One: The Cardassian DoW outlined a series of behavior WE might well invade someone over as their CB.
Two: That's not standard Cardassian MO.
Nice strawman tho.
...You do realize that it's very plausible that the Cardassians are outright
falsifying much of their accusations? It would hardly be out of character for the Cardassians to lie in a press release. Or to stage false flag operations, such as bankrolling renegade Chrystovians to do things their government would never have authorized, then blame the species as a whole.
Sorry, but it's not remotely feasible and the Cardassians actually have a legitimate CB. I mean, we know all the cardassian allegations are totally IC. If the Harmony wasn't being hypocritical shits sabotaging the same intervention they say is so necessary I'd be more up for it ... but I'm not voting to get played for a sucker by our biggest threat with this bad a hand.
I honestly think we can
fend off Harmony intrusion from becoming too much of a problem on our coreward border while doing this.
Remember, we're going to lose credibility and influence on our spinward border (with Cardassia) AND our coreward border (with the Harmony) if we don't intervene. Our diplomatic position is just as susceptible to crumbling; we don't really secure or strengthen it very much by
not reacting to this.
So if we're going to lose either way, I vote we lose in the way that at least gives us a chance to not lose on all our borders at once by hurting our credibility with
everyone. Plus, y'know, the option that reduces the number of people with Cardassian boots on their necks.
You seem to deliberately miss the part where they are the ones insisting to go after Cardassians with all we have, but their military support will be largely reliant on ours, because how the hell do you expect those Pathfinders and Guardians to stay operational?
Which is why they ALSO offered an option where they work hard to keep the Harmony from making too many gains against us while we're busy. I'm damn sure the ISC can support
peacetime fleets in the Harmony Border Zone without diverting the resources we need from our war effort. Likewise they're offering to fight the Dylaarians,
also something they can do without "military support... largely reliant on ours."
Furthermore, remember how we can't rely on the Chrystovians very much for military supplies? By the same token the ISC can't rely on us. We don't have the tooling to make the kind of parts and supplies they need. They
have to provide most of the resources that go into supporting their own fleet; about the most we could help them with would be fuel (maybe), bulk foodstuffs and the like (which we have in abundance), and shipping (admittedly tight)
If you accuse me of "deliberately missing" things, what am I to say when you turn around and act as if the ISC's willingness to risk ships far from home is some kind of trifling inconsequential thing because
oh, they'll be asking us for gas money and shipping? Or when you don't bother mentioning that they suggest multiple other ways they can help without relying so heavily on our logistical support?
We will have to share the burden of supporting them. I'm not going to say that this group won't amount to nothing because C is C, but is it really going to be enough when their demand is to basically bumrush through Imelak space and have a go at Pact forces?
Mind unpacking how the wording of their statements leads to that? NOTHING they said translates as "we expect you to Leeroy Jenkins through Imelak space."
We know perfectly well that the ISC plans for long-haul wars and accepting heavy losses as the cost of success if that's what it takes. It's their hat, along with "preparations and fortifications." Nothing you or I have read in the DM posts justifies the characterization you're giving to the ISC here.
And frankly, in an event of general war with Cardassia, there won't be much we can do about HoH anyway, and if ISC insists that isn't the case, they will get rolled, because sooner or later someone in Cardassia will go "this is the weakest part of their frontline, let's go all in through there."
I don't even know what you're saying here.
Their diplomatic support meanwhile is a joke; their ability against HoH has been anemic to put it mildly.
They don't have to be strong enough to
make gains to matter here. They have to be strong enough to
not lose. To at least slow down Harmony progress to the point where they can't just casually scoop up and lock us out of those polities in a matter of a couple of years. Assuming task force mechanics work the same way for the ISC and Harmony that they do for us, just
having a task force to oppose Harmony actions will make a huge difference.
So frankly, it reads a lot like their making indignant moral panic noises, but they aren't willing to commit themselves as much as they're demanding of us. That's not how this works; if they want us to intervene, that's fine. But if they're expecting us to fight a war with Cardassia over it, then they damn well offer something more than a battlegroup or quite literally worthless diplomatic support.
They offered to attack a Cardassian affiliate for us. Straight up, they directly said "if you're fighting a general war with Cardassia, we're hitting the Dylaarians." I even mentioned them doing this before. Who's "deliberately missing" stuff again?
The diplomatic support is not "literally worthless," it's the difference between the Harmony getting to chew on
their tags with unopposed task forces, versus opposed task forces. Even if the ISC task force(s) are
losing year by year, that has the potential to make a huge difference, because it matters whether the Harmony starts making gains that 'flip' those border polities in two years, or whether it takes five, or ten.
The battlegroup may actually be the least appealing of their support offers, but it too is not worthless, it's something like a C50-60 task force (maybe more?) that would be quite welcome to shore up our defenses in the Gabriel Expanse and Apiata space, or to help secure STO space while Federation forces try to link up with the Chrystovians.
I'm cross-posting from the universe where a flawless federation victory isn't a given, where Cardassian military planners aren't utter morons and where Horizon cannot be trusted. And the Imelak show up with some shiny surprises of the biological kind.
The thing is, you're flat-out ignoring things anon_user said, or you're making tremendous assumptions about how the war will go (not just "we won't win flawlessly" but "we're guaranteed to lose").
... I don't think the Cardassians would let them go after all the blood it cost to invade them.
It is very much possible that we can shove the Cardassians back OUT of a border species' space after they manage to push us out, whether the Cardassians like it or not. Even if the Cardassians manage a military victory that pushes us back, that does not mean the lost territory is lost
permanently.
Our worst case scenario is rather ugly, yes- but that is our
literal worst case scenario in which everything goes as wrong as possible on all fronts at once. Making all plans on the assumption that the worst case scenario is true, as opposed to planning for an intermediate case and making contingencies for things to go wrong, is setting yourself up for constant disaster through excessive pessimism and conservatism.
They didnt want our help. As I remember it, both sides made sure that we stayed out of it.
Yes, but the Klingons may decide they don't feel like helping us, nevertheless. Or if the Breen attack the Licori or Bolians, the Klingons can perfectly reasonably say they never signed a treaty with those neutral polities.
I speak of Keplers and Comets. Winning the Scouting and Skirmish helps a lot.
I mean, I'm not saying we won't have those ships or that they won't help, but it's not like our fleet is helpless against the Cardassian navy
without Keplers and Comets. We didn't need them to win the Gabriel campaign.
There are other forms or retaliation.
Also precedent. If they try this again we will know what will happen and are far less likely to allow it.
We know what will happen THIS time. If we allow it this time, we're setting a precedent for inaction next time.
"This will set a precedent" is not an argument for ignoring the bad thing people are doing today, in hopes that they won't try it again tomorrow. That's the exact opposite of how precedent works.
Just talking coyly about 'other forms of retaliation' doesn't address the question of what we do in response to this. It's not like we have some kind of magic wand to shut down the Cardassian economy or otherwise force them to give up this planned conquest.
We only have three options here. All in to scare them off, which would likely require a substantial fleet on Cardie borders, Something clever, or something nonviolent.
Do you have any suggestions for what "something clever," or "something nonviolent" might be? Because otherwise this is just advocating inaction while pretending to have a plan.
We've been explicitly told that if we vote for nonintervention, our options for doing anything will be very limited. If the head of Starfleet recommends "don't intervene," then the rest of the Federation political structure will take that as a sign that we
can't win, which will in turn undermine their confidence in peaceful solutions.
