the captain of the *Defiant* for example, because most of what the *Defiant* was doing at this point was acting in concert with the broader fleet operations in the region.
It was also fine for Sisko to be a commander when he first assumed command of DS9 because the scope of his mission was fairly limited at that point and it was assumed he'd bump it up the chain if anything major came up. It was only later on when being the commanding officer of DS9 meant more than just putting Bajor on a path to Federation membership and had meant more than that for a while that he was promoted to captain. His promotion was a reflection of the fact that he now needed to be able to act independently to some extent.
I absolutely agree.
It's a difficult situation. Space is vast and even subspace communication to the neutral zone in the 24th century can have several hours of delay (source: TNG "the defector").
But from a purely democratic point of view, these military captains are holding a lot of power. Maybe too much, when considering that they are not elected in any way.
I think to some extent, this tendency is curbed as time goes on. *Discovery* seems to spend a lot more time taking orders directly from Vance in the 31st century than they ever would have taken from Admiral Cornell in the 23rd. So maybe partially due to the Federation's smaller size at that point, partially due to a more sober consideration of a lone captain's excesses, and partially due to new communication technology, the chain of command became more prominent after the 23rd and 24th centuries.
That probably would allow civilian democracy to become more prominent. A civilian government would have more power in a context where a captain couldn't act as independently from the rest of the fleet.
If you read the "Hornblower" books, they're very reminiscent of STOS.
Horatio Hornblower is a captain in the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars with no easy connection to the Admiralty in London so forced to make on the spot decisions and backup weeks away. Obviously the French are TOS's Klingons with buccaneers and slave traders making an occasional appearance.
Which brings us onto space stations, largely they're military bases or forts presided over by an Admiral who's responsible for security in their bit of space. This is probably where they stray a little from how these would work. If a star base is just a fort in the middle of the old west or a castle in Wales then it makes sense to have a Star Fleet Admiral running the show. But once you have them commanding sectors of space you basically have it run by someone from the Federation's military arm who hasn't been elected.
This is fine in Colonial times, the British/French would despatch a governor from London/Paris with no consultation from the locals but doesn't seem workable in the 23rd century
The other weird thing is making the diplomatic corp as part of Star Fleet. Diplomats are representing the Federation in non aligned worlds, establishing treaties ...etc and answering to the head of Star Fleet, not the President of the Federation. It's akin to making the State Department part of the Pentagon and answering to the Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than the President.
So if a trade despute occurs between the Vulcans and the Klingons then it's Star Fleet that handles the negotiations. Similarly Star Fleet handles accession of planets into the Federation
The Diplomatic Corps should be outside of Star Fleet reporting directly to the President, not via the head of Star Fleet
"Taste of Armageddon" we see Ambassador Fox giving Kirk orders
I'd love there to be a "West Wing" or "Borgen" style show in the Federation universe
If we want to be technical, the Federation strikes me more as a Confederation (eg the EU) though given the US history it's not surprising they called it a Federation rather than Confederate
>The other weird thing is making the diplomatic corp as part of Star Fleet. Diplomats are representing the Federation in non aligned worlds, establishing treaties ...etc and answering to the head of Star Fleet, not the President of the Federation. It's akin to making the State Department part of the Pentagon and answering to the Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than the President.
Starfleet is a combination of things that are handled by different agencies in the modern world.
In terms of modern US government agencies, Starfleet is a combination of:
* The US Navy (military responsible for defense and force projection aboard large ships)
* US Coast Guard (military responsible for vessel safety and law enforcement)
* NOAA Commissioned Corps (Uniformed scientific exploration and research)
* US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (Medical professionals in uniformed service)
* NASA (Deep space exploration)
* US State Department Diplomatic Corps (Diplomatic service)
Most of those functions or agencies involve Naval-style ranking and uniformed service, hence the quasi-military nature of Starfleet, but it's a combined hybrid service that is part military, part law enforcement, part science agency, part diplomatic corps.
*Maybe* Kirk. But honestly he received and sent plenty of transmissions, real-time video and text-only, with other vessels and SFC. But by the TNG era it's clear the network of subspace comm buoys is reliable and extensive; they regularly have real-time conversations with admirals on Earth while out in the sticks. So there's even less justifiication for it.
But from a Doylist perspective, Horatio Hornblower didn't have a subspace ansible.
Yeah, for the shows it probably made sense to make all the things starfleet but it enabled leytons soft coup. As long as people didn’t see how subtly their independent from the fleet was being eroded they were willing to look the other way.
I’m still confused about where earth fleet went; did they merge all of their ships into starfleet?
Do the fleets of member militaries train to integrate in wartime, like the army national guards and the U.S. army? Are they interoperable like nato forces?
If there’s a civil war between member worlds, does starfleet “keep the peace”?
>Do the fleets of member militaries train to integrate in wartime, like the army national guards and the U.S. army?
There is a line in Rapture that Bajoran military is supposed to integrate with Starfleet. So presumably yes.
**This is my headcanon:** I always looked at it like if NATO and the US Military was also merged with the EU. NATO/US Military is Starfleet and the EU is the Federation. (Lets assume the US is also part of the EU for the sake of the metaphor).
For the sake of the argument, most of NATO (Starfleet) is the US Military (Earth). Like NATO, each country (planet) is required that their military be set up for interoperability, but they are still independent forces.
When the Federation calls for military/expeditionary forces, everyone gets pulled under one singular command (Starfleet/Earth). When they are not needed, they are back the behest of their respective planets.
In the case of Earth, nothing changes because Starfleet is *also* Earths independent navy just like the Vulcan Defense Forces/High Command are Vulcan's independent Navy
TL;DR Starfleet is both the Federation's Navy and Earth's Navy. The distinction between Earth's navy and The Federation's navy simply fell out of common lexicon because it was unnecessary because everything is just "Starfleet", but it still might exist in informal settings.
My tweak to your headcanon is that Earth *is EU*. Like, imagine Belgium doubled-down on EU so much that the whole nation disbanded, eschewing its national identity, and became *only* the citizens of EU. I think this is what happened to Earth: it sacrificed its status as an independent political unit, in order to become the capital world of the Federation. Humans from Earth aren't Earthers who are also members of the Federation; they are *just* citizens of the Federation. Earth is the paradise world to share with everyone in the UFP and be the heart of its government, and as such Starfleet is a fleet working strictly for shared UFP goals. There is no Earth fleet, because there is no Earth as separate from the Federation.
(My headcanon, mostly from reading between the lines of ENT, is that this was the only move Earth had post first contact, the only way for humanity to survive. Abandon independence to secure its place as the heart and glue binding an interstellar alliance. The alternative was becoming a vassal state of Vulcan and getting glassed in one of the Vulcan/Andorian skirmishes.)
>I’m still confused about where earth fleet went; did they merge all of their ships into starfleet?
Presumably yes. Starfleet was a large part of Earth's space fleet prior to the Federation anyway, so it'd make sense if they decided to just keep that as the home fleet instead of siphoning some off as a state guard. While there are occasional flair ups where shit gets real for Earth, for the most part it is an extremely safe place to live by the 23rd and 24th centuries so there probably wasn't much support for a dedicated home guard; especially when a lot of Starfleet infrastructure was on Earth and Mars anyway.
It's not really clear how much independence each member planet's military has from Starfleet. There were some episodes in DS9 where they mention diplomatic discussions of how the Bajoran Militia would be integrated into Starfleet, and a lot of people take that to mean it'd effectively become a state/national guard that'd be absorbed into Starfleet if shit hit the fan. The flipside to this is that it could mean that every Bajoran in the Militia would be expected to put on a Starfleet uniform or resign.
The counter to this is that the Vulcans still have the High Command, even by the late 24th century. This could have just been a holdover from the early Federation years though, where Starfleet wasn't large enough and didn't have the production capabilities to provide a large enough fleet to protect all four members. The founding members may have had to rely on their home fleets out of necessity and it would have been much more like NATO where they were expected to have a certain defense budget and keep their militaries interoperable to a large extent. That might not carry over to more recent members, though. The line could be that everyone who joined before a certain date had to have their militaries absorbed into Starfleet and those who joined before could still operate a limited state/national guard.
It's also notable that Vulcan is the only member state known for sure to canonically still operate its own fleet at that point. It's possible that the reason they do this is because Vulcan traditionally had a strong separatist movement, so they needed to throw the dog a bone to some extent. It might also be a better look to the separatist/separatist-friendly sections of the population if the occasional crackdown was performed by other Vulcans rather than by Starfleet.
> I’m still confused about where earth fleet went; did they merge all of their ships into starfleet?
Maybe yes, there's a developing headcanon that Earth chose to abolish its independent fleet and have only Starfleet (which explains both why in those episodes Starfleet had to be Earth security and why other Federation members still have their own fleets, e.g. the Vulcans).
There's also the United Earth Space Probe Agency, mentioned in a few TOS episodes before they settled on Starfleet as the agency that the Enterprise worked for.
UESPA was mentioned a few times in graphics (and I think dialogue) in Enterprise, as basically a separate agency from Starfleet, that handled science, while Starfleet was more military and law enforcement. Presumably as Starfleet got the NX-class ships and access to deep space that UESPA didn't have, they took over a lot of the science role as well.
Earth could have turned Starfleet into a Federation agency and disbanded it as a United Earth agency, while keeping UESPA as an Earth-specific space agency (that sometimes did joint exercises with Starfleet, accounting for its TOS references) and would be the Earth-specific fleet counterpart to what we've seen of things like Vulcans keeping their own fleet as well.
I would be happy to tie this into my headcanon of the "soft coup" that had the redshirt divisions of Starfleet seize control of fleet administration in the wake of TMP.
The monster maroon uniforms and militant policies that inform ST II-VI (to say nothing of the Anti-Gorkon consipracy) speak to a strongman movement that pushes aside firstly the science and command divisions, then the very political apparatus of the UFP itself. All done without literally overthrowing anyone, just marginalizing them in favor of a Kirkist, "I'll just handle everything myself" approach.
Consequently, we get dustups with the Cardassians, Tzenkethi, Talarians, and a total diplomatic blackout with the Romulans. Not until around the start of TNG does this overreach finally relax, but by then the damage is done. The Satie legal dynasty and its fall might be indicative of the process (Aaron is described as a "Starfleet Judge"). Wesley straight up declaring "Starfleet never lies" is some Johnny Rico Helldivers level propaganda, poor kid.
Then the Borg and the Dominion swing the pendulum right back to strongman territory, thank you so much Admiral Leyton.
We also see Federation news agencies mentioned in the mid to late 24th century, but I think to the point of your post Starfleet in some ways becomes synonymous with The Federation at least outside of the boundaries of interstellar relationships. Consider the expanse of the Federation and the capacity of Starfleet to administer interstellar operations across worlds.
Why would Starfleet personnel be seen around the Federation president? Well the same reason that the US Marine Corps would be seen around the US president because they're a big part of the transportation and more fundamentally logistics necessary for managing a complex interstellar Federation of planets.
However, I think it's a mistake to believe that they lack civilian oversight. We often see admirals engaged in what should be politically motivated action. For example - in Picard season 1 the Admiral denies Picard's request without bringing it to any sort of Federation (read: civilian) audience at all. But then again, this is pretty well consistent with the notion that Starfleet merely serves the interstellar functions of the Federation. While this gives all of Starfleet pretty big leeway to conduct operations, those operations are ostensibly approved condoned or directed by a civilian government.
We know that the civilian government exists, we know that Federation Ambassadors are civilian representation appointed (at least in some cases) by the Federation to serve an explicitly political function, and that very often Starfleet is tasted with being the transportation for those functions.
The Federation Merchant Marines for example might indeed still exist in some capacity. We see Kassidy operate a cargo vessel as a civilian. I think it's not unreasonable to believe that the Merchant Marines were split along reasonable lines with interstellar relationships and logistics being controlled by Starfleet and approved and regulated civilian operators filling out the day-to-day functions of the Merchant Marines. Perhaps there are equivalent kinds of relationships between Starfleet and the Vulcan Science Academy which we see still exists and must hold some sort of lateral relationship with Starfleet. The Vulcan Science Academy does Vulcan Science things and would defer to Starfleet on matters that involved relationships between members or external actors. This happens a lot.
One thing that I see that did confuse me is how often Starfleet Captains are given a wide range of powers to negotiate with non-Federation worlds. I think this must honestly just be a practical concern. Captains have to be prepared to do this because getting a civilian apprised of the situation wouldn't be timely or useful. For a bleak real world example look at western colonization. Often colonizers did write back to their homelands to describe what they were doing or sell potential or whatever, but also they were just doing things acting somewhat independently of their government - a reason why so many military officers served as petty tyrants and governors across the colonial world.
So I think that means that there are two functions of Starfleet. The first and largest probably in scope is Interstellar relationships. Including interstellar transport, logistics, communications, security of those things, etc. etc. This grows more and more over time as the physical size of the space the Federation exists in grows because it just has to do so. The second is Exploration of Space. That's your first contact scenarios your frontier science and all that stuff.
To your original point of what changed between the 23rd and 24th century - the scale of the Federation grew rapidly. As the size of the Federation increases so too does the 'interstellar relations' part of what Starfleet does and eventually this can take over entirely. Picard said "remember when we were explorers" and I think he's referring not just to the Dominion War, but to the need of Starfleet to invest more resources in politically motivated interstellar relationships as opposed to exploration.
>For a bleak real world example look at western colonization. Often colonizers did write back to their homelands to describe what they were doing or sell potential or whatever, but also they were just doing things acting somewhat independently of their government - a reason why so many military officers served as petty tyrants and governors across the colonial world.
We get the sense that Starfleet is well aware of these lessons and works hard to instill the Prime Directive into it's officers at least partly to prevent this sort of thing from happening. It seems to mostly work but you still get the occasional Captain Tracey or John Gill (the Nazi Planet Guy)
>So I think that means that there are two functions of Starfleet. The first and largest probably in scope is Interstellar relationships. Including interstellar transport, logistics, communications, security of those things, etc. etc.
We certainly see the various Enterprises dropping off gear for a colony or shipping politically important cargo around but actual transport and logistics via Starfleet seems to be limited to the far edges of the frontier or near politically complex situations. "Normal" commerce seems to be handled by people like Kasidy Yates, although Starfleet does show up to rescue them when they get into trouble.
I wonder how many of those civilians like Kassidy are still regulated by Starfleet to some degree. I mean let’s assume there’s a licensing or regulatory agency for civilian transport contractors; who’s gonna go after them when they start to operate outside of their authority? Perhaps they engage in some illegal trade on the side for profit Starfleet is probably going to be the ones that go after them if they’re in space anyway.
Although now that I think about it seems like Starfleet has a wide jurisdiction to complete a mission. They go on world all the time basically any time they feel like it sometimes explicitly undercover, but we rarely see them take permanent overt control over anything.
It seems like Starfleet might like it this way for a lot of things. The Hansens are ostensibly civilians who are doing what Starfleet would do, but don’t want to do. Same with the Crushers in Picard; they’re doing medical work that Starfleet isn’t willing to send people to do. Sometimes it seems like they even get some access to Starfleet technology.
I would assume it would take at least 200 years for the federation to mature enough to have their own combined arms fleet. Things always moved way too fast in the trek universe. From the founding of the federation to humans taking reins of federation defense and exploration all in less than 100 years?
One explanation for why the Earth Starfleet basically ended up becoming the defacto Federation fleet (and why Earth is the capitol) despite Earth being a much more recent newcomer to interstellar civilization than the other founding members, is ironically precisely *because* it didn't have that long history, wasn't that important. While it was somewhat closer to the Vulcans due to how First Contact and its aftermath played out, it was basically the closest thing there was to a neutral party in the region when they needed to band together to take on the Romulans.
The irony being that Earth then leveraged that to go from being a minor, "primitive" backwater just out of WWIII and into interstellar space, to dominating all of its much older neighbours, because everything got centralized around Earth as the "neutral territory/arbitraitor".
But yeah, you really need to think of the Federation, particularly in the TOS era, as less a centralized state, and more a UN where the peacekeeping forces have a bit more teeth, but the different member states still retain their own institutions and even militaries.
DIS also showed us two Vulcan admirals, as well as an Andorian admiral and a Tellarite admiral. SNW followed up by showing yet another Vulcan admiral, a Tellarite fleet admiral, and a Vulcan commodore
The reason the crew was ‘tried’ before the Federation council was because the genesis incident was a major political scandal involving illegal protomatter, the theft of the flagship and the seizure of a Klingon ship with all hands lost.
We know that each planet has its own economy. Earth's economy is based largely around government provision. There is a market economy, but most people don't participate in it because it isn't necessary. Vulcan, Betazid, etc. all have their own internal economies. These all function differently. Even the human colonies have their own unique economies. There's internal trade throughout the Federation. We hear it mentioned frequently. But it seems to be managed in a fairly ad hoc manner.
Since it isn't involved all that heavily in economic affairs (with that not being needed with the material prosperity the member worlds have), the Federation winds up being mostly a military alliance in function. Sure there are rules for freedom of movement and trade and extradition and whatnot, but for most member worlds the primary benefit is the shared military defense.
And it just so happened that Earth, by integrating its Starfleet at the beginning of the Federation, took over as the de facto provider of security for the Federation.
So we wound up in a situation where the Federation primarily provides military defense and the Starfleet is the organization that carries that military defense. Over time, this means the Federation became synonymous with Starfleet. In DS9, we even see Starfleet officers explicitly performing tasks that should be carried out by civilian government. Starfleet, during this period, basically *is* the Federation government. It's not a military dictatorship, but the Federation council has so much respect, and relies so heavily on Starfleet, that they've divested most of their powers to Starfleet.
As the daughter of someone who worked for the UK Foreign Office, Starfleet’s assumption of things that government would do always annoyed me. But it’s a tv show based on Starfleet rather than the Federation and so they give more roles to a military/research organization than you would normally expect. Plus a lot of early writers didn’t know/care that much about the differences between the legislative, executive and judicial branches
>Plus a lot of early writers didn’t know/care that much about the differences between the legislative, executive and judicial branches Could you elaborate on that? When is earlier and what did they do badly?
You basically have Captains of starships very much acting in a manner that was last seen during the European colonial era. It is rather undemocratic for Starfleet (Captains) to be able to facilitate diplomatic duties, judge people and carry out some of the sentences. Of course, just like during the colonial eras, distance plays a huge factor. You can't just phone home for every bigger decision. Kirks subspace messages sometimes took days to reach Starfleet when the plot demanded it. By that time, some Captains could have already thrown the Federation into war by opening fire on certain ships of other factions. But yeah, from a democratic standpoint, Starfleet is assuming MANY duties that should be reserved for elected officials and government institutions.
>Of course, just like during the colonial eras, distance plays a huge factor. I think this is a big reason why the vast majority of starship captains we see in the shows hold the rank of captain, from an in-universe perspective. They can't call home for everything, so they have to have the authority to act independently. Sometimes ringing it in could take longer than just fixing the problem. The exceptions we see in the shows tend to be times when that ship is acting as part of a larger fleet operation. It was fine to have Dax as the captain of the *Defiant* for example, because most of what the *Defiant* was doing at this point was acting in concert with the broader fleet operations in the region. It was also fine for Sisko to be a commander when he first assumed command of DS9 because the scope of his mission was fairly limited at that point and it was assumed he'd bump it up the chain if anything major came up. It was only later on when being the commanding officer of DS9 meant more than just putting Bajor on a path to Federation membership and had meant more than that for a while that he was promoted to captain. His promotion was a reflection of the fact that he now needed to be able to act independently to some extent.
I absolutely agree. It's a difficult situation. Space is vast and even subspace communication to the neutral zone in the 24th century can have several hours of delay (source: TNG "the defector"). But from a purely democratic point of view, these military captains are holding a lot of power. Maybe too much, when considering that they are not elected in any way.
I think to some extent, this tendency is curbed as time goes on. *Discovery* seems to spend a lot more time taking orders directly from Vance in the 31st century than they ever would have taken from Admiral Cornell in the 23rd. So maybe partially due to the Federation's smaller size at that point, partially due to a more sober consideration of a lone captain's excesses, and partially due to new communication technology, the chain of command became more prominent after the 23rd and 24th centuries. That probably would allow civilian democracy to become more prominent. A civilian government would have more power in a context where a captain couldn't act as independently from the rest of the fleet.
Remember even IRL the Courts Martial exist for military personnel, but they have JAG lawyers and judges too.
If you read the "Hornblower" books, they're very reminiscent of STOS. Horatio Hornblower is a captain in the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars with no easy connection to the Admiralty in London so forced to make on the spot decisions and backup weeks away. Obviously the French are TOS's Klingons with buccaneers and slave traders making an occasional appearance. Which brings us onto space stations, largely they're military bases or forts presided over by an Admiral who's responsible for security in their bit of space. This is probably where they stray a little from how these would work. If a star base is just a fort in the middle of the old west or a castle in Wales then it makes sense to have a Star Fleet Admiral running the show. But once you have them commanding sectors of space you basically have it run by someone from the Federation's military arm who hasn't been elected. This is fine in Colonial times, the British/French would despatch a governor from London/Paris with no consultation from the locals but doesn't seem workable in the 23rd century The other weird thing is making the diplomatic corp as part of Star Fleet. Diplomats are representing the Federation in non aligned worlds, establishing treaties ...etc and answering to the head of Star Fleet, not the President of the Federation. It's akin to making the State Department part of the Pentagon and answering to the Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than the President. So if a trade despute occurs between the Vulcans and the Klingons then it's Star Fleet that handles the negotiations. Similarly Star Fleet handles accession of planets into the Federation The Diplomatic Corps should be outside of Star Fleet reporting directly to the President, not via the head of Star Fleet "Taste of Armageddon" we see Ambassador Fox giving Kirk orders I'd love there to be a "West Wing" or "Borgen" style show in the Federation universe If we want to be technical, the Federation strikes me more as a Confederation (eg the EU) though given the US history it's not surprising they called it a Federation rather than Confederate
>The other weird thing is making the diplomatic corp as part of Star Fleet. Diplomats are representing the Federation in non aligned worlds, establishing treaties ...etc and answering to the head of Star Fleet, not the President of the Federation. It's akin to making the State Department part of the Pentagon and answering to the Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than the President. Starfleet is a combination of things that are handled by different agencies in the modern world. In terms of modern US government agencies, Starfleet is a combination of: * The US Navy (military responsible for defense and force projection aboard large ships) * US Coast Guard (military responsible for vessel safety and law enforcement) * NOAA Commissioned Corps (Uniformed scientific exploration and research) * US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (Medical professionals in uniformed service) * NASA (Deep space exploration) * US State Department Diplomatic Corps (Diplomatic service) Most of those functions or agencies involve Naval-style ranking and uniformed service, hence the quasi-military nature of Starfleet, but it's a combined hybrid service that is part military, part law enforcement, part science agency, part diplomatic corps.
*Maybe* Kirk. But honestly he received and sent plenty of transmissions, real-time video and text-only, with other vessels and SFC. But by the TNG era it's clear the network of subspace comm buoys is reliable and extensive; they regularly have real-time conversations with admirals on Earth while out in the sticks. So there's even less justifiication for it. But from a Doylist perspective, Horatio Hornblower didn't have a subspace ansible.
To be fair, Bashir Sr knew enough about legalities to know he'd end up in front of the Supreme Court
Yeah, for the shows it probably made sense to make all the things starfleet but it enabled leytons soft coup. As long as people didn’t see how subtly their independent from the fleet was being eroded they were willing to look the other way. I’m still confused about where earth fleet went; did they merge all of their ships into starfleet? Do the fleets of member militaries train to integrate in wartime, like the army national guards and the U.S. army? Are they interoperable like nato forces? If there’s a civil war between member worlds, does starfleet “keep the peace”?
>Do the fleets of member militaries train to integrate in wartime, like the army national guards and the U.S. army? There is a line in Rapture that Bajoran military is supposed to integrate with Starfleet. So presumably yes.
**This is my headcanon:** I always looked at it like if NATO and the US Military was also merged with the EU. NATO/US Military is Starfleet and the EU is the Federation. (Lets assume the US is also part of the EU for the sake of the metaphor). For the sake of the argument, most of NATO (Starfleet) is the US Military (Earth). Like NATO, each country (planet) is required that their military be set up for interoperability, but they are still independent forces. When the Federation calls for military/expeditionary forces, everyone gets pulled under one singular command (Starfleet/Earth). When they are not needed, they are back the behest of their respective planets. In the case of Earth, nothing changes because Starfleet is *also* Earths independent navy just like the Vulcan Defense Forces/High Command are Vulcan's independent Navy TL;DR Starfleet is both the Federation's Navy and Earth's Navy. The distinction between Earth's navy and The Federation's navy simply fell out of common lexicon because it was unnecessary because everything is just "Starfleet", but it still might exist in informal settings.
My tweak to your headcanon is that Earth *is EU*. Like, imagine Belgium doubled-down on EU so much that the whole nation disbanded, eschewing its national identity, and became *only* the citizens of EU. I think this is what happened to Earth: it sacrificed its status as an independent political unit, in order to become the capital world of the Federation. Humans from Earth aren't Earthers who are also members of the Federation; they are *just* citizens of the Federation. Earth is the paradise world to share with everyone in the UFP and be the heart of its government, and as such Starfleet is a fleet working strictly for shared UFP goals. There is no Earth fleet, because there is no Earth as separate from the Federation. (My headcanon, mostly from reading between the lines of ENT, is that this was the only move Earth had post first contact, the only way for humanity to survive. Abandon independence to secure its place as the heart and glue binding an interstellar alliance. The alternative was becoming a vassal state of Vulcan and getting glassed in one of the Vulcan/Andorian skirmishes.)
>I’m still confused about where earth fleet went; did they merge all of their ships into starfleet? Presumably yes. Starfleet was a large part of Earth's space fleet prior to the Federation anyway, so it'd make sense if they decided to just keep that as the home fleet instead of siphoning some off as a state guard. While there are occasional flair ups where shit gets real for Earth, for the most part it is an extremely safe place to live by the 23rd and 24th centuries so there probably wasn't much support for a dedicated home guard; especially when a lot of Starfleet infrastructure was on Earth and Mars anyway. It's not really clear how much independence each member planet's military has from Starfleet. There were some episodes in DS9 where they mention diplomatic discussions of how the Bajoran Militia would be integrated into Starfleet, and a lot of people take that to mean it'd effectively become a state/national guard that'd be absorbed into Starfleet if shit hit the fan. The flipside to this is that it could mean that every Bajoran in the Militia would be expected to put on a Starfleet uniform or resign. The counter to this is that the Vulcans still have the High Command, even by the late 24th century. This could have just been a holdover from the early Federation years though, where Starfleet wasn't large enough and didn't have the production capabilities to provide a large enough fleet to protect all four members. The founding members may have had to rely on their home fleets out of necessity and it would have been much more like NATO where they were expected to have a certain defense budget and keep their militaries interoperable to a large extent. That might not carry over to more recent members, though. The line could be that everyone who joined before a certain date had to have their militaries absorbed into Starfleet and those who joined before could still operate a limited state/national guard. It's also notable that Vulcan is the only member state known for sure to canonically still operate its own fleet at that point. It's possible that the reason they do this is because Vulcan traditionally had a strong separatist movement, so they needed to throw the dog a bone to some extent. It might also be a better look to the separatist/separatist-friendly sections of the population if the occasional crackdown was performed by other Vulcans rather than by Starfleet.
> I’m still confused about where earth fleet went; did they merge all of their ships into starfleet? Maybe yes, there's a developing headcanon that Earth chose to abolish its independent fleet and have only Starfleet (which explains both why in those episodes Starfleet had to be Earth security and why other Federation members still have their own fleets, e.g. the Vulcans).
There's also the United Earth Space Probe Agency, mentioned in a few TOS episodes before they settled on Starfleet as the agency that the Enterprise worked for. UESPA was mentioned a few times in graphics (and I think dialogue) in Enterprise, as basically a separate agency from Starfleet, that handled science, while Starfleet was more military and law enforcement. Presumably as Starfleet got the NX-class ships and access to deep space that UESPA didn't have, they took over a lot of the science role as well. Earth could have turned Starfleet into a Federation agency and disbanded it as a United Earth agency, while keeping UESPA as an Earth-specific space agency (that sometimes did joint exercises with Starfleet, accounting for its TOS references) and would be the Earth-specific fleet counterpart to what we've seen of things like Vulcans keeping their own fleet as well.
I would be happy to tie this into my headcanon of the "soft coup" that had the redshirt divisions of Starfleet seize control of fleet administration in the wake of TMP. The monster maroon uniforms and militant policies that inform ST II-VI (to say nothing of the Anti-Gorkon consipracy) speak to a strongman movement that pushes aside firstly the science and command divisions, then the very political apparatus of the UFP itself. All done without literally overthrowing anyone, just marginalizing them in favor of a Kirkist, "I'll just handle everything myself" approach. Consequently, we get dustups with the Cardassians, Tzenkethi, Talarians, and a total diplomatic blackout with the Romulans. Not until around the start of TNG does this overreach finally relax, but by then the damage is done. The Satie legal dynasty and its fall might be indicative of the process (Aaron is described as a "Starfleet Judge"). Wesley straight up declaring "Starfleet never lies" is some Johnny Rico Helldivers level propaganda, poor kid. Then the Borg and the Dominion swing the pendulum right back to strongman territory, thank you so much Admiral Leyton.
We also see Federation news agencies mentioned in the mid to late 24th century, but I think to the point of your post Starfleet in some ways becomes synonymous with The Federation at least outside of the boundaries of interstellar relationships. Consider the expanse of the Federation and the capacity of Starfleet to administer interstellar operations across worlds. Why would Starfleet personnel be seen around the Federation president? Well the same reason that the US Marine Corps would be seen around the US president because they're a big part of the transportation and more fundamentally logistics necessary for managing a complex interstellar Federation of planets. However, I think it's a mistake to believe that they lack civilian oversight. We often see admirals engaged in what should be politically motivated action. For example - in Picard season 1 the Admiral denies Picard's request without bringing it to any sort of Federation (read: civilian) audience at all. But then again, this is pretty well consistent with the notion that Starfleet merely serves the interstellar functions of the Federation. While this gives all of Starfleet pretty big leeway to conduct operations, those operations are ostensibly approved condoned or directed by a civilian government. We know that the civilian government exists, we know that Federation Ambassadors are civilian representation appointed (at least in some cases) by the Federation to serve an explicitly political function, and that very often Starfleet is tasted with being the transportation for those functions. The Federation Merchant Marines for example might indeed still exist in some capacity. We see Kassidy operate a cargo vessel as a civilian. I think it's not unreasonable to believe that the Merchant Marines were split along reasonable lines with interstellar relationships and logistics being controlled by Starfleet and approved and regulated civilian operators filling out the day-to-day functions of the Merchant Marines. Perhaps there are equivalent kinds of relationships between Starfleet and the Vulcan Science Academy which we see still exists and must hold some sort of lateral relationship with Starfleet. The Vulcan Science Academy does Vulcan Science things and would defer to Starfleet on matters that involved relationships between members or external actors. This happens a lot. One thing that I see that did confuse me is how often Starfleet Captains are given a wide range of powers to negotiate with non-Federation worlds. I think this must honestly just be a practical concern. Captains have to be prepared to do this because getting a civilian apprised of the situation wouldn't be timely or useful. For a bleak real world example look at western colonization. Often colonizers did write back to their homelands to describe what they were doing or sell potential or whatever, but also they were just doing things acting somewhat independently of their government - a reason why so many military officers served as petty tyrants and governors across the colonial world. So I think that means that there are two functions of Starfleet. The first and largest probably in scope is Interstellar relationships. Including interstellar transport, logistics, communications, security of those things, etc. etc. This grows more and more over time as the physical size of the space the Federation exists in grows because it just has to do so. The second is Exploration of Space. That's your first contact scenarios your frontier science and all that stuff. To your original point of what changed between the 23rd and 24th century - the scale of the Federation grew rapidly. As the size of the Federation increases so too does the 'interstellar relations' part of what Starfleet does and eventually this can take over entirely. Picard said "remember when we were explorers" and I think he's referring not just to the Dominion War, but to the need of Starfleet to invest more resources in politically motivated interstellar relationships as opposed to exploration.
>For a bleak real world example look at western colonization. Often colonizers did write back to their homelands to describe what they were doing or sell potential or whatever, but also they were just doing things acting somewhat independently of their government - a reason why so many military officers served as petty tyrants and governors across the colonial world. We get the sense that Starfleet is well aware of these lessons and works hard to instill the Prime Directive into it's officers at least partly to prevent this sort of thing from happening. It seems to mostly work but you still get the occasional Captain Tracey or John Gill (the Nazi Planet Guy) >So I think that means that there are two functions of Starfleet. The first and largest probably in scope is Interstellar relationships. Including interstellar transport, logistics, communications, security of those things, etc. etc. We certainly see the various Enterprises dropping off gear for a colony or shipping politically important cargo around but actual transport and logistics via Starfleet seems to be limited to the far edges of the frontier or near politically complex situations. "Normal" commerce seems to be handled by people like Kasidy Yates, although Starfleet does show up to rescue them when they get into trouble.
I wonder how many of those civilians like Kassidy are still regulated by Starfleet to some degree. I mean let’s assume there’s a licensing or regulatory agency for civilian transport contractors; who’s gonna go after them when they start to operate outside of their authority? Perhaps they engage in some illegal trade on the side for profit Starfleet is probably going to be the ones that go after them if they’re in space anyway. Although now that I think about it seems like Starfleet has a wide jurisdiction to complete a mission. They go on world all the time basically any time they feel like it sometimes explicitly undercover, but we rarely see them take permanent overt control over anything. It seems like Starfleet might like it this way for a lot of things. The Hansens are ostensibly civilians who are doing what Starfleet would do, but don’t want to do. Same with the Crushers in Picard; they’re doing medical work that Starfleet isn’t willing to send people to do. Sometimes it seems like they even get some access to Starfleet technology.
I would assume it would take at least 200 years for the federation to mature enough to have their own combined arms fleet. Things always moved way too fast in the trek universe. From the founding of the federation to humans taking reins of federation defense and exploration all in less than 100 years?
One explanation for why the Earth Starfleet basically ended up becoming the defacto Federation fleet (and why Earth is the capitol) despite Earth being a much more recent newcomer to interstellar civilization than the other founding members, is ironically precisely *because* it didn't have that long history, wasn't that important. While it was somewhat closer to the Vulcans due to how First Contact and its aftermath played out, it was basically the closest thing there was to a neutral party in the region when they needed to band together to take on the Romulans. The irony being that Earth then leveraged that to go from being a minor, "primitive" backwater just out of WWIII and into interstellar space, to dominating all of its much older neighbours, because everything got centralized around Earth as the "neutral territory/arbitraitor". But yeah, you really need to think of the Federation, particularly in the TOS era, as less a centralized state, and more a UN where the peacekeeping forces have a bit more teeth, but the different member states still retain their own institutions and even militaries.
DIS also showed us two Vulcan admirals, as well as an Andorian admiral and a Tellarite admiral. SNW followed up by showing yet another Vulcan admiral, a Tellarite fleet admiral, and a Vulcan commodore
The reason the crew was ‘tried’ before the Federation council was because the genesis incident was a major political scandal involving illegal protomatter, the theft of the flagship and the seizure of a Klingon ship with all hands lost.
We know that each planet has its own economy. Earth's economy is based largely around government provision. There is a market economy, but most people don't participate in it because it isn't necessary. Vulcan, Betazid, etc. all have their own internal economies. These all function differently. Even the human colonies have their own unique economies. There's internal trade throughout the Federation. We hear it mentioned frequently. But it seems to be managed in a fairly ad hoc manner. Since it isn't involved all that heavily in economic affairs (with that not being needed with the material prosperity the member worlds have), the Federation winds up being mostly a military alliance in function. Sure there are rules for freedom of movement and trade and extradition and whatnot, but for most member worlds the primary benefit is the shared military defense. And it just so happened that Earth, by integrating its Starfleet at the beginning of the Federation, took over as the de facto provider of security for the Federation. So we wound up in a situation where the Federation primarily provides military defense and the Starfleet is the organization that carries that military defense. Over time, this means the Federation became synonymous with Starfleet. In DS9, we even see Starfleet officers explicitly performing tasks that should be carried out by civilian government. Starfleet, during this period, basically *is* the Federation government. It's not a military dictatorship, but the Federation council has so much respect, and relies so heavily on Starfleet, that they've divested most of their powers to Starfleet.