Author's Note: Yes, this is Star Trek fanfiction, set roughly during TNG. I considered filing off the serial numbers and presenting generic space opera, but I think it works better this way. Incidentally, this is my personal headcanon.
Star Trek was created and is owned by various people who aren't me.
Welcome, new graduates, to Federation Counter-Intelligence's Romulan Affairs Office.
You may be under the impression that we're doing badly. Perhaps you've grown tired of reading about Romulan agents being caught in high-trust Federation positions that they'd held for years. But our only regret is that we eventually have to “catch” them.
Our negotiating strategy with the Romulan Empire is to make them think we want things and then grudgingly concede them. And then watch as they violate the treaty in small ways on a regular basis and there's nothing we can do about it. On the plus side, we allow them to satisfy their desire to push us around without letting them substantively hurt us. On the minus side, we look weak, and periodically someone in the Romulan Court proposes conquering the Federation outright.
Which is why we periodically remind them how dangerous we are. For example, they're afraid of what we might do with cloaking technology, hence the Treaty of Algeron. We've kept that treaty, but our theorists worked out the underlying principles ages ago, and we have plans to “invent” cloaking devices and distribute them to the entire fleet in under thirty hours. The Romulans have read those plans. Similarly, we make sure they know about all our really dangerous technologies: planet-cracker bombs, soliton waves, protomatter, cryptofluid biological weapons, controllable time travel, sentient nanotech, personal genetic enhancement... everything that we decided to stop working on when we realized how dangerous it was. They need to know that in a true all-out war, we'd crush them easily.
At the same time, they need to not know the details of how any of those things work.
And they need to not feel so threatened that they engage in a desperate pre-emptive strike. They need to know that we really, really don't want to fight a true all-out war.
And, they need to believe that if we were desperate enough, we would.
It's quite a narrow path we walk. That's why we're so happy to have lots of known Romulan agents we can leak information to.
Well, it's one of the reasons. Take a look at this display here. Each of these dots represents a cloaked Romulan probe in Federation space. You've heard of the Ultra-Large Phased Subspace Telescope Array? It does a great job of tracking the early development of galaxies. But if you process the raw data a little differently it detects activated cloaks. We can detect cloaked ships inside Romulan space too, but those are less interesting.
Each dot is annotated with the probe's likely originator and mission. A few we're not sure about. Most of them are checking to see if we're up to something. By and large, we're not, and mostly we're happy for them to know that. Occasionally we are, and we need to either hide carefully or arrange a plausible accident to befall the probe.
But that's not what's interesting about these probes. What's interesting is that most of them aren't official government operations. They're run by individual Romulan senators and admirals trying to boost their own prestige. I'm sure you've all read about the complicated mechanisms of Romulan government, but in practice informal prestige determines policy. Sneaking into the Federation and getting away with something valuable is good for prestige. Getting caught is bad.
Some of you have probably been following the negotiations regarding sector 4201. The main push for the hard-line position comes from Senator D'Kassus. One of his probes is here, marked with a red triangle. In a few days, the USS Repulse will find it. We'll give them an approximate location and then they'll track it down with antimatter sweeps, tractor it into a shielded cargo bay and disassemble it while it's still transmitting. Our diplomats won't say a word, but the Romulans will know we know, and they'll know we know they know we know. That's a serious humiliation as Romulans reckon things.
The main push for compromise in sector 4201 comes from Admiral S'Lota. We'll feed one of his spies a report saying we caught the probe by breaking into D'Kassus's computer systems (which, incidentally, we can't). He'll share that information with the Senate, which will be worrying.
S'Lota's reputation rises. D'Kassus's sinks. The empire does it S'Lota's way and compromises. And, as a bonus, D'Kassus will redo all of his computer security in a blind panic. With any luck, he'll make a mistake and we will be able to crack the new one.
So you see, a lot of Romulan policy gets made right here in this office.
Some of you are probably nervous about matching wits with the Romulans. They have a formidable reputation: the galaxy's great manipulative bastards. But ask yourself this: would real master manipulators allow themselves to get a reputation like that? Or would they have a reputation as being honest, kind and generous? Have a reputation for being capable enough in technical matters but politically naïve?
Like we do?