James Tiberius Kirk, Neocon
Occasional Reason contributor Paul Cantor, author of Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization, being interviewed by Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture:
The Prime Directive really takes us to the heart of the paradox of Star Trek. The United Federation of Planets is committed to non-interference in the affairs of other planets; Captain Kirk and his crew are not supposed to change the way of life of other civilizations. But, of course, they do it every episode–they just go right through the galaxy destroying one functioning civilization after another. I show that Kirk has a particular hostility to any civilization that smacks of theocracy or aristocracy. What it comes down to is this: the Enterprise will not interfere in a planetary civilization–provided that it looks just like John F. Kennedy's 1960s America. But if it does not, it's time to get out the phasers and blast away–to take down the Greek god Apollo, for example.
Star Trek provides a perfect reflection of the paradoxes of America's foreign policy–the non-democratic imposition of democracy around the world. The Enterprise was out to make the galaxy safe for democracy–and it would destroy any civilization that stood in its way. Gene Roddenberry's message was clear: woe to any planet not ruled by a liberal democrat.
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We come in peace
(shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill)
We come in peace
(shoot to kill)
Shoot to kill, Jim!
“Star Trekkin'”
Given his undying faith in the power of planning, perhaps joe should send the Klingons his resum?? He could design whole planets!
You’re either with us or against us in this war on Klingons!
The original Tiberius, ironically, not much of an expansionist. As Roman emperors go, anyway.
Once in a while Roddenberry’s libertarian streak would show, like the “Next Gen” episode where they encounter a planet of drug-addicted beings, and ultimately Picard decides it’s best to leave them to their own devices, to let them work it out on their own. And who can deny Spock’s Objectivist leaning?
Kirk came a bit too early to be a neo-con; he was the real thing, a JFK-style interventionist liberal (i.e., what the neo-cons were back in the early 60s). The whole premise of the original Star Trek series was the payment of any price, the bearing of any burden, to assure the success, survival, and extension of JFK-style liberalism throughout the galaxy. (I don’t know, however, that Kirk’s noted inability to keep his trousers zipped was directly modelled after JFK’s.) That’s what paleo-cons mean when they say that neo-cons are the spiritual heirs of JFK rather than of Robert A. Taft.
I just don’t think the ethic is as clear cut as many of my fellow libertarians make it out to be.
If I visit a neighbor’s house and witness spouse abuse, I am to believe that nonintervention is the only moral act? Isn’t it perfectly understandable that I feel dirty for allowing to continue an immoral situation I could stop?
If you don’t go after Apollo on the grounds that nonintervention is always moral, you are denying the self represented the capability to organize against any tyrant with a big stick. No entangling alliances means if Apollo wants Canada, he can have it. All he has to do is leave you alone. Forget the strategic problems for a minute. I am continually surprised at how easily folks in this neck of the woods will say their hands are clean when Canucks are forced to ride chariots and worship marble.
I am not saying that it is obvious to me that intervention is always the right answer, but it certainly shouldn’t be dismissed based on loose ideas of empire building, expansionism, ‘leaving people alone’, and so forth. The lover of freedom has a moral right to kill every tyrant. Whether he should do so is a matter of cost analysis.
Well, when you intervene to stop a crime, you’re not doing so with other people’s lives and money. Nor do you have to kill innocent civilians and level their homes. Nor are you called upon to rebuild anything from the top-down.
In related news: UPN canceled “Enterprise” today.
“Well, when you intervene to stop a crime, you’re not doing so with other people’s lives and money”
I can’t even call the cops? Intervening in domestic violence can absolutely result in the spouse or children getting hurt worse by the abuser.
It just isn’t that obvious to me …
Oh, good. I was wondering when that piece of shit was going to die.
Gentlemen,
I watched the show way too much as a tyke, but aren’t we blowing this out of proportion? This is all from memory so I’m sure someone will correct me …
Didn’t the space nazis want to murder Spock and wasn’t that one started by a rogue star fleet guy?
Kirk made peace between the Yangs and the Koms. How was that bad?
Didn’t the Romulans open fire first?
On the Roman planet, that had some religious bull crap mixed up in it but wasn’t it the natives who were going to make Kirk be a gladiator.
I won’t mention the time travel episodes because that’s meddling spelled MEDDLING.
Kirk did open fire a lot more than Picard ever did (that was the truly unwatchable spinoff – wotta bunch of poofters) but Kirk was an obviously American military man (just doing his duty the best he knew how) and Picard was some kind of intergalactic viceroy/nanny. Kirk was more of an Eisenhower and Picard more of a Hillary Clinton. OK, this is way too belabored.
SP
My favorite plot device was “General Order 24”, which was an order calling for the complete destruction of all life on the planet. The fact that the Federation even HAD a General Order 24 in its rulebook makes the whole prime directive thing pretty silly. Then again, maybe General Order 24 was written by Alberto Gonzalez, and even though it was on the books, the President of the Federation would never ever think about implementing it.
SP,
I’m surprised you didn’t go for the obvious: Picard is French.
Nice link. The same publication has a great essay (IMHO) on Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. The zine would be better if it weren’t pseudo-academic, however.
ST:TNG had plenty of warfare and intervention. They fought and defeated the Borg – twice! 🙂
Remember when Kirk visited the “Native American” planet? They followed the prime directive pretty well there as I recall.
Kirk & crew did end up taking about a couple of Dyson sphere-like civilizations. They also took down the “Roman Empire” planet (where “Christ” had visited!!!!).
Super Prole,
No, Troi was more like Clinton.
The Old Series had an explicit anti-intervention episode based on Vietnam (which is implicitly mentioned as a late 20th century “bush war” if I recall correctly). The hill people and the villagers are armed by the Federation and the Klingons. I forget which did which but in any case, after a yeti, a hot half-naked brunette panting over a wounded Enterprise crewman, some skirmishes, Kirk realizes it is all for nought but his Federation-bloc client, angered over the brunette’s death, decides to import more weapons to fight a local cold war proxy conflict.
Most episodes were the opposite, however. Proto-neocon, especially the one where on the gangster planet the Federation “the Feds” are “cut in for 40%”.
Could imperialism get more blatant?
I’ll leave the finer points to the rest of you, but on the question of taking down the god Apollo, well, I’m sorry, the big guy deserved it. He was trying to steal their nooky, for god’s sake.
matthew hogan,
My favorite of the series has been ST:DS9 – largely because of the Captain Benjamin Lafayette Sisko character.
Douglas Fletcher,
I have to agree. The Apollo episode isn’t really an appropriate example.
kmw,
A happy “Go climb a tree” (c.f. Errand of Mercy) to you. I like that series.
And in Who Mourns for Adonais, Apollo stopped their ship, and threatened to destroy it, after forcing the crew into being shepherds, farmers, and hunters. That sounds like a simple case of self-defense to me.
In A Piece of the Action, (Mob planet) Kirk wasn’t really serious about the 40% going to the Federation because he later said that the money would be funnelled back to the Iotians. Of course, why would it have to be taken in the first place? I would say that was the only way Kirk could could see that he would make the Iotians understand it would be better for them to unite instead of being involved in endless turf wars. Also, because McCoy left his communicator there, Kirk realized that pretty soon the Iotians would be dealing with the Federation on a more equal footing.
In Patterns of Force, (Space Nazis) The Enterprise was attacked with a couple nukes at the start of the episode. Their goal was to undo the “damage” that John Gill caused.
In Bread and Circuses, (20th Century Roman Empire), Scotty was specifically congratulated for saving Kirk from being executed without affecting the culture by causing a temporary blackout.
Here is a list of episodes I can see a reasonable argument being made for violations of the Prime Directive:
Patterns of Force
Miri
The Return of the Archons
The Gamesters of Triskellion
This Side of Paradise
The Apple
A Taste of Armageddon
A Private Little War
The Empath
Spock’s Brain
Mark of Gideon
Plato’s Stepchildren
The Cloud-minders
Mirror, Mirror
The Omega Glory
That Which Survives
Hmm, 16 out of 78, or about 1/5.
I would consider only three of those to be religious cases, The Return of the Archons, The Apple, and The Omega Glory. It seems Paul Cantor was using some selective memory to prove his point.
Some latitude should be given for lack of mental nimbleness, as it was an interview. Still, how does “Who Mourns for Adonis?” manage to pop into his head as an example of a Prime Directive violation?
From what I understood Roddenberry’s original series idea for the Prime Directive was that it applied to less technologically advanced civilizations. That the inhabitants should figure out for themselves how to live and govern their affairs without the Federation trying to prevent every misstep. It did not apply in he same way to cultures on par with the Feds, i.e. Klingons, Romulans. And of course, conflict with the prime directive sometimes was the drama in the plotline of the week.
MJ,
Not honoring the Prime Directive happened in ST:TNG as I recall. Remember the episode where Data gets the Enterprise to launch some specially-modified photon torpedoes designed to stop a series of massive, planet-shattering earthquakes to save his “friend” and her family? That episode contains Picard’s PM = a way to “protect us” speech.
Anyway, if you think Kirk (or Picard or Sisko) is nasty, compare their actions with that of the Dominion.
Hmm…the politics of Star Trek are interesting. But how about “The Devil in the Dark,” where miners are attacked by what they believe is a malevolent predatory beast, but actually is simply a lone mother defending her young from encroaching miners?
That episode was pretty cool.
Spock does a mindmeld with it at great personal risk.
Anyway, it’s a bit of a stretch to say Kirk supported US foreign policy, though. Sure they violated the prime directive, but as noted, it was often crouched in self-defense. Despite the many, many allegorical episodes, there was always lip-service to peace and the acknowledgement that higher beings either would be completely beyond war or…er, well, stage it for their own amusement.
A more pressing question is whether the interviewee, despite his meritorious points, may simply be constructing using the tried/true “Bible Code” method of academic criticism. I mean…globalization and fracturing? I could think of a dozen good Trek episodes to support any number of arguments. Decentering? Twilight Zone. Coherence and moral authority? Cosby Show, etc. We could play that game…well, forever.
Shawn Smith,
You should remove at least the following episodes from that list.
This Side of Paradise – Everyone infected by body-snatching spores.
The Return of the Archons – USS Enterprise, & prevously USS Archon, attacked by Landru.
A Taste of Armageddon – Kirk ordered by the ambassador to intervene; that qualifies only as an example of the neo-con faction at the Federation violating TPD.
Miri – Why is this even on your list ?
“I show that Kirk has a particular hostility to any civilization that smacks of theocracy or aristocracy.”
Good Grief ! In “Who mourns for Adonais”, Apollo did the force initiation; he wanted everyone to worship him, whether they liked it or not. Not a TPD violation.
Wow,
what a bunch of Star Trek geeks.
The old Star Treck kicked ass, all the new ones suck. Pickard sucks, the shows with him in are like some kind of a UN fantasy. I would like to see some like the old ones with Kirk, but with a little more violence, some more explicit sex scenes, and a little less preaching.
Some of the old episodes were pretty cool though.
Prime directive shmime directive, what can we get for us of this planet.
JLA,
That was a pretty good article about “Unforgiven”. The essay did seem to have some definate feminist undertones. I loved that movie.
A couple of things the essay missed;
The best part of the movie IMO is when he asked who the owner of the bar is. And the dude who was the bar owner is unarmed, to wich Clint says “any man who would do that to my friend should have armed himself”, and then he shoots the man in cold blood.
The other part is that the essay claims that men in America are reduced to being unmanly breadwinners. But they are not even that with the prevalence of two income families.
I don’t really know how that last point ties into what I thought was the feminist thesis of the essay, but I am sure it is important.
kwais, don’t be such a Herbert.
SM,
I was trying to include all episodes that an argument, even if it were not valid, could be made.
* * * S P O I L E R S * * *
This Side of Paradise was included because the colonists were living a peaceful, happy life under the control of the spores, and Kirk messed all that up. Now, it was with other Federation citizens, so it’s a pretty weak argument in that case.
In Return of the Archons Kirk destroyed Landru (by causing it to destroy itself), altering the way almost all people on the planet behaved. Granted, it was a case of self-defense, also.
Miri was included because Kirk decided to change the culture (such as it was) of all children to one that was more functional, i.e., it wouldn’t die because of starvation.
kwais,
What a bunch of Star Trek geeks.
LOL. Thanks for not calling us “Trekkies.”
There were stinkers in the old Star Trek, too. Think Spock’s Brain (Illiterate women steal Spock’s Brain to run all their machinery), The Omega Glory (Kirk lets the Yangs/Yankees know what they were fighting for and reads the Preamble to the Constitution), All our Yesterdays (Spock and McCoy go back to an Ice age on Sarpeidon, where Spock falls in love with Zarabeth, whom he has to leave at the end). The third season had others, But I think you see my point.
Whatever Roddenberry’s ideas were about foreign policy extension, I’ve always thought that the three major empires in Star Trek were basically metaphors for the superpowers of the 1960s. Thus, United Federation of Planets = USA/Nato, Klingons = Russians, Romulans = Chinese.
My reasoning: the FOP obviously shares our western values; the Klingons were beligerant and underhanded, just like them Russkies; and the Romulans were severe and mysterious, up to god knows what, which fairly well describes Mao’s empire.
Maybe this is too obvious a point for this bunch, though. Maybe I’ll go back to sleep.
Douglas Fletcher,
The Cardassians are clearly the Serbs; the Bajorans the Bosnians. Its hard to point to a true analogue for the Dominion, though the Borg could be analogized to any fanatical group I suppose.
So where does Star Trek go from here? Are they going to make any new shows or movies, or will it die out? If they keep making total crap like Voyager and Enterprise, perhaps it’s time has come.
Mr. Nice Guy,
Honestly, I think we need a ST hiatus. We’ve had one series or another on since 1987 (eighteen years in other words); a rest would be apropos I think.
I always read The Prime Directive as more like multiculturalism than a libertarian injunction against imperial violence. Isn’t the idea that “contamination” by advanced cultures, especially those that bring science and technology, causes harm by altering the “natural” course of development
The general trajectory of series from the original through to present is definitely pessimistic. Next Generation, as has been noted, had an onboard counsellor. By the time of Voyager things had got so bad that they weren’t even boldly exploring, just wondering around trying to find their way home.
And Spock as an Objectivist? I’m not any kind of expert, but I didn’t think they were in to “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”.
Paul Cantor has a great future writing for Michael Moore.
The “civilization” in “Who Mourns for Adonais” consisted of Apollo himself. Period. He kidnapped members of the enterprise crew onto an otherwise uninhabited planet. Kirk fought back and destroyed Apollo’s power source. Apollo committed suicide when he saw his career as a slavemaster nipped in the bud. And Cantor calls _Kirk_ the aggressor!?
Shawn Smith warns: * * * S P O I L E R S * * *
For the love of Jeebus, is there anybody this side of the Neutral Zone who’s worried about plot reveals for Star Trek???????
“…in Who Mourns for Adonais, Apollo stopped their ship, and threatened to destroy it, after forcing the crew into being shepherds, farmers, and hunters…”
And how. Wasn’t that when Apollo’s own giant hand stopped the ship in mid, er, space?
“Behold…a “god” who [i]bleeds[/i].” (A former Trekkie friend’s favorite line from that episode.)
To show how far into Trekhood many are, must sterilize the errors of Kurt Wayne:
“Behold…a “god” who bleeds.” (A former Trekkie friend’s favorite line from that episode.)
{that is, the “Who Mourns for Adonais?” Apollo episode.}
But the line was not from that episode.
(Actually, I think it may have been from The Passion of the Christ. :-))
It was from (titles elude me) the American Indian-Kirk amnesia episode where he is elevated to deity by emerging from an obelisk that Spock later deciphers.
Y’all need to examine your memories better. A Piece of the Action was a case of contamination by pre-Prime Directive “Feds” who crashed on Iotia. Remember “Da Book?” “You know, DA BOOK! DA BOOK!” Leading to a classic Spock, “Fascinating! An entire culture built on…”
Their decidedly accepted mission was to observe/document the already created contamination.
MT
Star Trek as metaphor…ah yes, the great ideas and physics of Star Trek, ranking right up with the “giants” of literature: Robbins and Susann.
Oh, Tiberius was just as imperialist as his successors, maybe more so, and was one of the most paranoid tyrants in history.
The prime directive only applied to civiliations that did not have faster than light travel. That was mentioned in the original series in passing and explicitly in the ST:TNG episode where Picard and Troy go the the world about to use warp for the first time to warn them that they will be contacted immediately.
In the original series, the most blatent abuse of the PD was the same episode where Kirk ordered General Order 24. Those folks were having an interplanetary war (not interstellar) for hundreds of years using simulated computer attacks on each other’s planets. I’d say leave em to their games, but they did insist that the Enterprise had been “hit” and so all the crew people had to die.
James T. wasn’t about to walk into on of those booths peacefully!
How cool was it when Scotty announced all their population and power production centers were targeted and would be destroyed in 24 hours unless the hostages were returned?
Matthew Hogan, thanks for the correction.
“Must sterilize”…that’s from “The changeling”, isn’t it? Or has my 44 year old brain become more “sterilized” with age? “>)
“In the original series, the most blatent abuse of the PD was the same episode where Kirk ordered General Order 24. Those folks were having an interplanetary war (not interstellar) for hundreds of years using simulated computer attacks on each other’s planets. I’d say leave em to their games, but they did insist that the Enterprise had been “hit” and so all the crew people had to die.
James T. wasn’t about to walk into on of those booths peacefully!”
(One last attempt at remembering a line, this one from “A taste of Armageddon”, I believe?)
KIRK: “What a…filthy way to die.”
(Or was that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) saying that? BTW, I’ve only seen a couple of “Trek” episodes in the last 15 years. I just visited startrek.com to verify I had the title right. In the reviews to the right of this episode’s page, someone posted “Drive-by diplomacy in action.” :)))
The Cardassians are clearly the Serbs…
Gunnels, you must be very popular at your local whorehouse. You never know when to quit.
But thanks for backing me up earlier, anyway.
Here’s the racial breakdown of Star Trek races and their real counterparts:
Federation: Europe (all that multi-culturalism, inclusiveness, etc)
Klingons: Russians
Romulans: Chinese
Vulcans: Japanes (like the Chinese, but nice and useful and smart)
Ferengi: Jews
Cardassians: South East Asia (Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc…)
Bajorans: Sub-Saharan Africans (the tribal spirit worship and all that)
Dominion: Supercharged Arabs (Jem’Hadar) and Covert Terrorists (Founders)
Borg: The US (not in a bad way. We just roll over anyone who gets in our way, do things about a billion times better than anyone else, and covert people to our ideology. We rule, just like the Borg)
matthew hogan,
You’re correct. The Paradise Syndrome
Gosh, I’m such a nerd.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd,
I just remembered the last time I revealed a major plot twist on this forum (to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) with no warning, and I wanted to not do that again. I guess I went too far, hmmm? 🙂
talcott / MT,
Correct, but after demonstrating the Enterprise’s (and therefore, the Federation’s) power by knocking out all the gunfighters on a street, Kirk tells the Iotians that the Feds will be back every year to collect their cut, and to be sure the Iotians are behaving themselves.
Kurt Wayne,
Yep, The Changeling had “…must sterilize…” several times.
“From what I understood Roddenberry’s original series idea for the Prime Directive was that it applied to less technologically advanced civilizations.”
Specifically, it applied to non-spacefaring civilizations, since the spacefaring ones would run into the Federation soon anyway.
Mr. Nice Guy,
There are plans for an eleventh movie to start production sometime this year (at least, that’s what Rick Berman says.) After the 60-some million worldwide take for the last movie Nemesis (the lowest of the series), Paramount is probably going to insist on some kind of way to be sure they get their money back.
Plenty of people are saying it’s about time Star Trek take a break. Seven of those eighteen years had two Star Trek shows on at the same time. There are over 600 episodes plus ten movies. That’s an awful lot of trivia to learn. 🙂
If memory serves, “ST: Enterprise” fostered the idea that the Prime Directive was foisted upon the earthlings by the Vogons, err, the Vulcans. That tight-suited Vulcan on the show wasn’t half-bad, either.
If memory serves, “ST: Enterprise” fostered the idea that the Prime Directive was foisted upon the earthlings by the Vogons, err, I mean, the Vulcans. That tight-suited Vulcan on the show wasn’t half-bad, either.
And OT: I strongly recommend the book of “Hitch-Hikers Guide” above the TV show, and although the radio anthology rocks, too, I never played the game. Will the movie live up to this exalted history?
The most fascinating part of the PD is how it reveals the Federation’s hypocrisy. If they really believed that interfering with less advanced civilizations would muck up their development, wouldn’t the Feds turn down any help from more advanced civs? No, the Prime Directive was just an excuse to keep the alien brothers down, while the Feds were looking to get a leg up from any glowy energy being they came across.
I know it doesn’t click with my libertarian convictions, but, still, I find the idea of mandatory mini-skirts…intriguing.
Hi, Trekkies and all…
I have an alternative sci-fi paradigm to suggest: the Ender series by Orson Scott Card. In the first book (SPOILER ALERT that may actually apply, below asterisks:),
************************************************
this eleven-year-old called Ender completely destroys the only other intelligent species humanity has ever been in contact with… except for one egg containing one queen, which nobody knows about but him. He begins to travel the galaxy carrying this egg about from place to place, looking for a spot to let it hatch, because the aliens had revealed to him through telepathy that they just never realized humans were sentient – if they had, they’d never have attacked them.
Second book: Ender finds a place to put the egg. It happens to be the only planet on which humanity has (again) identified an intelligent species, and there’s a small and (they think) completely isolated human colony there dedicated, oddly enough, to studying these aliens and maybe someday converting them to Catholicism –
– but they’re not allowed to do the conversion thing because of a policy like the PD in Star Trek. Humans are not allowed to interject ANY kind of human culture or knowledge into this nascent civilization, which makes it really hard to study them; you can’t, for instance, ask “What do you grow for food?” because maybe they DON’T grow food, and your question would indicate to them that maybe they COULD, thereby polluting their culture. (How they learned to communicate with one another is elided, conveniently.) The stated reason for this “PD lookalike” is that humanity feels so guilty for having had such a devastating effect on the only other civilization they ever knew.
Here comes the money part. Eventually this young, primitive civilization reveals that they’ve been sneaking into the human compound for a long time, looking at what the humans have and do, and they accuse the humans of holding out on them – of holding back their advances and sophistications, things the aliens would love to have, out of fear and selfishness. Fear, that is, that the new culture would someday outstrip the human one. See any useful global parallels today?
Reading this series (which goes on from here) gave me a whole new perspective on multiculturalism, and encourages me to examine my motives carefully whenever I think I’m being altruistic and respectful of people who do things differently from me.
Matt,
The first time I saw the Ferengi, I thought someone is taking a big swipe at the Rand and her Randroids. But you may have a valid point: Despite what Ayn might have claimed, You can take the girl away from the Jews, but you can’t take the Jew out of the girl.
Ken –
Been a little while since I read the Ender series. But in that second book you seem to have left out that the alien species is killing humans, and each other, so that they can transform to the next level.
Makes the present parallels a bit more obvious.
Unfortunately, Enterprise was cancelled once it actually became watchable and a real prequel series.
Way to go, Berman and Braga, for chasing away all of the fans, and THEN giving it to someone else who a) can write and b) actually WATCHED the original series.
John
The Romulans are WW2 Japanese – incredibly vicious, a strong code of honour, tough & related to the Vulcans (er current Japanese) whereas Darth Vadar is a medieval Japanese (with WW2 German helmet & gas mask).
The gangsters can play Chinese – honourable thugs who will master our technology & come visiting.
Apollo can be the British royal family – outdated & a bit sexy.
The fact that Kennedy, Bush & Kirk all approve the prime directive except when they find it useful merely shows the continuity of US foreign policy.
IIRC, in The Return of the Archons, Spock objected to Kirk’s proposed actions with the observation that the PD forbade interference with the development of a (non-star-faring) society. Kirk retorted that they weren’t developing, they were stagnating!
I’m sure that Kirk (or his lawyer) brought up this pilpul at his court-martial. I can envision the judges looking at each other in disgust and muttering, “Damnit, he’s technically right; we can’t sentence him to the dilithium mines after all”.
Um… Technically -and this always Ruffled my feathers on the later shows-, the “Prime Directive” was that the Federation/Star Fleet would not interfere in the natural progression of PRE WARP societies. That is, if they’re not advanced enough that they have accomplished Intergalactic travel (ie: Modern Civilization), then we leave them alone.
Unless somebody else has already started meddling (that old time Trek episode where the Klingons were slowly introducing firearms to an otherwise just post-copper-age planet.)
It says nothing about Non-interference when it comes to Intergalactic (modern) civilizations.
A common theme for speculative fiction is the idea that one of the effects of European civilization on the American Indians was to deprive them of any motivation. This is based on reports of Indian populations sliding into alcoholism and sloth. The fear was (is?) that introducing advanced concepts into more primitive civilizations would not “elevate them” or produce competitors but would in fact destroy them.
I strongly suggest a read of “Childhoods End” by Arthur C. Clarke as one of the primary studies on this. Clarke is the originator of the phrase about advanced technology and magic, which goes a long way down that road. Any presumption that more advanced civilizations are somehow immune to this is wishful thinking. The point isn’t that there is any immunity, but instead that the level of disparity between the two civilizations is not sufficient for there to be a problem.
Thus, the Federation does not represent this threat to the Klingons but Q does to the Federation (in ST:TNG).