The thing is, to neutralize most of their fleet we'll have to cut well into their space. Even if we don't physically occupy planets we have to occupy space. We'd have to destroy or capture multiple layers of outpost and starbase defense networks, blow up a lot of ships. And bear in mind that due to the way repairs work we will, on average, have to fight and overcome each individual enemy ship twice or even more times to finally destroy it.
The Cardassians may reasonably hope that even if they lost a series of major battles on the borders, the political support just wouldn't be there for the Federation to keep fighting the war all the way up to the orbitals of Cardassia Prime and make demands of the Union government at torpedopoint. And that they could probably offer any peace treaty on terms even slightly more favorable than "status quo ante bellum" and expect much of the Federation government to want to accept. In which case they might, say, lose Bajor and their mining colonies in the Gabriel Expanse, but they wouldn't be worried about getting destroyed as a functioning government.
Basically, from the point of view of the Cardassians, the strong pacifist faction within the Federation acts as a 'hedge' against the risks normally associated with fighting a war.
Normally in war, if you win you can theoretically win everything, but if you lose you can theoretically lose everything. This makes war very undesirable if the odds are even slightly against you. And even if the odds are for you, you may be a lot more worried about "lose all" than you are eager over "gain all."
But against the Federation, the Council's inclination to accept minor concessions in exchange for peace will tend to reduce the amount the Cardassians can "lose," because they can give up a little in order to end the war early. As a result, they may reason that a moderate chance of gaining a large amount is better than an equal (or even slightly greater) risk of losing only a small amount.
Perhaps the goal here is not to defeat the Cardassian fleet, but to go after their shipping, (as I also suggested in my post). between that and any set piece battles we might have, would curb the Cardassian capability to repair their fleets or to build new hulls, given that Cardassia Prime, where I assume the bulk of the industry is, is in a rather resource poor system.
Yes, we will need Task forces and the like and be threatening enough to their forces for them to keep the bulk of it ready to respond to enemy incursions as opposed to releasing those hulls for escort roles
To be fair, fascist governments have a long history of underestimating opponents and picking unnecessary fights that they shouldn't have sought out; read Eco's essay on "the eternal fascist" for more on that subject.
Precisely, Knowledge is power and there might be a lot of internal pissing contest that could be settled one way or the other by feeding your rivals garbage...
Yes, but it only became one AFTER the Cardassians started brutally extracting large amounts of resources from the planets. They did a lot of strip-mining and toxic industry there, for instance. Remember that the Occupation lasted for roughly fifty years in canon.
Some intelligence regarding the situation on Bajor would be helpful. We explicitly promise not to disrupt the status of Bajor, but that promise is predicated on the promises the Cardassians made, and they may not intend to keep those. Also, we have reason to think the Bajoran Occupation got worse over time; it may honestly not be that bad right now, with a genuine functional Bajoran government that has considerable popular support being 'advised' by Cardassians, and with only a few religious fanatic holdouts seriously opposing the new regime.
Come to think of it, that's... pretty much what Afghanistan was like for the Soviets at first.
Which is why we need to know the situation in Bajor, and while the Treaty may forbid us from not disrupting things in Bajor, frankly? it means we can as long as we don't get caught. which is why I suggested using some intermediary, I suggested a member state, but if that is too close... we could always create a trading company (maybe in an affiliate?) and use that one as a front for ops in Bajoran Space. yes, such actions come with risks, but IF we determine the status in Bajor has turned for the worse and IF we decide to help the dissonant voices on Bajor (should they exist) against Cardassian Excesses is the best course of action...
(in other words, if it is going to be a cold war, let's make it a cold war)
That's... not a bad idea. That is, after all, more or less what we we did with the Explorer Corps from about 2305-08, and it was very successful at curbing Cardassian expansion before they could 'get to' the Indorians, the Apiata, or the Seyek. We particularly dodged a bullet with how well the Explorer Corps handled the Apiata, as Briefvoice's recent omake illustrates.
Right now our explorers are pretty busy, in particular because of the Licori War, but I definitely agree we should try to poke out past Seyek space and try to get contact with the species in that region before they get snapped up. We know what we have to do in order to try to 'push around' the Cardassians' coreward flank, but their rimward flank is pretty much unexplored territory.
Well, yeah, right now is not the time to go poking Cardassians, we already have Gabriel and the Licori thing, we don't need a full on War with Cardassia at this moment, so, while we should keep provocations to a minimum... we should be able to start layign the groundwork for a few things: Bajor observation AND Commerce Hunting are the two that come to mind.
WHY would we need to? What is the purpose of doing this? The only reason we have these ship roles is to formalize things we need Council approval for. We don't need Council approval for the Ambassadors because we already have it.
I am not asking for approval for the ambassadors, I asked about mechanics for downgrading the Excelsior Classification to Explorer, light; and that only once the Ambassadors are deployed.
Though it was mostly asked from a mechanic perspective, in general, rather than in this particular case
