Starfleet and the Russian Navy.

[frigidmagi]

Within Starfleet (via Star Trek just to be clear) we have seen repeated examples of officers being able to pass up promotion without a negative impact on their careers.

These examples include Riker, Picard and Kirk himself.

Now in the Western (or at least Anglo) military tradition, someone who passes up promotion is practically killing their career. There are several reasons for this, one of the biggest is to keep a good movement of new blood and fresh experience into the upper levels, while allowing jr's the chance to get command responsibility. Ensuring there are enough tested and experienced commanders to go around in case the balloon goes up.

This does not seem to be a major motivation in Star Trek, at least not during the TNG era.

Instead commanders and captains are allowed to maintain the same placement and command pretty much for as long as they want it. This echoes in a lot of ways the Russian military tradition where both navy and army officers were allowed to retain commands and posts for as long as they wanted it. The thought being that this allowed for men who knew their area and duties inside and out and had real comfort and experience in the role.

It should be noted this seems to be the route that Starfleet has gone. Riker is allowed to continue as XO for as long as he wants, while Picard and Kirk both turn down promotions to admiral (in fact Spock flat out tells Kirk taking a jump to admiral in ST II was a mistake and a waste of material). This suggest that in the terms of promotion and unit command a more Russian mindset is being used.

Thoughts?



The two systems have never truly be tested in direct confrontation.

[Cynical Cat]

Interesting and plausible.

[Batman]

I agree. While I can see the logic behind the western approach-every command position held by an old hand is one where a newcomer CAN'T gather command experience him/her/itself-I can ALSO see why someone would let people who apparently know what they're doing keep their jobs if they're happy with it.

And let's face it-at least in peacetime, Admiral is likely mostly an administrative job, and I rather suspect Kirk enjoyed administrative work about as much as Jack O'Neill did.

And probably went even FURTHER out of his way to avoid doing it.

[Rogue 9]

Of course they use the Russian system; they're goddamned Commies.