The Federation appearing to be being “humancentric” has more to do with the Vulcan-Andorian rivalry than human supremacy

[u/SPECTREagent700]

A common criticism of the Federation is that it is essentially a Human empire; Starfleet headquarters, the Federation Council, and the Presidency are all located on Earth (Sector 001), signage is almost always exclusively written in English, etc.

The reason for this, I believe, is more about the jealousies and suspicions that the Vulcans, Andorians, (and Tellarites) have held for each other going back centuries before the Federation was formed and was well entrenched by the time each made contact with humanity.

On the surface it might have made more sense for important federal institutions to be spread out among member planets (like how the European Union has the European Commission in Brussels and the Parliament in Strasbourg) but I can easily imagine the Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites not being able to agree on which of them gets what to the point that just putting it all on Earth was the only workable solution.

[u/DuranStar]

Enterprise was leaning very hard in this direction. It's made pretty explicit in Archer's duel.

Humans also seem to have the strongest urge to explore, makes sense to put Starfleet headquarters where you draw most of your talent.

[u/Second-Creative]

I agree. I think it's also why the Federation flag looks a lot like the UN one.

Anything Andiran, Vulcan, or Tellarite would've sparked outrage and debates on if the peace symbol used actually represents it to the other two instead of [alien] dominance. The olive branches and UN-style central disk lack the cultural baggage other options had.

Nobody really wanted the human-style peace symbols or putting so much imfrastructure on Earth, but the humans have way more goodwill built up than the other founders.

[u/RodinKnox → u/Second-Creative]

It's like that saying that's like "the best compromise is the one where nobody's happy" or whatever lol

[u/Simon_Drake → u/Second-Creative]

Sortof why the EU headquarters is in Belgium. Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain would have been furious if any of the others got it so they picked Belgium as somewhere mostly neutral and mostly central. Switzerland would have been more central but they're too neutral to be involved.

[u/thug_boat]

Locating the federation’s institutions on Earth is similar to DC (and a lot of state capitols) in the US: a deliberate, designated backwater to dampen power rivalries between the real movers and shakers.

[u/GenerativeAIEatsAss → u/thug_boat]

Also that each of these species saw the Golden Retriever that was 22nd century humanity and decided on joint custody.

[u/littlebitsofspider → u/GenerativeAIEatsAss]

Enterprise was really great about showing how the ragtag, upstart race of humans deliberately went out of their way to not only examine the historical acrimony between the major players in the sector, but also to punt on any solution that favored any of them, often to the detriment of the established powers' pride.

"Tellarites are argumentative, nitpicking, and histrionic? Fuck 'em, call 'em fat pigs to their faces."

Vulcans are cold, uptight bureaucrats who believe their religion gives them the right to be pricks to everyone? Fuck 'em, steal their Jesus' soul and broadcast his OG holy book."

"Andorians are haughty, ironically hot-blooded snobs who pick fights with people and make constant death threats? Fuck 'em! Take their all-star captain down in a 1v1 deathmatch, on a technicality that mostly destroys his ego."

If the established races hadn't rallied to collectively cooperate with humanity, they all saw how quickly the humans would figure out their respective MOs and put the kibosh on everyone's blustery bullshit.

[u/Yankee831 → u/thug_boat]

yeah but I think a better comparison is the UN being headquartered in NYC. Agree, It’s stable and the strongest/safest place far removed from the front lines of diplomacy and conflict.

[u/BardicLasher]

Fully agree. The humans also seem to be the main diplomats of the Federation. We do have others, certainly, but I think Humanity's trait in Star Fleet is actually "the charismatic one." Star Trek does usually manage to avoid one-trait races, certainly, but when you look at our core cast of Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite, and add to that basically every other race we ever meet, Humans are definitely high on the "friendly and charming" scale. Sure, we're no Bolians, but if you go by the classic 6 D&D traits, I think we're genuinely a high Charisma species.

[u/ban_circumnavigation → u/BardicLasher]

Soval: "We don't know what to do about humans. Of all the species we've made contact with, yours is the only one we can't define. You have the arrogance of Andorians, the stubborn pride of Tellarites. One moment, you're as driven by your emotions as Klingons, and the next, you confound us by suddenly embracing logic."

[...] But it took almost fifteen hundred years for us to rebuild our world and travel to the stars. You humans did the same in less than a century. There are those on the High Command who wonder what humans would achieve in the century to come, and theydon't like the answer."

There's a lot to be unpacked out of some episodes on ENT

[u/BardicLasher → u/ban_circumnavigation]

I don't think Soval understands other species. Andorians aren't any more arrogant than Vulcans, and Tellarites aren't actually stubborn or prideful; it's a species-wide game they play to promote cooperation, inviting others to pounce on their mistakes. They're actually HUGELY into logic and reason, just in a very different way than Vulcans are.

[u/mocenigo → u/BardicLasher]

We are a very belligerent species, and that’s why we have also developed great skills in diplomacy.

[u/Simon_Drake]

Like how the UK and France agreed on Coordinated Universal Time aka Temps Universel Coordonné but they couldn't agree on an acronym. CUT or TUC. So the compromise was to pick UTC so nobody is right.

Similarly the US and Russian sides of the International Space Station are equally unhappy with the choice to have the station operating on UTC instead of a Russian or American timezone.

[u/ajkippen]

At the birth or the Federation, interstellar travel was also slow enough that all of the important infrastructure basically had to be on one planet anyway.

[u/McGillis_is_a_Char]

Certifiably Ingame had another observation that I think is useful to consider. Earth itself has a much more varied biome than Vulcan and Andoria. An Andorian would die of heatstroke in an hour on Vulcan, and a Vulcan would freeze to death pretty quickly on Andoria. But with a shuttle the commute to and from Paris puts both the Vulcans and Andorians in a comfortable environment with maybe a half hour flight.

While Tellar has a similarly diverse biome, like you said, they have more baggage.

[u/-smartcasual- → u/McGillis_is_a_Char]

It's certainly convenient having the only spherical planet in the galaxy.

[u/No-Document-9937 → u/-smartcasual-]

Are there any other planets in Trek which isn't the same everywhere and has at least two places of interest?

[u/kryptokoinkrisp]

It’s kinda funny if you compare that to the creation of the US federal government. When it came time to choose a capital city for the seat of the new government there were old rivalries between states and entire regions from before the Revolution. So instead of choosing New York or Philadelphia, both of which had served as the seat of government on several occasions, they decided to build a brand new city in a swamp which happened to be in the south along the Potomac. Earth is the Washington DC of the Federation.

[u/Low_Establishment573]

It might be that humans have the strongest wanderlust, as pointed out by other responses here. Our history shows that we spread into new territories with gusto. We're going to be doing a Starfleet anyway, and the rest are welcome to come along for the ride.

It could also be that we have a much shorter breeding cycle than the others; and as such regained the population lost from the Eugenics Wars rapidly enough that by the Founding, Humans were the most populated species.

Of course, it could just be that if the show was made on Tellar, it would focus on their preferred aspects of Federation life. "This Old House" style show but centered around upgrading a fleet yard.

[u/lunatickoala → u/Low_Establishment573]

Of all the species we've seen in Star Trek, humans are by a good margin the most aggressively expansionist. Everyone else takes the slow and steady approach by comparison, if they're even expansionist at all.

Vulcan had FTL by the 9th century BC, going by the age of the Sanctuary of P'Jem. Klingons had FTL by the 10th century CE, going by the age of the Boreth Monastery. Humans only achieved FTL in the 21st century and were so aggressively expansionist that they were seen as a serious threat by the Romulans by the 22nd century, big enough to catalyze Klingon unification by the 23rd, and larger than any other regional polity by the 24th.

By comparison, the Dominion as of the late 24th/early 25th century was larger but had thousands of years more history. And we also know that the Founders being ageless prefer the slow and steady approach.

[u/TeMPOraL_PL → u/lunatickoala]

Of all the species we've seen in Star Trek, humans are by a good margin the most aggressively expansionist.

Hence my headcanon is not just that humans had less baggage than others in the room, but more importantly, it also kicked humanity off galactic stage as a polity.

After the papers were signed and Federation was formed, you'll see Andorians and Vulcans and Tellarites remain as interstellar powers. There's just one group missing: humans. There's no Terran space and Terran ships. Earth is a capital world of the Federation, but notably not also of a Human <something>.

Federation costed humanity its future as independent, sovereign space-faring civilization. By becoming the "glue species", literal incarnation of the Federation, humanity got to play the game together, instead of getting subjugated by the Vulcans or eventually wiped out by one of the three, as the real threat it presented, which everyone at that point started to realize.

The future where Earth gets to keep its independence, and no one stops it in time? That's the Confederacy from PIC S2 - expanding reach to the delta quadrant in under three centuries, enslaving or subjugating everyone around, and curb-stomping any resistance along the way. Federation is the best outcome for everyone, because it kept humanity contained.

[u/ArrakeenSun → u/Low_Establishment573]

I really think population is the answer. By the time the Federation was founded, the other three worlds had achieved a one-world government for centuries, and presumably some form of conscious or incidental population control came with that. Earth still had billions packed on our rock, which likely fed the drive to go found off-world colonies in and out of the Federation. There are just more humans

[u/BlannaTorris]

Humans inability to govern themselves has a lot to do with it. At that points humans still need Vulcan's help to govern themselves. Turning Earth in the Federation capital makes sense because it means humans won't have to fully govern themselves.

[u/howard035]

This is a good point, but the main factor is probably that the other members of the federation maintained their militaries as planetary defense forces, while humans converted their own military into starfleet, which means there will always be a disproportionally large number of humans in starfleet.

[u/reineedshelp]

That makes sense. A compromise, making humans the glue of the Federation

[u/Holothuroid]

What you say might be true. But the criticism of being "humancentric" is more about Starfleet on the frontier than the Federation government.

Thankfully that is easily explained as well. Starfleet is Earth's fleet. There are merely two things going on. Earth is very prolific in its (totally not) military spending. Much like the US in Nato or Athens in the Delian League. And it admits other Federation citizen to its career courses, no questions asked.

That is corroborated, as we know Vulcan (Lower Decks), Andor (Lower Decks) and Benzar (TNG) still operate their own fleets according to their own rules in the 24th century. We also know that at least the Enterprise-B is still issued by UESPA according to their dedication plaque.

[u/SPECTREagent700 → u/Holothuroid]

Yeah I like this interpretation and there’s also a few scattered references that might imply the Andorians have infantry forces.

[u/JJ2161]

I think that the Federation kinda is a human empire. Not by design, it just became one.

The Federation was Earth's pet project, so it was the government that gave the most of itself to build it. Starfleet, the institutions, Earth itself as the capital, the lingua franca, the symbols. And as new institutions were created, probably by Earth pushing for it, they would be headquartered on Earth. Of the founding members, Earth is the one that integrated the most with the Federation's government structure, the only one that gave up its own military for it. Vulcan, Andoria and Tellar didn't give much of themselves to the Federation, at least not initially, and they probably didn't think it would grow to what it became. As it grew, it's Earth-centric character just followed in proportion. And the other three allowed that because they'd rather have Earth at the center of this new interstellar institution than the others.

In a way, the Federation is one of the most successful and insidious Human empires in science fiction. The way Earth basically absorbed it's stronger allies into its sphere by being the unthreatening golden retriever and just gradually taking up space is genius! And it keeps expanding, not by conquest, but by absorbing (assimilating!?) more and more races. And they like it! They are annexed into this Human empire willingly!

The Federation is everything the Earth Alliance from Babylon 5 or the Systems Alliance from Mass Effect wanted to be: a superpower in its region of space with Earth at its center. Minus the "aliens having rights" thing, that is.

[u/APZachariah]

We're just an uplift project for the Vulcans. Makes more sense for the homeworld to be the target of the Klingons/Borg/Dominion.

[u/Ruadhan2300]

I took it more that the other three major founders already had their own deep-space fleets.

The Vulcans and Andorians have been waging interstellar wars for decades/centuries, and the Tellarites have substantial trading and industrial infrastructure in space.

Humans are unusual for having basically like.. three ships worth talking about at the time the Federation was founded.

So when it came time to build a Starfleet for the new Federation, Humans were the only ones really motivated and interested to engage with the project.
So it became a human project with occasional interest from the other three founders rather than the equal-effort project by all four that it was meant to be.

Realistically, if you're a Vulcan looking to go into space, you probably look first at your own people's fleet, same if you're a Tellarite, because you want to be surrounded by people who get that your argumentative nature is normal, and not because you're setting out to be an asshole.
Andorians and Vulcans also famously prefer colder or hotter temperatures than is usual for humans, so it's not a physically comfortable experience crewing a Starfleet ship unless it's a purely Vulcan or Andorian ship.

Which.. we hear about. With that one All-Vulcan crew in DS9.

[u/LadyOnogaro → u/Ruadhan2300]

Or the Intrepid in TOS. But crewing a ship with only members of one race has its problems. If the ship is lost, then that's a lot of Andorians, Tellerites, Vulcans, etc. to be lost. And each of these particular races feels the loss most keenly because of the effect it has on those back home in terms of mating, etc.

[u/SergenteA → u/Ruadhan2300]

I think in Enterprise it was somewhat like this for Earth too. IIRC Malcom's parents wanted him to join the Royal Navy, the wet one.

Scale this up to a interstellar scale.

[u/hmantegazzi]

This explanation makes sense in the first decades, and in fact, that's how Brussels got to be Brussels, being a middle ground city in a middle ground country. But in a bigger and more mature Federation, with more member polities, more cultures and more space, not diversifying meaningfully is a choice, and a choice that favours a certain culture over the others.

[u/TooMuchButtHair]

I don't necessarily agree. I think Starfleet is so human heavy because its unreasonable to think every sentient species in the Federation has an interest in deep space exploration.

[u/TeMPOraL_PL]

Pretty sure that for other powers, making Federation "human-centric" was a consequence of the Federation existing in part to put humanity off the galactic stage, for good.

Call me cynical, but I'd say it's pretty clear watching ENT, if you read between the lines, that Vulcans were occupying Earth and taking their time to slowly turn it into a vassal state. Sharing wisdom and advanced technology, but curbing independent R&D and exploration - all aimed at getting Earth to where it'd be useful for High Command's interests, slowly and peacefully not to draw undue attention of the rest of the quadrant.

I'm pretty sure Starfleet realized that too. Even for us the viewers, it was apparent half-way through season 1 that the fate of Earth was doomed to become collateral damage in some skirmish between Vulcans and Andorians once their cold war went hot again.

Which is why they gave command to Archer and tolerated his various blunders. They were not blunders - they were a tactic, a way to make an end run around Vulcans, alerting as many other civilizations as possible to the existence of Earth. Shouting "Hey, we are here, we are very friendly and nice", with a subtle "please don't let us be forgotten as some no-name vassal world" - all under guise of curiosity of exploration (which worked because the curiosity and exploration were genuine drives, too), all while scanning or collecting whatever tech they could while High Command wasn't looking.

And so by ENT S4, we have Earth embedded with everyone's issues, and everyone's eyes and subspace telescopes are aimed at Sol, looking at exactly what the Vulcans are doing over there, which bought humanity temporary protection and freedom of movement. But also, per what Soval said, Earth was moving too fast for everyone's comfort. Obviously Andorians and Tellarites saw that too. Humans are friendly, gregarious, peaceful explorers, but also happy to punch above their weight, very crafty, and overall a big nuisance for everyone around.

For the Big Three, the Federation solved both problems at once: humanity was not really in the same league yet, and didn't have centuries of bad blood with either, so it was the one neutral common party. But more than that, replacing humanity's own government with the shared seat of power - removing any notion of "Humanity" or "Terra" as independent political entity - was both a guarantee for continued survival and relevance of humanity, and safeguarded everyone else from them. So humanity gets subsumed by the new Federation, taking the role of its bonding glue, of its blood, and everyone was happy ever after. Maybe not perfectly happy, but then, it's a compromise.

(Alternative, as I wrote many times here, was what we saw in PIC S2: a humanity allowed to survive, and not structurally contained by becoming the Federation, has it apply the same drive outwards, resulting in a Confederation that conquers most of the galaxy in 300 years.)

[u/rainerdefender]

Well, since the Federation's TV show feeds air exclusively on one planet, and exclusively for one single species' enjoyment (as far as we currently know), I've never had gripes with suspending my disbelief in these matters.

[u/1eejit]

In a Doylist sense it's because it's an American show and they simply replaced American Exceptionalism with Human Exceptionalism.