The Klingons were also providing technological advancements--read that military armament--to the side they favored. [Oddly enough, this was the side that favored them.--Ed.] Once Captain Kirk found out, he decided to arm the other side with comparable weapons, thus keeping the two sides roughly equal. When challenged by Dr. McCoy about the viability of his solution, Kirk said he knew it wasn't a great idea, but it was the best of the available options.
Gene Roddenberry doubtless intended this to be a cautionary tale about the Cold War, with the Klingons standing in for the USSR and the Federation standing in for the USA. More specifically, he intended it to be a morality play about the Vietnam War, with the lesson being that sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. With both sides having roughly equal arms and technology, a stalemate could be maintained, thus lessening the overall damage that would come should one side gain a big technological advantage over the other.
A balance of power, as it were.
For the past decade or so, at the least, I have wanted to show this episode to everyone who claims Ronald Reagan is one of the greatest US presidents "because he ended the Cold War." Note the presumption in the claim: ending the Cold War is a good thing, a desirable outcome.
But is it, really? Hence my desire to make them watch "A Private Little War." Roddenberry had more insight than maybe even he knew. Neither Vietnam nor the Cold War were wonderful, but maybe they were the best of a set of bad options, as the Star Trek episode demonstrates.
Consider this: when it was the US vs. the USSR (after the Cuban Missile Crisis that is), there was if not peace, a mutual understanding that the lid could come off only so far. The USSR was allied with most of the Arab states--indeed, it contained some of them--and it kept the lid tightly clamped on Islamic terrorists. And when it couldn't keep the lid totally clamped, it was the country spending its young people's lives and its money and its technology to put the terrorists down. Does the name "Afghanistan" ring a bell? Did you know that in the early 80s, we were supplying the Taliban with arms and advice? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," I suppose.
So why are we now losing our young people's lives and our money and our technology in Afghanistan, Iraq, and [I shudder to think of this possibility--Ed.] maybe soon in Iran . . . which used to be our one major ally amongst the Arab states? Because the Cold War is over. We "won" by spending the Soviet Union into oblivion, and now we are reaping the whirlwind.
The real moral of this story is that no one should ever presume that his/her presumptions are correct. Things change, normally in ways no one could predict. Hence the political "Law of Unintended Consequences." It's true in every other area of life as well: no matter how carefully and thoroughly one plans, what actually happens will be somewhat different from every possibility one considered. Thus what I've been saying for at least 10 years about the ending of the Cold War NOT being such a good idea. (And thus Reagan not having been such a great president.)
I don't know whether I should be singing "The World Turned Upside Down" or Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?"
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