The Prevention Era
My TiVo recently captured Spike TV’s rerunning of Star Trek: Deep Space 9’s two part “The Way of the Warrior” episode. It’s far from great, but for present day circumstances it’s an interesting example of a 1995-vintage portrayal of the concept of preventive war — what Bush has tried to label “preemption.” The basic philosophy behind preventive war is that there might be a country somewhere that hasn’t attacking you, and that as far as you know has no immediate plans to attack you, and, indeed, is weak and poses no threat to you. But, you think, the other country (or its government) is just rotten and might attack you one of these days and might get stronger in the future, so you need to attack them now.
In the episodes in question, various Alpha Quadrant cultures are all in something of a cold war dynamic with a race of shapeshifters from the Delta Quadrant. Since the shapeshifters can convincing imitate all manner of humanoids, there’s naturally a paranoid atmosphere. At this point, the government of the Cardassian Empire falls apart and a new civilian regime comes to power. The Klingons decide that maybe the change of regime reflects a shapeshifter plot so they decide to invade!
Various consequences spill off from this. But the important point, just as a cultural observation, is that none of the good guy characters on the show so much as consider the idea that the Klingons are behaving in an acceptable manner. The writers clearly just took it for granted that a pile of vague circumstantial evidence that some people are maybe in league with the enemy doesn’t count as a good reason to start a war. And my general impression is that that’s just how it was in the United States. The view that it might sometimes be acceptable to wage wars of aggression on a mix of suspicion and trumped-up pretext was a totally marginal view.
39 Responses to “The Prevention Era”
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December 27th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Warning: Thread Hijack. Where, exactly, does DS9 fall in the pantheon of the various Trek series?
December 27th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I thought it was accepted that the main motivation for the trillion dollar invasion of Iraq was “Suck. On. This.”
If we want to discuss pre-emptive war from a grown-up perspective, the German invasion of Russia in 1941 is surely a better example.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:13 am
A small but devoted group (known as “Niners”, according to TV Tropes, the official source on everything TV) correctly regard DS9 as the best Star Trek ever.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Matt is wrong, that episode is great, and DS9 is the best Star Trek ever, with the caveat that that assessment applies starting in Season 4, and excludes the series finale.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Of course, I also dimly recall (and it’s been a long, long time since I watched the show) that there were some plots about shapeshifters infiltrating Starfleet Command that had even civilian characters expected to cheerfully surrender their civil liberties in the face of an enemy who, after all, could be any one of us.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Actually, the shape shifters are from the Gamma quadrant, not the Delta quadrant. Geez Matt, get it right.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:52 am
EarBucket: The thrust of that episode was the complete opposite of what you suggest.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Yes, Earbucket is wrong. Star Trek has always been a liberal, internationalist type of show, and DS9 was the same philosophy applied to a murkier, more dangerous world. It was fairly successful (and in this sense quite a bit more “mature” than shows like Babylon 5, though not as serious as BSG.) They covered terrorism, internal coups, the police state, nation building, civil war, all-out war, and I think towards the end they even considered Genocide against the shape shifters. It was a good show mostly because it allowed the Star Trek writers to break out of their comfortable moral universe and test the bounds of the ST ideology.
Yes, I am such a nerd.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:35 am
As a side note: I always thought it was ridiculous how vulnerable Starfleet was to some kind of internal takeover. It almost what, like five times throughout the various series? And each time the plot was foiled by heroics and good luck. You’d think they’d have put some systemic protections in place after the first time…
December 27th, 2008 at 11:08 am
From the German perspective the First World War was a preventative war. As German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg stated at the time, “if war must break out, better now than in one or two years time.”
December 27th, 2008 at 11:46 am
This is good. I sometimes make moral decisions by considering what would star trek do (second generation and deep space nine eras). I’m pleased that others see the wisdom. Ethics, rational behavior, consideration of something other than opportunism: such a refreshing change.
December 27th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I’m not enough of a geek to remember every DS9 episode, but the show did sometimes venture into tricky moral territory. Avery Brooks as Sisko was at his best when he occasionally crossed to the dark side, then afterward agonized over doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
December 27th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
What adds a level of irony to any retrospective view of this episode — and devoted DS9 fans will recall this (spoiler warning, if you haven’t seen a decades-old Star Trek series and don’t want me to ruin a pivotal plot point, I guess) — is that while the Cardassians, the subjective of the preventive Klingon invasion, were not subverted by the shapeshifters, the Klingons, in fact, were. The preventive invasion against the Cardassians, which was publicly motivated by a suspicion that the Dominion was involved, was in fact INVENTED by the Dominion themselves, who had already taken over high levels of the Klingon government (one incredibly important Klingon general was replaced).
The shapeshifters, wanting people to be afraid of them, had replaced an incredibly powerful Klingon general and urged the Klingon empire to go to war against the Cardassians on the (very thin) suspicion that the Cardassians had been subverted by the shapeshifters.
If we try to take this analogy too far, I guess that makes George Bush a terrorist. Which just goes to show that lessons from Star Trek and other television shows should probably be self-contained.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
For the most realistic depiction of the Bush era, see the DS9 episodes “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost”. Earth suffers a terrorist attack that appears to be the work of Changelings. Starfleet subjects Earth to a bunch of silly security measures like blood tests and “changeling detectors”. Then Earth’s power grid completely fails.
It turns out that the power grid failures are the work of Starfleet Security, who wishes to take over Earth in a military coup, and they’re using fear of Changelings to get people to submit.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Homefront_%28episode%29
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Paradise_Lost_%28episode%29
December 27th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
It has bothered me to see people who ought to know better use the term preemptive when what they are referring to is preventive. An attack is preemptive when an actual military attack is imminent or taking place. Attacking a country because a nation might possibly attack, or because someone fears an attack is preventive—that’s the ultimate Crime Against Peace.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Wars of aggression by strong countries against weak ones are unlikely to ever be viewed well by either the mass of humanity or the eyes of history. The weak excuses that are used to justify such wars are never going to be convincing, precisely because they are excuses, with the true reasons being too dark to expose to the light.
It’s not like any of this is new. There is a long, baleful, history here, one that the writers don’t have to be aware of to come to this conclusion, but I bet that they are.
December 27th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Okeedoke, my bad. Like I said, it’s been over a decade since I’ve seen the show, so it’s quite plausible that I’m remembering things entirely backwards.
December 27th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I would just say, you would be hard to find a show on the air today that treats current events as boldly as DS9 — except Ron Moore’s followup: BSG.
Seriously, find a show on TV where “Terrorist” isn’t a bad word. The middle seasons of the show (late 2-3, 4) were generally bad. The episode Matt is talking about is one of the “recovery” episodes, but seriously, the stuff in the first two seasons about the Bajoran Provisional Government and the end of the Cardy occupation are some amazing stuff, and more timely than ever. Season 6 and 7 contain some of the best hours I have ever seen on TV. “In the Pale Moonlight”, “The Siege at AR-558″, “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges”, and the whole back half of season 7 are well worth watching any time.
December 27th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
@VR Actually, if you recall, it is Martok who had infiltrated the Klingon government and convinced Galron — a weak minded, overly political Chancellor — that war with Cardassia was necessary.
I think that make Dick Cheney an Iranian agent.
December 28th, 2008 at 1:35 am
As the CAP cleaning staff points out, modern trek (from tng on) has always had a strong internationalist left wing slant. The federation, after all, is essentially the UN if the UN took over the world, then joined a sort of galaxy-wide government. So the fact that internationalist liberals thought internationalist liberal things in 1995, while today’s neoconservatives think quite different things is hardly evidence of any profound change.
Good catch on the gamma/delta quadrant point, Gheby. As we all know, the Delta quadrant is the setting of Voyager, a series best not spoken of. But geez, Matt! I can forgive (but never condone) your appalling lack of copy editing when the mistakes are trivial. But to be off by a freakin’ QUADRANT? They actually pay you for this?
December 28th, 2008 at 1:41 am
More proof that Hollywood is populated by elitist liberals!
Actually, a lot of Hollywood product fits right into the right-wing world view. Saddam was an undeniably evil man, so you don’t have to have seen very many action films to recognize that he is the villain and the job of the good guys is to stop him.
December 28th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
The middle seasons of the show (late 2-3, 4) were generally bad.
I disagree. There were no bad seasons of the show.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Meanwhile, I’m still pissed that the Connors have virtually IGNORED the search for “The Turk” for THIRTEEN FUCKING EPISODES! And “The Turk” continues to evolve into Skynet!
And that idiot Ellison is HELPING Catherine Weaver, a T-1001 Terminator (although Ellison’s too dumb to know it), create Skynet, after having told Cromartie – who is now the budding Skynet’s “mouthpiece” – that “I’ll never do the Devil’s work!”
Idiot sure as hell is. He even lied to John Connor about it – and the idiot believed him. John should have let Cameron continue to kick Ellison’s ass until he spilled the beans.
Except, well, torture wasn’t working, as usual. Sorry, Mixner, foiled again. But it was fun watching Cameron bounce Ellison off – and through – every piece of hard furniture in his house.
What they should have done was follow Ellison around until he ended up at Zeira Corp – which would have led them directly to “The Turk” and Weaver.
The Connors have been so freakin’ inept this season it must be making future John tear his hair out.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:13 am
For your edification:
Cameron Fights (Read: Beats the Crap Out Of) Ellison TSCC Season 2 Episode 09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLrqIfbpwAs
December 29th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Actually, to all intents and purposes the United Federation of Planets more resembles the European Union with a military.
December 29th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Didn’t the Dominion itself preemptively kneecap any civilization it thought might be a threat?
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