Sisko and Eddington, Federation and the Maquis. Cardassians and Bajorans.

In response to this comment on YouTube.

The thing Sisko must have been worried about, is this: The predecessors of the Maquis — then the citizens of the Federation — had near the Federation-Cardassian border reasonably successfully colonised several worlds lush with vegetation, and as it happened, the Federation conceded exactly those planets to the Cardassians, who had just left Bajor, which they had occupied and which liberated itself.

Cardassia, on the other hand, had a very flimsy civilian economy, and people there were starving (never mind the military), which fact the clip alludes to, along with one other episode on TNG.

So, having made the just-liberated and ostensibly still a resource-rich Bajor a protectorate, the Federation in return conceded those colony worlds to the Cardassian Union, in order to ensure that Cardassia would not attempt invading Bajor again. (Well, the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole made things quite a bit more complicated.)

The colonists, in turn, were not properly informed about this, and they felt that the rug had been pulled out from under them, which they protested against on the basis of having had a justified expectation that they could keep these colonies to themselves indefinitely. I guess the borderspace colonies were initially allowed to form in order to keep a presence near the Federation-Cardassian border, and avoid the Cardassian Union from attempting to grab uninhabited Federation space.

(I have a feeling that this is what the Federation and the Cardassia Union had had a war over. The externality of that war was, that eventually it became untenable for Cardassia to maintain their occupation of Bajor.

I know there was a peace agreement between both the Federation and the Cardassian Union, but I kinda think Cardassia was on the losing side (note how O'Brien complains about inferior technology on DS9, so this must have been a factor).

There's more: Memory Alpha has it that there was a long-standing and expensive skirmish between Cardassians and the Klingon Empire.

The peace agreement was then just a way to make sure that Cardassia does not completely lose face, or lose the conflict with the Klingons, and that the Federation won't look too belligerent.

But then Bajor happened, and this completely changed the political picture, which meant that some of the Federation borderspace planets had to be transferred to Cardassia, which ceded Bajor.)

The colonists should have seen the writing on the wall.

The colonists should have known that they were positioned at the edge of Federation space next to a belligerent force, despite what at best was a tenuous peace treaty.

Therefore, in order to keep Bajor more or less secure, conceding the colony worlds was just the lesser evil of pragmatism.

In that view, along with aid programmes to ostensibly feed the Cardassians, the Federation must have had humanitarian concerns, which in all actuality was just appeasement, and Eddington saw that through. (Note that even food replicators can be repurposed.) The Federation, though, could not afford another war, now that the Borg threat was looming.

Eddington and the Maquis could not understand this bigger picture, and that in turn made them very stubborn and difficult for the Federation to deal with.