Between Star Trek and Star Wars a word changes but a political abyss mediates. The one that goes from a Star Migration to a Star War, in translation of walking around the house. The problem is that the United States, which was once trekkie today is warsie. The country has gone from resembling the Federation of Star Trek to the Republic of Star Wars. And all followers of space adventures that, with some exceptions due to the long existence of the series created by Gene Roddenberry, his is a much more solid and less convulsed organization than the one devised by George Lucas.
In the universe of Star Trek, the Federation gathers, under terrestrial hegemony, the peoples of a part of the known universe, and tries to widen its peaceful borders through non-aggressive exploration missions. In itself, his account is a pacifist rectification of the history of colonial Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries. But the integrity of the Federation rests precisely on the fact that there is an afterlife, an alterity, other peoples outside of it, some discovered and others to be discovered. Potential external enemies or political spaces where freedom and democracy do not operate. Potential aggressors of politically pre-modern civilizations.
In those terms, America functioned during the Cold War and presented itself as the leading nation of the free world precisely because there was “another world” beyond its border, the Iron Curtain. It is not so much about how the rest of the world perceived US foreign policy, but about their perception of themselves, of the cohesion that that geopolitical framework offered to a country driven by a purpose. That is why that incarnation was very functional to maintain a cohesive and vigorous internal identity.
In the Lucasian universe, the Galactic Republic takes over all known space. It is not a political entity surrounded by others, but the republic is the entire available geography. We know that there is an outer border, but in functional terms it does not operate as the border of the Federation because there is nothing beyond it, it is not a border but a border. There is nothing beyond, there is no world outside the Republic, there are no other political geographies in which to look to recognize one’s own values, to reaffirm a political purpose. That is why the Republic is condemned to the impulses of tyranny, to the tensions of civil war and separatism and to an agitated coexistence between its political, religious and military powers.
The United States has been installed there since 1990. It has lost its geographical otherness, the ominous and belligerent Soviet enemy, and democracy has become a standard that, in its heterodox way, reigns even in old Russia. Islamist terrorism acts, for discursive purposes, as an internal enemy in Western democracies, and China, perhaps due to its low bellicosity, does not operate – at least in the imaginary of the American people – as a functional substitute for the evil communist enemy. The paradox is that perhaps the fact that the United States can solve this lack of purpose depends on its remaining a formal democracy and not falling under the influence of tyranny, which was always the main fear of the founding fathers.
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