Jim wrote:I was serious, but in honesty, I do not recall the mountain leveling that you mention. The Klingons threatened a lot of stuff that they could never follow up on so...
I do remember many times where "hiding in caves" was more than adequate to protect everyone. That does not say to me that planetary bombardment on a scale that is any real threat was available.
I feel that if it was an actual viable option, it would have been used a lot more. I would have expected the Cardassians to use it against the Maquis. I would have expected the Dominion to use it widely during the war as well. Why use ground forces when you can just push a button? Especially the Dominion. When they got cut off from their reinforcements and had shortages in both Jem’Hadar and Ketracel White they could not “afford” to throw troops into the grinder. Just bomb planets back into the stone age if that is an actual viable option. However, they did not do that (in either situation) as I felt it was not an actual viable option.
I suspect it's a combination of actual war aims and MAD. For the former it's no different to what happens now. Why does America wage extensive ground wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, when it has a vast nuclear arsenal? In part, because using those weapons would defeat the purpose of the war. You can't "liberate Iraq" by turning it into a nuclear wasteland, and nor can the Dominion impose control and order on the Alpha Quadrant by annihilating the population of all the planets.
And if the Cardassians or Dominion did start to do that, everybody else would respond in kind. A Trek equivalent of World War III that left all sides in ruins isn't in anybody's interest.
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...