And there is nothing paramilitary about starfleet, it is fully military, like I said emphasis is in exploration followed by defense of member states, but as this scenario shows we do go on offensive wars if needed.
Of course, at this stage I am going to ask you your definition of military organization, because obviously we might be operating under different deffinitions
A military organisation is an organisation whose primary and stated duty is protecting the government, people or both it serves, and especially do so from other people and governments.
This is not true of Starfleet.
Starfleet's primary and stated duty is exploring a hostile environment for no purpose other than curiosity. Said hostile environment is dangerous, which is why it has heavy weapons and shield systems and runs its ships lightly military. This makes it easy to turn Starfleet into the Federation's combat arm if needed, but like riot cops equipped with assault rifles it's not
supposed to get into that kind of a fight. And yes, I view Starfleet's ships, even its heaviest combat capable ships currently in use, as not equipped with full on war equipment.
Now,
foreign ships do, but that's because
foreign ships are designed from the ground up for the primary function of combat and it's entire space is designed around that facilitating that function. Again, this is not true of Starfleet ships, Starfleet ships have
some weapons, but their entire load out is
much lighter than it could be, with much space dedicated to laboratories, diplomatic functions and just sheer living space. If it went for full on combat you'd shove in a more potent warp core, strip out nearly every lab and every stateroom and shrink much of the living space all for the sake of shoving in more gun and shield. And Starfleet's ships would, across the board, show up with 2 or 3 more shield and combat rating than current ships on the same hull weight.
That depends. So far, N'Gir has done something obnoxious, but that's it. Until we see more evidence of presidential malfeasance, I don't think we should start going 'hur hur we'll get 'em later!'
N'Gir's behaviour throughout her tenure has indicated some degree of incapability to properly weigh the demands and risks of Starfleet's duties. Had N'Gir actually demanded Sousa's resignation much of Starfleet would've stated and written home 'what the fuck,' and Sousa would've likely quietly but actively poisoned the well by speaking with other influential people and through interviews by explaining just how poorly N'Gir was handling Starfleet.
And Starfleet may be on somewhat shaky ground, but the Biophage did much to turn that around, as did the other successes throughout the past 20 years or so of Starfleet's operations, most of which can be clearly pointed towards as Starfleet trying to keep violence off the board and willing to act diplomatically and peacefully. It's probably destroy Sousa's public career, but N'Gir and the Development faction would lose at least as much, especially since the Development faction in the Council and Starfleet have been fairly good at working together, unlike the Pacifists and Starfleet at times.
