DISCUSSION OF THE SITUATION:
A limited state of emergency may be useful so that we can "federalize" member-world units into service, but that's the only value of it.
Given how Federation law works, "limited state of emergency" is like "a little bit pregnant." I'm not sure it's even possible (unless you're an Andorian shen or an Apiata queen, arguably). A Federation-wide callup of member world forces isn't something our system is designed to allow,
except when we've crossed the
Godzilla Threshold.
[TVTropes' term is a good one, but confusing- it represents the point in a monster movie where unleashing Godzilla on the problem starts to seem like a good idea. Godzilla is insanely destructive all by himself, of course, so this implies that the problem is
worse. The biophage is a good example of this category of problem. The Syndicate blowing a hole in the middle of an Amarki city isn't.]
Ato said:
We need to declare a state of emergency and a state of war agsint the Orion Syndicate. Anything less risks the Amarkians leaving the Federation, they haven't been members very long, and if they don't feel that we can live up to our promises they will just quit. At the same time we can't punish the Orion Union for the actions of the Syndicate, and thus fall into the Syndicate's quite obvious trap. Nor can we risk war with Cardassia at the same time as we are dealing with Orion insurgency.
Again, a state of emergency indicates a Federation-wide existential threat. This doesn't qualify, under the "is there any plausible way this could be one tenth as bad as the biophage" test.
Declaring war against the Syndicate isn't actually a bad idea, it's just pointless- we're already committed to destroying them and the whole galaxy knows it. Might make a good propaganda gesture but that's it.
As noted, it runs into the problem that we won't know when the war is over. While I'm sure the Federation Council will be WILLING to declare an end to the war, eventually... I'm not sure I want to set that kind of precedent.
How the fuck did they get a photorp into the courthouse?
I suspect the Amarki aren't very good at security scans, and it honestly didn't cross their mind that someone would bring an antimatter warhead into a courthouse.
What is this I don't even?!? The Syndicate just lit off a nuke-equivalent on a non-military target on a homeworld. There are some crimes so heinous that protecting the perps by means outside the court system constitutes an act of war. Antimatter weapons on non-military targets? That's one of them.
If the Union actually were to go and join the Cardassians, thus de facto declaring their willingness to throw away their independence to defend the people who did this, and functionally endorsing it, I can't see any appropriate response other that "Declaration of War acknowledged".
I am not going to vote because my personal sentiment on the appropriate response to the Cardassian offer is hawkish by Amarki standards - something along of "Do you really, really think declaring war on a superior power who has you completely enveloped is a good idea? Do that and the Orion Union rapidly stops being a thing as we burn your military and government."
You are being a silly person, in a violently silly way.
The people who are being given that offer are NOT the people actually running the Orion Union government at this time. The people running the government NOW have been loyally allied to us in the face of very serious challenges for many years.
No, the Cardassians contacted other people who might
OVERTHROW that friendly government. We don't necessarily even know their names, so we cannot contact them all directly. But no, it would be folly to threaten to "burn the military and government" of the Orion Union in retaliation for a coup against the present government,
while the present government is still in charge. Because what that would do, is that would remove any desire for anyone else to obey the current Union government for any reason other than fear of the Federation. Which means the Orion Union government would lose all its ability to fight the Syndicate, our ability to inflict Impact would collapse, and even if the coup didn't materialize, we'd be screwed.
Alastor Mobius Toth said:
I'll be the paranoid Romulan and come out and say it: Cardassia has more or less just fired shots at us. Given that Syndicate is fundamentally a crime organization, I can't see them actually agreeing to this. However petty and ruthless they might be, their primary consideration is profit; bombing the capital of most warlike member of per-eminent superpower of Alpha Quadrant is like "there's incompetent, and there's you people"-stupid, because that's how you get a quadrant's worth of resources drop onto you like a sack of bricks. The entreaty is frankly too timely to be a coincidence.
Uh, the Syndicate have made it fairly obvious that they are not JUST a Mafia-like organization.
They're like a cross between the Mafia and some kind of secularish-ish version of ISIL (in that any cultlike traits they show are confined to their own membership, not something they impose on everyone around them).
Suicide bombings are not a Mafia M.O., but we've seen the Syndicate pull them off. Pheromonal thralls may explain it, but they don't explain the
mindset.
Furthermore, the pressures of the current situation will have driven the Syndicate out of a 'profit' mindset and into a 'survival' mindset. They have to do SOMETHING to ensure that the Orion people as a whole will weld themselves to the Syndicate and ensure that it survives the conflict in some way, shape, or form. This is their attempt to do that something- to associate "anti-Syndicate" with "anti-Orion invading alien brute squads" so firmly that the average Orion will be pro-Syndicate for centuries.
So they've given up making a profit on the current situation; they just want to assure their survival.
If the Amarki invade the Union, we have to fight them. It's perverse but the same reasons that give us reason to respond to the Syndicate apply; this is an attack across membership lines. Starfleet and the Federation won't let members beat each other up. We need to ensure that the Amarki understand this.
The Orions aren't members. They're affiliates. The Amarki know this.
If we tell them what you suggest, they'd be fairly well justified to leave the Federation and say "uh yeah, Cardassia? Remember that deal you offered our enemies who nuked our capital? Would you like
us to take that offer instead? Because seriously, we hate them and the Federation won't let us do anything about it."
And then the night soil would hit the oscillating rotary ventilation device.
