During the negotiations with the Cardassians on the Enterprise Riker loudly exclaimes “the Federation will not start a war.” Oh please, the Federation have started almost every war we know they’ve had. Especially the Dominion War.
Burnham started the Klingon war and Starfleet started the Dominion war.
Focusing on the Doninion War, Starfleet discovers a stable wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant and starts exploring it. Fine, fair enough.
However in 2371 the Dominion warns Starfleet to stay on their side of the galaxy, stop planting colonies and stop violating Dominion territory. Again, fair enough.
After all would the Fedetation allow the Romulans to explore Federation space freely? Of course they wouldn’t. But the Federation expects to explore the territory of others freely because Starfleet believes they have a RIGHT to explore the galaxy and if that means crossing borders then so be it.
The Federation then gets all pissy when the Dominion sees them as such a threat they ally themselves with Cardassians to establish a permanent presence in the Alpha Quadrant. All this happens outside of Federation space so they have no rights to interfere as per the Prime Directive.
But do they leave the Cardassians to run their civilisation as they see fit? Of course not. They mine the wormhole which starts the war.
So as far as the Dominion War goes, the Federation were the clear aggressors. And let’s not get into the attempted genocide of the Founders.
So…exploration is an act of war, but murdering colonists who don’t even know you exist isn’t? The federation didn’t even know the dominion existed before the latter started attacks. The first aggressive encounter they had was a rescue mission, half of which were children. Which ended with the Dominion suicide bombing a broken and defenseless federation starship… not because it was a last ditch effort to defend themselves against a superior foe… but because they could. It was a demonstration of power and fanaticism.
The only aggressive action the Federation takes against the Dominion is existing.
That was how I remembered it starting as well. The first offensive action against the Dominion by Alpha Quadrant powers was orchestrated by the Founders as a way to eliminate both the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order.
After that the Founders manipulated the Cardassians and Klingons into fighting each other, which later caused the Federation-Klingon war as well.
While one could argue that mining the wormhole led to open war, I would say the direct attack on the Odyssey and the bombing of the Antwerp Conference could both be the start.
The mining was also in response to the increased buildup of military power within the Cardassian territories by Dominion troops. You could argue that it was just about defensive capabilities (and they do), but there’s no direct way to know that. That’s really how the Dominion works, indirect action until they can use over-whelming force.
Exactly. The Dominion was definitely the aggressor in the conflict whether directly or indirectly. I don’t think the Federation had any other recourse at that point. If they waited, they would have no chance at peace due to the overwhelming amount of Jem’Hadar in striking range.
Exploring isn’t an act of war. But repeatedly violating another species borders after being warned away is very much an act of war.
They don’t even know what the borders are. The founders just tell the Federation “Stay on your side of the wormhole” with no other emphasis on what their border is. After that, the majority of the Federations explorations are in areas that they believe isn’t Dominion territory and defensive reconnaissance.
Their only interactions with The Dominion are fairly aggressive, if they sent peace envoys and attempted any kind of diplomatic contact, the Federation most likely would have agreed to limit activity in the Gamma quadrant. But as it stood, all they knew was that The Dominion was expansionist, aggressive, and xenophobic. Why wouldn’t they try to get as much info as possible in case of the strong likelihood that the Dominion would pre-emptively attack?
Hell, we can see with their infiltrations of various Alpha Quadrant military powers that they were already making aggressive movements. It was mostly about turning them against themselves, rather than direct action, but it was aggressive non-the-less.