Star Trek thread of going to familiar places and beyond

[chronovore]

Yeah, ST:ENT has it right - both in the TV series and at least one novel: the portion of Starfleet's charter that allows for unfettered action if Starfleet itself faces an existential threat, while understandable, leads to slippery slope arguments. America holds an idealized version of itself at the forefront of its mind, but we also had the CIA self-funding operations in Central and South America. Pre-emptive foreign interference because there's a potential existential threat is the slipperiest of slopes. 

And then I am reminded of Iain M. Banks' CULTURE novels, where it is a technocracy run by sentient, benevolent AIs — and the Culture will utterly destabilize and undermine other civilizations preemptively if the AI thinks that civ is gonna be a problem. 

So I'm torn.