This week we take a closer look at how the Romulan Imperial Navy operated in the period preceding Star Trek The Next Generation. Including the Classes of ships she operated, their tactics and Doctrine, as well as the large scale strategic thinking that allowed the empire to expand its influence and secure its intrests in the 24th century.
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"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." – Sun Tzu
Conventional warfare has always been a Romulan weak spot ever since the Earth-Romulan war ended. While in psyops, it is indeed better to break the enemies' will to fight in the first place.
Beware the moving shadows in the night sky, for the talons of a vicious raptor may swoop down upon you.
Are you sure installing a puppet is quite difficult? Seems like the United States shadow government was able to do that quite easily for about the past 20 or so years (granted, it was in countries that couldn't compete with our military to oust the puppet, but still…).
So these incidents of romulan incursions help tie the loose ends of the klingon civil war. This being made far easier by the factioned klingon great houses. Great insight
Not to mention, if they can use such strategic deception and intimidation campaigns to push the Federation to behave counter to its stated moral compass and get caught with their pants down so much the better.
If anyone is interested in how one power can subvert a culture without firing a shot look up Yuri Bezmenov interviews. Most enlightening.
I really enjoy Beta canon videos because it just adds so many more perspectives on the Star Trek universe and your additions of ships and doctrines and overall stories add to the enjoyment of Star Trek. Thank you very much for that.
Subversion? Romulan NGOs? 🤫😶
Establishing a "presence" generates uncertainty and increased risk for the opponent. The enemy needs to allocate resouces to protect assets. This denies the enemy the ability to concentrate, forcing them to disperse their forces.
A couple of excellent examples in real life of political subversion by a foreign power is KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov's interview in the 80s discussing the KGBs efforts at demoralization. You can find it on Youtube. Another is China's demoralization campaign using TikTok going on today.
I mean… how do the Romulans even compete against the Federation?
Jolan Tru. i keep hearing you refer to the Kitomer massacre. I have never heard of such event.
I have heard the glorious Kitomer liberation
the biggest rule in art of war, is deception. look strong where you are weak and weak where you are strong. Cloaking helps that, because you don't know how many ships are there. If you raid, they will think you are stronger than you are and just trying to goad you into war. The smart part, since of the big three alpha quadrant forces, Romulans are the weakest is Romulan tactic is to keep the enemy guessing. So their enemy has to over defend the entire border. And I disagree. Romulans are about disinformation. If you attack constantly near the border, that makes it obvious who is doing it. What I would do, is random attacks in areas that are not expected. Having a random attack near Kardassian space, would case Klingon and Federation ships to be pulled away from Romulan borders .
Don't see how this one can work against a near peer unless you completely (or close to it) win with the psyops angle before you ever engage militarily at any official level. If the enemy are the Feds or Klingons and you appear on their side of the neutral zone and attack: war or worse (eg Khitomer attack cementing the Fed-Klingon alliance against you where before you might be able to play one at a time). Your ship blows up a freighter going from Vulcan to Andoria, or where ever, your war bird is deep in enemy territory, you can't play the, " we went off course for half of the Federation and then when we came out of warp…and cloak…we accidentally blew up the first thing we saw," card. I can see how something like the Cardassian government backing their settlers from the shadows against Federation colonies can work. They have the, "they don't act in the name of the Cardassian people, we would never condone such acts of terrorism" plausible deniability lies to work with. Though should also qualify that this game will probably work best against an enemy like the Federation. Sure you can make chaos and mistrust with psyops, but if the damage done that way isn't extremely deep/permanent and you then attack , it would probably reunite whatever divisions you made and may even out you as the cause of the rift in the first place, making all out war a more preferable option for the Fed/Klingons against you. IE if the Tal Shiar were able to fan the flame the old conflict of the Vulcans and Andorians back to life but don't get either to leave the Federation and then have a Romulan fleet attack Tellar Prime or Earth, they will probably ignore whatever conflict was stoked between them to join in the defense of the place that is being attacked, possibly discovering it was the Tal Shiar responsible for the conflict in the first place, and at that point you may have just pushed the Feds past their normal we want to talk and be nice phase to the call up the Klingons, we're doing this phase. Bottom line, its still a game of brinkmanship no matter how much jargon you throw in: you have to hope what actions you take against the near peer either will be totally unnoticed until it's too late and/or hope to hell you actually know what their response will be to your provocations.
So TOS: Balance of Terror is an example of this doctrine, but the finale of Strange New Worlds season 1 misunderstands the Romulans completely.
This sounds like a very easy doctrine to mess up, since it requires a very long term commitment to a slow, careful program of destabilisation that is easy to mess up if you just push a little too hard. It also sounds like a strategy that really only a race like the Romulans or possibly the Vulcans could use, because of their very long lives, where you can have high-command officers, who will stay in office for a century or more, to keep that strategy going and keep it stable. It'd be really easy for an aggressive or over zealous younger officer to screw up and poke the bear too hard.
Superb as always!
I'd be very interested in your thoughts on how to counter this Deep Raiding Doctrine 😀
I really like your channel, smooth use of simple and appropriate visuals, great writing with an imperfectly human delivery. I don't mean that in a bad way, it just feels very natural. The lost era in such an interesting timeframe, and I like the divergence of from the D7 type ships into the Klingon and Romulan design lineages. What you've clearly pointed out is the doctrine that informs those design choices. Your videos with Drachinifel were really good, you had great chemistry. I hope you and all your subscribers had an amazing xmas and have a great new year.
Hey venom Geek, looking at the expanded universe and at games such as Star trek armada 1,2,3 and Star trek online, do you think you could do something like a Mini fleet doctrine for the borg?
There is usually a lot more than just cubes and spheres in most depictions of the collective
An appropriate answer to this strategy by UFP/SF would be to withdraw from the cloaking element of the treaty comming out of thr Tomed Incident. SF should paint a quadrant wide visual of each attack as a treaty violation, post Tomed. Lobbying a mutual defense pack with the Klingons can't hurt either. Every SF ship being cloak enabled would turn the tables on this straregy. Also, in Canon, when were the Sonus Nets deployed? Was this before TNG era, or before the late 2350s
The Romulans are my favorite
In my opinion in a way this is even more inflammatory towards your neighbors but I agree in the long term it makes the prospect of war not a very likable idea but it also make everyone hate you sooooo not always the best choice in my opinion
Seems like a doctrine that was always doomed to be short lived. Either 1. Your attacks are not serious enough to start a war and so the enemy keeps on keeping on and nothing really changes. 2. They increase their military presence at the boarder to counter the raids, defeating the purpose. 3. They stop sending out lone ships and just group them in convoys meaning any attack would be large enough to start a war forcing the Romulans to either do nothing and let them pass or start a war. 4. You start a war. Or 5. If you're the Kligons you start counter raiding meaning Romulan ships and worlds are now being hit and they have to divert resources to protect them and repair/replace the damage done.
Without a clear goal that can be achieved and thus bring an end to operations, these random attacks could be used to shift blame and build anger against an outside threat to get the people to rally behind the government, by blaming everything bad on the Romulans, whether they are responsible or not, by showing the little evidence they are leaving behind. A ship suffered a warp core breach do to improper maintenance, Romulans, food shipment not arriving on time due to corruption, Romulans, power grid failure due to old age, Romulans. Any government could really turn their people against the Romulans, and with enough time, and enough attacks, enough loss of life and ships, they would support a first strike into Romulan territory to protect themselves from a constant, proven, danger. And since the Romulans are not confident in their ability to win a conventional war I guess this is the defining example of the fact that Romulans are not Vulcans since this plan is completely illogical. Honestly, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Cool video. And it looks like you will be hitting 20k soon! Congrats on that!
So much focus on that border region makes me ask… Klingon Civil War mini-series please?
Also I'd be tempted to use this to use and improve on the UK's nascent strategic raiding strategy, completing the circle of art and life imitating each other.
The Klingons used this tactic prior to the first battle of Deep Space Nine.