But yeah I think you hold that belief to some degree because as I said otherwise it doesn't make much sense to me to worry about the things you do, at least not to that degree. If the Hishmeri aren't a cartoonish race of spacemongols then we won't need that an obvious show of force to convince them of the fact that attacking us is a bad idea.
Oh for crying out loud!
Look, the Hishmeri are a nomadic culture, and the very name 'septs' implies a decentralized tribal culture. They don't have to be cartoonish spacemongols. They just have to be
exactly what we've been told: Spacegoing wanderers, with a penchant for raiding when they think the odds are in their favor. Think about real life cultures that match this description (except for the 'spacegoing'). The Norse (and some of their descendant cultures like the Normans), who weren't nomadic but did wander a lot. The Goths circa 400 AD, the Turks circa 900 AD. The Comanche circa 1800 AD.
I'm
deliberately avoiding nomadic people who are specifically legendary for being utterly cruel and devastating to all in their path... but the examples I can think of are pretty alarming in their own right.
Deflecting people who operate like this is certainly possible, but mere persuasion is not enough. Generally you either have to pay them tribute (decreasing their incentive to take risks to rob you), or you have to be
very, very persuasive (i.e. offering to help them attack your joint enemy and share the profits of doing so).
Or you have to make it unambiguous that you possess more armed force than they can overcome. As to why this is the case...
Let me point out some of the
limitations of trying to convince the Hishmeri to go away using diplomatic envoys and navigational charts and well-worded threats.
Suppose that instead of being the mighty, expansive, and technologically sophisticated ruler of the Federation, you are playing as the Lecarre.
Your scouts have detected the Hishmeri migration wave, a few months out from your space- they could actually reach you a matter of weeks, if their warships pick up speed and head straight for your homeworld. Your own fleet, being small and a bit primitive (say, Combat 50) isn't useless; it could probably chase away a fair number of Hishmeri raiders, even if they're well armed and operate in squadrons. But if the whole migration fleet (say, Combat 100+, maybe even 200) united under common leadership, they could roll right over your defenses and plunder everything you have that can be towed away in a spaceship.
The usual Lecarre practice of hiding isn't going to help here; the Hishmeri WILL find you, you cannot hide your entire star system-wide civilization and all its signals including the ones you've already emitted. What would you do?
Well, the first thing you'd do is get on the phone with the Cardassians and scream for help, obviously. However, suppose help is not forthcoming. Or that the help is insufficient ("we'll send two
Jalduns and four frigates") Or that the help is likely to arrive late (e.g. "sure, we'll need four months to mobilize a fleet and work it around to you in a way the Federation doesn't think of as us trying to start Galaxy War One.").
Crud. Now what do you do?
You
lie like a rug, that's what you do!
...
You might boast and exaggerate the power of your own defenses, or the prowess of your people as warriors. You might claim to have secret weapons that will annihilate the Hishmeri if they come too close. You might talk about your most powerful and unforgiving masters, the Cardassians, who love you well for your invaluable services and have already sent a great armada to defend you, one that will arrive shortly! You might dwell upon the might of the Cardassian fleet with its scores of heavily armored warships. Or upon the ghastly and degrading tortures that await any enemy of the Cardassian Union so unlucky as to fall into their hands.
Or you might tell exciting yet plausible lies to the Hishmeri, about the weakness and vulnerability of some other target (e.g. the United Federation of Planets). Why, less than ten years ago, one of the Federation's favored allies, the Caitians, went to war with your good friends the Dawiar. The Dawiar are of course valiant, albeit... technologically primitive... not that you'd recommend attacking them! Anyway. The Dawiar went to war with the Caitians, and
the Federation did not enter the war on the Caitian side. One of their closest friends, a friend so close they later made a member of that species president, and they didn't fire a single shot in their support, against an opponent that only invented warp drive less than forty years ago, they're
that primitive. Not that you'd recommend attacking the Dawiar, braver warriors cannot be found!
Anyway, the Federation. Surely, the Federation must be a bunch of weaklings. And their territories are far more expansive, and much richer, than yours. So you say to the Hishmeri, rather than risk the unfailing and brutal wrath of Cardassia, why not divert course a little and follow these helpful maps over to Federation space...? Of course, naturally this map clearly marks the boundaries of Dawiar territory and their main fortifications and bases, so that they may give your valiant allies a wide berth!
...
Note that none of this requires the Hishmeri to be ogres or evil cartoon characters. They just have to be
exactly what we already know they are: a nomadic spacefaring civilization with a sizeable fleet, plus a habit of raiding when they get the chance and think they can get away with it. The entirely natural reactions of other species in the regions they pass through will do the rest.
And the Hishmeri are probably used to this happening. They've met a lot of species. They may never have met the Lecarre before. But I suspect they meet someone
like the Lecarre- namely someone with weak defenses who is comfortable with telling boastful lies or selling out a neighbor to protect themselves- every few years.
From their point of view, the kind of scenario I describe happen may have been happening every few years for the past several centuries. Someone wants to use the Hishmeri against an enemy. Someone is afraid of the Hishmeri and exaggerates their own defensive strength. Someone is afraid of the Hishmeri and tries to make another target for raiding seem more inviting.
What do these people do? They lie. The Hishmeri hear a lot of lies. They don't have a very clear picture of what's in front of their fleet out of range of their advance scouts. Much of what they do hear contradicts itself. The only way to
really be sure who is strong and who is bluffing, who is unsafe to raid and who is safe, is to go see for yourself- to press forward until you actually get the measure of their defenses. Preferably not in battle, it's better to avoid unnecessary battles... but at the very least, you push forward until you hit a
solid reason to stop. Fleets are solid; words aren't.
...
Notably,
the Lecarre probably already have this problem, whether they know it or not. So do the Dawiar, though the Dawiar are less likely to make shit up and more likely to just shoot a bunch of Hishmeri in the face with a metric ton of torpedoes, then growl "all right, which one of you thieving scum wants to be next?" Because the Dawiar are fierce like that.
It is entirely possible that the Hishmeri are already getting all kinds of weird ideas about what does or does not exist in Federation space, what the Federation will or will not do in order to protect itself and its affiliates. Moreover, this kind of thing has probably happened to the Hishmeri many times before. They are
used to being lied to, either by people who want to redirect their advance to hurt an enemy*, or who just want to scare the HIshmeri away from their territory for fear of getting raided and beaten up.**
...
The Hishmeri will have learned from long experience that they get lied to a lot, and that the only way to be sure who does and does not have the defensive strength to deter their raids is to find out by direct observation.
So informing them in a kind yet stern manner that we would prefer that they avoid our space might work, but there's a pretty high risk of it
not working. They've heard it before.
Informing them in a kind yet stern manner that we would prefer that they avoid our space
from the flagship of a battlegroup is more likely to work, because the Hishmeri have more reason to listen if we speak to them in a louder voice.
_____________________________________________
*("The Klingons are your old enemies, OF COURSE you want to use us to hit them in the back, oldest trick in the book, eyeroll, eyeroll, what's in it for us? Seriously, ante up enough dilithium to power the fleet for a few years and stop bullshitting us")
**("OF COURSE you're a peace-loving people who are just so gosh-darn nice! It's not that you just happen to lack the power projection to establish a tributary relationship with a prewarp culture only a few sectors away from the home planet of your president. Couldn't possibly be that! Yeah, I know, you boast about your war with the random people we've never heard of who OH GODS OF SPACE THEY BLOW UP WHOLE SUNS!!! Oh right, pull the other one, it's got bells on. Hey Hrun, remember that time the giant chicken-men of Zabriska XII tried to convince us that they'd just defeated the Grand Master Planet Eaters and would effortlessly massacre our fleet if we took their stuff? Yeah, that was rich. I mean, I've still got that cloth-of-gold rug I took from their Grand Archpriest, and the throw pillow stuffed with tail-feathers we plucked from their High Council at vibro-javelin-point, and I'm not feeling very massacred yet, you know?")
I simply see to disagree with you on this point since I think that for people as advanced as we and the Hishmeri are there are hundreds of different way's to convince each other without requiring something as brute as what you propose.
You disagree with a strawman version of my position and are ignoring important points that I have already made. I do not think the HIshmeri are cartoon characters. But historical precedent
and common sense suggest that given that the Hishmeri are
exactly what we've been told... it will take a considerable impetus to convince them to go around Federation space. Words alone are unlikely to supply the relevant impetus.
