Is the Klingon reputation for ravishing worlds accurate?

[Klythe]

    In some stories, Klingons are written as the conquerers who invade and carelessly take what they want from a conquered planet.   They were certainly portrayed as would-be-conquerers of Organia.  They were heavy-handed and quick to oppress the Organian peole, but they didn't hold the planet long enough for us to find out to what level they would exploit the planet's natural resources.

     Now before you answer, "Of course Klingons ravish worlds and take what they want"...  If that is true, then why hasn't the Empire collapsed over a thousand years from the acquiring of spaceflight up until the accident at Praxis they've never been limited in their ability to expand to find new planets to conquer and pillage?

[qoSagh]

History is written by the victors, however in the case of Star Trek, history is clearly written by the Humans. Thus Klingons are said to be barbarians who ravage worlds take resources and leave behind wounded people in ruined cities. This is simply not the case as seen in the few pro-Klingon books out there including Pawns and Symbols, The IKS Gorkon books and others that have been brave enough to tell the other side of the story.

As I have said before there is a certain racist arrogance to being Klingon. The Klingons see themselves as the top of the proverbial food chain. All that there is in existence is for the taking and using for the betterment of the Klingon Empire. Since captured worlds become part of that Empire, it is really not in anyone's best interest to leave them in ruins, because ruined worlds are a drain on resources.

It is true that the Klingons claim worlds with military force, but the occupants soon learn the benefits of being a productive member of the larger whole. FASA contained information on how the Klingons eventually turned over limited home rule to local governments that were loyal to the Empire.

The Klingon Empire has not collapsed because it does not waste resources, it does not needlessly conquer worlds that it does not need, and it does not allow a world to become nonproductive and thus a drain on other nearby worlds. All of these would be contrary to the principle of nal komerex khesterex, that which does not grow, withers and dies. The qaptaQ, among other scholars, have long known that moving too fast is not really growth but waste and in fact has less to do with nal komerex khesterex than it does with the proverb "Only a fool fights in a burning house". Klingon resource management is all about not letting the house burn to the ground.

Simply because Klingon methods do not mirror those of the much weaker federation, and are based around concepts of honor and justice (in the Klingon perspective) there is much resistance to a system that our enemies can not truly understand. Honor is earned and returned, many subject races are simply not capable of honor and thus are not honored in return. Justice, as any Klingon child knows, belongs to the strong. The Empire is usually the stronger have of any fight for a new world, and therefore it is just to conquer such worlds for the greater good. There is however nothing careless about the way we invade worlds.

[Klythe]

    Waste is in the eye of the beholder, to some building a large fleet of military ships is a waste, to others building temples, others building places and monuments.   We have seen some magnificent Klingon buildings, clearly more magnificent than they would need to be to merely serve the purpose of containing the Klingon who work or reside in them and their stuff.  Every civilization wastes or fails to utilize resources for one reason or another.  Be it social pressures, religious, preferences and tastes, lack of technology or simple ignorance of the resource.

    Take the belief that Klingons are at the top of the food chain.   There is a social pressure there against eating more than a minimal amount of things on the lowest end of the food chain, vegetation, their word for vegetation(also used where we would use a word like salad) is even of unusual morphology, tI, it is a rare Klingon word that leaves a vowel dragging...  The word is said with a particular sneer as if the word itself is distasteful.  There is a waste right there as Klingons eat much more meat than their diet would require because of Klingon world view with themselves at the top of the food chain.   

    As a side point, Klingons who believe in the old gods, particularly Durgath, do not see themselves at the top of the food chain, if it is said in Pawns and Symbols "We are all prey for Durgath's palate"(I think, book is packed-can't double check).  In fact I thank you for raising Pawns and Symbols.  That describe the Klingon Empire's response to a kind of ecological disaster that could spark a collapse if not handled carefully.

    Now here is the question... If justice truly belongs to the strong, why would there be food rationing on the afflicted worlds?  After all Justice belongs to the Strong, so the strongest should eat and the rest should stave, right?   If a world becomes unproductive whether it is within the Klingon's ability to control or not, why would it be a drain on others, would the strong just leave the world and claim a better one leaving the weak to die and the unproductive world uninhabited?   There is more at work here than that.

    Is it not also wasteful in a way that the servitor races resist us?  And that we have to destroy so much of their resources before they will acknowledge their place?   I am not saying that Klingons are wrong or should change, but that there are many resources lost in these wars and we need many resources to build, maintain and operate as many starships as we do.  Often we need many resources quickly to rebuild after a war.  Clearly we do create some environmental impact the world in and around the Klingon Empire.  There are poor worlds in the Empire and not all Klingons are as honorable as the rest, and as in any other society, don't the dishnorable and greedy tend to seek politics as a way to increase their personal power?

[qoSagh]

With the ecological disaster in Pawns & Symbols, we had the resources (scientists and farmers) to combat this threat. It was an immediate threat because of it's potential to harm such a large part of the empire, thus the resources were committed to stopping this threat. It is the same theory that allows a large fleet of warships to be sent against a large foe and a small fleet to be sent against a small foe.

Allowing the population of a planet to die by starvation is not a wise tactic, if the planet is still useful for some sort of production. If the starvation is due to something other than food production shortages, then the same condition will likely exist when new settlers are relocated there to work in the other industries like dilithium mining. Often the native population is best suited for the climate at hand and it is prudent to use them whenever possible on their own world. It is not prudent to allow dissidents to remain alive and remain influencing large portions of the native population. So while in the short term the casualty rate may appear high when conquoring a new world, in the long term the benefits outweigh the costs.

Food rationing is a short term requirement while a long term solution is found and implemented. It is very wasteful the way that servitor races resist us, but they are not, after all, Klingon. As such they can not be expected to conceive of such complex reasoning as is needed to run an interplanetary empire. Teaching a targh to sing only wastes your time and annoys the targh. Without rationing, the shortage would grow far worse as each is left to eat until they are full. Those working in mines need more nourishment than those preparing the food for the miners. Rationing is an outward manifestation of the good stewardship the Empire offers each world under our control.

Resources as a whole are there to be spent, that is one of thegreat prizes which the Klingons have earned as a race. All efforts to expand, including war, will cost resources, this is why more resources are constantly sought through conquest. This is simply the natural order of things.

[Klythe]

    Any race will seek more resources when they can, but what about when they can't?   When The Empire finds their opponents too have so many resources that even with their quiet hearts and timid souls still can muster enough power to protect their worlds of their Empires from being conquered quickly, leading to an extended war where they can focus even more of their resources against us and find new strength in alliances?  We currently share long boarders with the Federation and Romulans and perhaps also the Breen and others.  How often can we push back these borders and keep them back long enough to take full advantage of the newly conquered worlds?


    There is little space to find new worlds to conquer.   Has this situation only been known to us in the last two centuries, or have there been other hopeful star "empires" that may have been able to impede the growth of the Klingon Empire and the influx of new resources from conquered worlds for decades or even centuries before they have finally fallen like prey to our claws?   Some, like the Kinshaya were more formidable than others like the Willall.  As we take from the kuve we find ourselves with many more resources quickly and be become accustomed to wealth and power...  Some even become soft.  As the weak fall quickly only the strong remain and finding the resources we need to continue to fight decade after decade for centuries if we must against worthy opponents, like the Kinshaya becomes even more difficult.

    Has the Empire merely been fortunate that there has always had the correct balance of easily conquered kuve to provide resources and new technologies and worthy opponents to keep out wits as sharp as our blades and our warrior hearts as hot as our disruptors?
I think it is foolish to assume the universe is so considerate to Klingons.   There undoubtedly have been been several times when the empire was on the brink of collapse, but the klingon heart endured pain longer than our opponents.

     So, perhaps let us argue this from the other side.  What threats are there to the empire that if unchecked or in concert with other threats challenge the very heart of the Empire and would cause collapse if we were not Klingons?
 

[qoSagh]

There are two kinds of resources, internal and external. The external are those yet to be conquored or controlled, the internal are far more complex. Our collective Klingon heart is an internal resource, as is the strength of our military, the skill of our tacticians, the knowledge of our scientists. When there is a shortage of one kind of resource, we naturally adapt to using more of the other kind. When the famine threatened to harm our ability to collect and utilize external resources, the internal resources dominated and corrected the problem. When Praxis exploded, we shifted to more external resources. When the need arises for more external resources and there is a military target in the way, the internal resource of our warrior strength takes the lead and we fight for conquest. The key to this, is knowing how to balance these resources, something that Klingons do quite well.

[Klythe]

    Internal and external to what?  A famine or specifically a blight that caused famine means grains will not grow in the Empire.  This was ultimately solved by resources external to the empire, a new grain a scientist taken from/provided by the Federation.  There are times when events beyond mortal control conspire to restrict both Internal and external resources.

    The more resources drawn from a planet, the less able it is to continue to support providing that level of resources.  Using planetary resources not only removes those resources from the planet, but also tends to cause ecological changes that harm future production...  Harvesting trees leads to deforestation, which often leads to soil erosion which impacts food production.   When a Targa-X mining vehicle harvests minerals such as dilithium and topaline, the holes left behind often emit significant amounts of hydrogen, methane, and other gases that were trapped deep underground into the atmosphere.

    When faced with a prolonged war that limits the acquisition or new external resources and enthropic decay of internal resources due to the Environmental impact of harvesting them, there must be some significant pressure on the empire that cannot be solved by the warrior's heart.

[qoSagh]

Internal and External are of course relative to the Empire at the time, as the Empire is always continuing to grow. The fact that wars sometimes limit that growth, is exactly why the warrior heart is so important to this effort, victory becomes much more important when it is not a matter of mere conquest but a matter of the survival of our most glorious Klingon race. Without the Klingon heart as a component in this equation I doubt the Empire would have made it much past the stone age, let alone to space travel.

All resources are there to be use, and not all resources are taken in such great numbers that they leave behind wasted planets. Of course some are consumed, but those gas deposits are also resources, and may be captured and used as more raw materials. So a planet may actually see phases in it's usefulness as a resource for the greater empire. It may start off as a food production planet, then transition to lumber, then to mining, then to gas, perhaps then even to being a quarry for building stone. But each planet is different and some last longer than others. Some may even serve better as locations of bases for either military operations, population growth or a combination of the two.

In the case of the Federation grain, the federation served as the resource provider, and the grain served as the resource. Superior Klingon scientists would have eventually solved the problem, but other factors, mostly the military required a swifter action. The beauty of using the Federation for something like this, is that left to their own devices they will always provide for the needy, even if that needy is in fact their enemy. This is a mistake that eh Klingons do not make, but we will continue to benefit from.