Federation Vs Empire

Last night, through an exceedingly circuitious route to recall, I visited a truly delightful website. Pure geekdom, it analyzes the proceedings and outcome of a war between Star War's Empire and Star Trek's Federation.

The conclusions?

In a straight-up fight, the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Even with its numerical advantage removed, the Empire would still squash the Federation like a bug. Accept it.

The Federation's response is what anyone familiar with military science would suggest:

Given a highly asymmetrical situation, the most obvious course of action is to attempt to reduce the magnitude of the asymmetry, hence the notion of coalition-building. However, in this case, the magnitude of the asymmetry is so great that coalition-building would be ineffective. Therefore, we must adopt the controversial tactics of retreat, decentralization, guerilla (sic) warfare, and terrorism.

Pretty much a foregone conclusion, considering that the Empire has an immense industrial base, aggressive policy and tough leadership; while the Federation is much smaller, prefers endless negoatiation and tries to maintain an untarnished moral status.

Not surprisingly, the author of all this material is an engineer, and - according to canon, I suppose - he sees the Empire as a heavily militarized, expansionist regime much like the Mongols were. On the other hand, the Federation is an essentially peaceful but totalitarian regime - with the curious twist of having no distinction between civilian and military forces and leadership. Even their basic individual weapon looks nothing like a gun (dark shades of oplophobia looming); in my opinion this similar to the attitude of tranzist regimes such as the EU, which do have armies, but god forbid they actually go out and fight for the interest of the home country!

There are many interesting snippets scattered around the website, and they're not only about those fictional universes and their intermingling, but often about our own reality and present events; there is an evaluation of Israeli policies that would make some scream bloody murder (but it's written from the perspective of Federation officers). However, there is one incorrect statement: during the Great White Phosporous Propaganda Campaign I consulted quite a few high-level sources, and none of them described phosphorous combustion fumes as "highly toxic".

Great place to stay up at night until your eyes are sore and you are about to fall asleep on the keyboard, I tell you.