Cardassian/Romulan alliance

[Thor Damar]

As we have seen quite recently in the trekverse the Cardassian Union has not made the wisest of choices with regards to whom it allies itself with.
In the primary universe the CU made an ill fated alliance with the very empire that caused all the chaos and destruction in the known Alpha Quadrant (the Dominion). This resulted in Cardassia engaging in a three front war with the other major powers of the AQ, the occupation of the Union by the Jem'Hadar and the Breen along with Vorta sitting in the halls of the Central Command on Prime. It finally ended in the near genocide of the Cardassian people, the ruin of Cardassia Prime and the possible occupation of the Union.
All in all not the best choice that the Cardassians have made I think we would all agree.

In the mirror Universe we have the Klingon/Cardassian Alliance which is supposed to be an alliance of equals dominating the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. It has been heavily impelled, however, that the alliance is not a partnership of equals and the Cardassians are firmly in second place.
(Regant Worf's treatment of Dalin Garak is a great example of this).
If the Terran rebellion succeeds in defeating the Alliance it seems that Cardassia Prime will meet the same fate as its Primary universe counterpart.
(That is if the Klingons do not betray them first).

But would there ever be an alliance that would benefit both the Union and its allies?

I would argue that there is one particular Empire that the Union should have allied itself with, namely the Romulan Star Empire.
There would be several key tactical and strategic reasons for this endeavour:

1) Access to Romulan Cloaking devices. This would put the Union on an equal footing with both the Klingon and Federation fleets and would be an advantageous intelligence gathering tool.

2) Weapons exchanges. Both the CU and the RSE have a huge military industrial complex and have unique and powerful weapons that could only be improved upon by an information exchange.

3) Intelligence. Both the Cardassians and Romulans have a flair for covert operations and boast two of the finest and most ruthless intelligence organisations in the known Galaxy, the Obsidan Order and the Tal'Shiar. If the resources of these two groups had been combined over the long term then Cardassia Prime and Romulus would be the two most effective capitals in both Quadrants.
(The Founders would be in for a rude awakening)

4) Common threats. Although the two powers do not appear to share any direct borders, they do both share several common enemies, namely the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets.
As we have seen the Klingons are an aggressive warmongering Empire that routinely attacks its galactic neighbours whenever they 'tire' of peace and prosperity. So a mutual defense pact would have a certain logic to it.
The federation seeks to make every single space faring race in the Galaxy into a member and to proud peoples like the Cardassians and the Romulans this would be quite disagreeable.

So those are some of my reasons why I would support such an alliance. Are you in agreement or do you think it would not work. Should the Cardassians have allied with some-one else or should Romulans remain in splendid isolation?

 

[Mycobac]

I completely agree. I have always been of the opinion that the Romulans and the Cardassians are natural allies. They share a similar fascist-like political structure, they have a very state-oriented "give all for the greater good" society, they are very proud and xenophobic, and they believe in their own species superiority above all. Additionally, while as you mentioned they do seem to share many common enemies (i.e. The Federation, the Klingons) they do not seem to be in any direct competition for resources or have any mutually exclusive goals.

Perhaps they are too isolationist to form a truly bilateral alliance but I would expect at least some wary mutually self-interested collaboration. I believe that they were trending this way as shown by the joint Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar operation against the founders before the aftermath of that debacle and the subsequent Klingon invasion destabilized Cardassia to the point that they would no longer be a viable partner for the Romulans.

 

[Anwar]

They'd be more at ease with one another than any of the other powers, but their own xenophobic tendencies would make it difficult for a real alliance to work out.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

^^Seconded.

 

[sbk1234]

I don't think the Romulans would have much to gain, since they seem to have a superior technology to the Cardassians. Unless there was a way they could exploit the Cardies, I don't think they'd really be interested.
The Cardassians would be in a better position to gain technology from the Romulans, but would the Romulans want such a union?

 

[Anwar]

The Cardassian tech thing has been a little inconsistent: Their ships are shown to be on part with Excelsior level tech or maybe even Ambassador level tech and inferior to anything from the past 10 years or so before DS9 began. Yet those battery weapons from the Chin-Toka system were 100% Cardassian and ripped the Fed fleet the shreds before they powered them down.

 

[Mycobac]

Good point about the Cardassians having more to gain technologically than the Romulans. However, the Romulans could use the Cardies as their cat’s-paws as they have always been less isolationist than the Romulans and have never seemed to be too concerned about getting their hands dirty.

As far as the inconsistent levels of Cardassian technology, I think the creators just planned to use them as a one-shot alien of the week, more of a nuisance than a major threat but they proved so popular that they decided to bring them back. This posed a problem because it was hard to take someone as a serious threat when you can easily kick their ass militarily, so they decided to go for strength in numbers. If you notice, in the early appearances they always show two or more Galor-class ships at a time. Over time they seemed to gain in footing until later in DS9 they seemed to be on par with the capital starships of the other major powers. I always saw the Cardassian tech sort of like the USSR during the Cold War, not as fancy or flashy but able to kill you just the same. Also, it seems logical that a military dictatorship would put the most resources into weapons development, so the weapons platforms at Chin'toka might represent the absolute epitome of Cardassian tech which is lacking in civilian life and scientific research (possibly augmented with some Dominion tech).

As an "in-universe" explanation of why the Enterprise was able to win so easily in "The Wounded", maybe Gul Macet was out of favor with Central Command and the Trager was an obsolete model of Galor being phased out or retrofitted. After all, the mission specifications called for the Cardassians to appear as the aggrieved victims of an unwarranted assault, which hardly required a top of the line ship.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Now there's a train wreck of an idea. Would be a hell of a lot of fun to see enacted on TV tho.

The Rommies are far smarter than the Cardies and they know it. They would just use their "alliance" to gain advantage, playing into the Cardies' well known tendencies towards obliviousness and arrogance.

Now if Garak had a position of authority in the Cardie govt, they might still stand a chance. Rommies also have their weak points, such as a tendency towards internicene feuding, even tho they try their best to keep outsiders from ever getting wind of it.

The first Cardie-Rommie alliance - to attack the Dominion homeworld - was not precisely a rousing success. However, the repercussions fell far harder on the Cardies, while the Rommies came out of the war with two major rivals (Cardies and Klingons) on the ropes and the Feds still on the defensive against any future Dom incursions. Wow, it was almost like they planned it that way.

 

[Jono]

It would be as equally successful and long standing as the Romulan-Klingon Alliance.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

The Cardassian tech thing has been a little inconsistent: Their ships are shown to be on part with Excelsior level tech or maybe even Ambassador level tech and inferior to anything from the past 10 years or so before DS9 began. Yet those battery weapons from the Chin-Toka system were 100% Cardassian and ripped the Fed fleet the shreds before they powered them down.

You're sure the weapons platforms were 100% Cardassian in design? Because I'd be willing to bet that they're Cardassian in appearance with Dominion-backed weaponry.

 

[Anwar]

Well, Weyoun was surprised by their existence and I think it was mentioned they weren't Dominion weapons.

 

[JustKate]

I voted for "Yes, and together they could rule the Galaxy!" but I'd add "though I'm not sure they would."

An alliance between two peoples, both absolutely sure of their own superiority and also of everybody else's inferiority, is, let us say, fraught with difficulties. I think they could make it work...right up until the moment when something went really "sh*t hits the fan" wrong. Then they'd look for someone to blame, and...

If they managed to avoid that SHTF moment...well, what would happen if they won? Would either of them be comfortable sharing power? I really don't think so. But I'd love to hear theories about why and how it might work.

 

[JustKate]

I just thought of a parallel - sorry, Thor Damar, I know you aren't crazy about these real-life parallels, but...

It kind of reminds me of the Empire of Japan-Third Reich alliance in WWII. How in the world would those two powers have worked together if, God forbid, they'd won?

 

[Thor Damar]

I just thought of a parallel - sorry, Thor Damar, I know you aren't crazy about these real-life parallels, but...

It kind of reminds me of the Empire of Japan-Third Reich alliance in WWII. How in the world would those two powers have worked together if, God forbid, they'd won?

I think that might actually be a apt RL example in terms of the Geographical distance between the CU and the RSE so I'll forgive you for making it JustKate.
(obviously I'm not in favor of the Cardassians as 'space Nazis' or the Romulans as either Fascistic or Maoist and I don't see my hypothetical alliance as the 24th centuries answer to the Axis powers of WWII. So there.)

Now that I've got the obligatory rant out of my system I can address the points raised by the previous posters.
(I can't get a handle on the 'multi quote' function so I'll try and deal with each point in a separate paragraph)


JustKate makes an interesting point with regards to the ideologies of the Cardassians and the Romulans and how that would affect the conduct of the alliance.
My analysis of the situation runs as follows, as the Cardassians and Romulans are both a highly pragmatic peoples they would use the alliance for specific and achievable goals, for example containing the Klingons within their borders or effecting regime change. Although the RSE has very nearly succeed at this several times before it would be more beneficial to have an ally that could...distract... third parties and use their own resources to enable for a speeder resolution.

That's just one notion that I've had, I'll post some more up later and address some of the interesting points made in this thread.
(I will not be able to do so in this post because ironically I lack the temperament for long winded posts)

 

[ltcmmanderdata]

it would've been a good story for the cardassians and romulans to be allies romulan cloaking devices would be on cardassian ships romulans would use cardassian ship design like on the old show when romulans used klingon ship design

 

[Praetor]

See "Improbable Cause"/"The Die is Cast."

If they could trust each other long enough, they would probably take the quadrant.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I just thought of a parallel - sorry, Thor Damar, I know you aren't crazy about these real-life parallels, but...

It kind of reminds me of the Empire of Japan-Third Reich alliance in WWII. How in the world would those two powers have worked together if, God forbid, they'd won?

Read Philip K. Dick's Hugo Award-winning The Man in the High Castle for a pretty good idea. A little worse, on the whole, than how our alliance with the USSR fared, I'd say.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Man in the High Castle aside, it would have been literally decades before Germany and Japan could have even considered abrogating their understanding--digesting the billion or so people in Asia at the time would have been a hell of task for the fewer than two hundred million people of Germany and Japan. Japan couldn't quite handle China even when they weren't at war with us.

Of course, there's no way America would ever have been actually conquered. Britain is less certain, but that too borders on the impossible. (The Soviet Union was a nearer-run thing, but not close as near-run as people think... still, the loss of our commie friends would've made us far more willing to talk terms, I suspect.)

Uh, anyway, I voted they should join the Federation.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Actually, in the book, it does take decades (two, I believe) before the Nazis show their fangs and turn on the Japanese. Before that, the two powers proceed in a faux alliance not at all like the Cold War.

Of course, the book does posit near-domination by the Axis, with the US occupied by the Nazis along the Atlantic and the Japanese along the Pacific, with the besieged Central States "free." Not an entirely accurate extrapoloation, I grant (for one, Imperial Japan is depicted as way too benevolent an occupying force) but a damn fine novel just the same.

 

[Myasishchev]

I wouldn't argue against that.