Why was the Dominion so successful?

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2003-11-02 08:57pm

OK, the question is simple. Why was the dominion so damned successful in war against the Alpha Quadrant? In the very beginning when they first met, the Dominion was a juggernaut. Three of their bugs could destroy a Galaxy class ship that was ready for battle and lose only one of their own.

By the mid point of the war, the bugs were relegated to cannon fodder status, getting routinely destroyed by Birds of prey and far lesser craft, certainly no longer the Galaxy class killers they once were.

The Dominion seemed to sport little else other than the bugs, their heavy cruisers and the Battleship we saw in the episode "Valiant". The bigger ships were fewer in number compared to the far more numerous literal swarm of bugs.

So, lacking in big ships and with their bugs reduced to cannon fodder by mid war, why were they so overwhelmingly succesful, going so far as to invade Betazed and Trill, threaten Vulcan, and then simply collapse in the span of a few episodes of DS9.

Aside from lazy writing, can we peg it on superior tactics, ships, tech, intelligence. what are your thoughts?

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-11-02 09:05pm

More ships, I suppose.

Jason von Evil · Post by **Jason von Evil** » 2003-11-02 09:21pm

They took the Feddies by surprise. Keep in mind that SF had few combat ships, mostly just science and explorers.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2003-11-02 09:25pm

Aya wrote:They took the Feddies by surprise. Keep in mind that SF had few combat ships, mostly just science and explorers.

Really? Then I guess that massive Klingon Federation task force we saw at the end of Call to Arms must have been a mirage. The Federation was as prepared for that war as they could be, waiting for the attack on DS9 to launch a countrerattack on the Taurian shipyards.

The problem is that the Dominion had been handing the Feds their asses and occupying key worlds up until the big push into Cardassia and suddenly the Dominion crashes like a house of cards. What the fuck was that?

Publius · Post by **Publius** » 2003-11-02 09:33pm

It could perhaps be attributed to psychological weakness on the part of the Founders.

PUBLIUS

Jason von Evil · Post by **Jason von Evil** » 2003-11-02 09:37pm

Stravo wrote:
Aya wrote:They took the Feddies by surprise. Keep in mind that SF had few combat ships, mostly just science and explorers.
Really? Then I guess that massive Klingon Federation task force we saw at the end of Call to Arms must have been a mirage. The Federation was as prepared for that war as they could be, waiting for the attack on DS9 to launch a countrerattack on the Taurian shipyards.

The problem is that the Dominion had been handing the Feds their asses and occupying key worlds up until the big push into Cardassia and suddenly the Dominion crashes like a house of cards. What the fuck was that?

Bleh, I haven't seen DS9 since the last episode.

The Romulans happened. The Dominion did not want them to enter the war on the Federations side. Also, keep in mind that Section 31 infected Odo with a virus, who then infected The Founders.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2003-11-02 10:57pm

Simple ruthless brute force tactics. They didn't care about negotiations or rules of war or any of that other garbage, they just shot the crap out of anyone they ran into. The Federation wasn't ready for this. They have not fought a full out war since Kirk's time, even the war they supposedly had with the Cardassians was more of a border action than an all out war with mass fleet engagements. It's not surprising that they get slaughtered in the opening phases of the war with the Dominion, the Fed ships are unprepared and most importantly haven't drilled in large fleet engagements. They might've done some work in small taskgroups of maybe 5-10 ships, but not in fleets of hundreds of ships. Without proper co-ordination it's no wonder they drop like flies until they get their act together later on.

Kamakazie Sith · Post by **Kamakazie Sith** » 2003-11-02 11:35pm

aerius wrote:Simple ruthless brute force tactics. They didn't care about negotiations or rules of war or any of that other garbage, they just shot the crap out of anyone they ran into. The Federation wasn't ready for this. They have not fought a full out war since Kirk's time, even the war they supposedly had with the Cardassians was more of a border action than an all out war with mass fleet engagements. It's not surprising that they get slaughtered in the opening phases of the war with the Dominion, the Fed ships are unprepared and most importantly haven't drilled in large fleet engagements. They might've done some work in small taskgroups of maybe 5-10 ships, but not in fleets of hundreds of ships. Without proper co-ordination it's no wonder they drop like flies until they get their act together later on.

The fact that Fed shields were useless against Dominion weapons, for a time, had an impact on that.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-11-02 11:54pm

I think the only factor that seemed to turn the war around was the entry of the Romulans, the mention of the Romulan front (Tears of The Prophets) seems to indicate the WW2-ification of the war. It's the only thing I can think of anyway.

In the first 6 eps of Season 6 (The Dominion war arc), The Federation and Klingons were getting their asses handed to them and for a while the war becomes less of a factor. The Romulans entered in ep 19 (In The Pale Moonlight), soon after the Dominion takes Betazed.

The Dominion was wiping out fleets of ships (DW arc), the second fleet at least (10 ships returned out of 112.) They also had some bad-ass battleship (Valiant)

"The Dominion is resolved to win the war at any cost"- Senator Vreenak (In The Pale Moonlight)

The FKRs didn't even go on the offensive till the end of season 6. (Tears of The Prophets)

Somehow it seems either-

There was somehow a decent Romulan force on the "Romulan front." Which I find questionable because on all maps I've seen the Romulans are "east" of the Fedaration, whereas the Cardassians are on the "west."

Somehow the FKR Alliance disabled the Dominion industrial complex, which is odd, because Martok says "The Dominon has shown the ability to build ships at an impressive rate." (What you Leave Behind)

The FKRs somehow retrofilled all of their ships. Possibly sharing tech or some crap.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2003-11-02 11:54pm

Kamakazie Sith wrote:
aerius wrote:Simple ruthless brute force tactics. They didn't care about negotiations or rules of war or any of that other garbage, they just shot the crap out of anyone they ran into. The Federation wasn't ready for this. They have not fought a full out war since Kirk's time, even the war they supposedly had with the Cardassians was more of a border action than an all out war with mass fleet engagements. It's not surprising that they get slaughtered in the opening phases of the war with the Dominion, the Fed ships are unprepared and most importantly haven't drilled in large fleet engagements. They might've done some work in small taskgroups of maybe 5-10 ships, but not in fleets of hundreds of ships. Without proper co-ordination it's no wonder they drop like flies until they get their act together later on.
The fact that Fed shields were useless against Dominion weapons, for a time, had an impact on that.

Not by the time the war started. When the war started they were on even ground as the Feds adjusted their shields against the DOminion and their weapons were just as effective against the DOminion (DS9 destroyed 50 ships in the opening assault. a testement to their weapons' effectiveness)

Aerius' explanation makes alot of sense to me and is one of the best I've heard yet.

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2003-11-03 02:33am

aerius wrote:Simple ruthless brute force tactics. They didn't care about negotiations or rules of war or any of that other garbage, they just shot the crap out of anyone they ran into.

Yeess and the Federation was always opening hailing frequencies when comming into battle against the Dominion wern't they? The Federation were not hampered by any 'rules of war', in fact short of thinking that Genocide was too far to go I don't recall ANY kind of rules hampering or interfearing with the Federations war effort. FFS, the Federation STARTED the damn war with a mining of the wormhole and attack on the Dominion shipyards!

The Federation wasn't ready for this. They have not fought a full out war since Kirk's time, even the war they supposedly had with the Cardassians was more of a border action than an all out war with mass fleet engagements.

We know almost nothing about the Cardasian boarder wars, if it included large fleets or otherwise, it was still a large enough conflict, if not on the scale of the Dominion war. They also had a short lived but rather violent war with the Klingons in the time between the end of season four of DS9 and the first episode of season 5.

I see little indication that they hadn't seen the writing on the war and were getting ready for the war, however I will admit to the possibility that the war kicked off earlier then they realy wanted it to, before they were realy fulyl ready for it.

It's not surprising that they get slaughtered in the opening phases of the war with the Dominion, the Fed ships are unprepared and most importantly haven't drilled in large fleet engagements.

And your evidence of this is....where? The large defense fleets had clearly been established before the Dominion war broke out and prepositioned near the Cardasian boarder, though probably somewhat out of sight for the sake of diplomacy appart from forward scouts. One of the fleets with a KDF contingent indeed was ready and deployed to make a raid into Cardasian space, destroy the shipyards on Taurian II, then get back out again with minimal loses.

They might've done some work in small taskgroups of maybe 5-10 ships, but not in fleets of hundreds of ships. Without proper co-ordination it's no wonder they drop like flies until they get their act together later on.

Would you like to provide even a BIT of proof of the assertion that they were untrained and unprepared to work in large groups?

Now the REAL reasons the Dominion was giving the Federation such a drubbing in the early war time were preaty clear.

1. The Dominion had a high tech sensor system capable of tracking Federation ship movements accross the entire frontier, deep into UFP space, capable of even detecting cloaked ships at light year distances. So that whenever a fleet tried to attack, they would arrive at teh target to be greated with three times their numbers in defenders who should not have been there and gotten slaughtered. This led to some major defeats in the first months of the war and O'Briens constent bemoaning of 'Engage Retreat, Engage Retreat...'. The Defiant was able to toast that sensor array by going on some damn insane mission through a theoreticaly impassable steller area and getting deep enough into Dominion space and close enough to the array to shut it down.

2. While the Federation was starting to deploy a greater and greater number of new, combat oriented ships, a LOT of their fleet ships in the early Dominion war were Excellesors and Mirandas. Many probably reactivated from storage depots, modern weapons slaped onto them and pointed at the front lines. While its true they also had a sprinkeling of newer ships to provide musscle, the Galaxy class being the primary heavy hitter and in sufficent numbers to give a fleet a heavy punch, it did mean that the more technologicaly advanced Dominion ships had a far easier time.

3. And a reason a lot of people overlook is that there isn't anything saying that the Dominion were also not taking loses equal or even worse then the UFP. Remember that the Dominion has shown an ability to bread Jem'Hadar and build ships for them at a rate grossly above the other AQ powers. They effectivly lose no strength while each lost Federation / Klingon ship means that much fewer personnel and that much firepower gone for a long time. The inital strike by the UFP/KE against the shipyards at Taurian may have been to try and reduce this edge, but it clearly failed.

In contrast, even well after the retake of DS9, the Federations industry was still not on a full war footing, even in the critial shiphyard stakes. To quote the Romulan senator Vreenak from 'In The Pale Moonlight":

The Dominion shipyards are working
at one hundred percent capacity --
your facilities are still being
rebuilt. The Dominion is breeding
legions of Jem'Hadar soldiers every
day -- you're experiencing a
manpower shortage.

Of course by this time the Federation had gotten a chance to catch its breath with a quasi truce for a time. Then after the Romulans entered the war, the front was stabalised enough so that the Federation could build up. Just look at the battle in 'Tears of the Prophets'. Far greater numbers of newer ship clases are represented in that battle in ratio to the older clases, quite a change from the early battles. When they lose the Chintaka system in season 7, the reinforcement fleet sent is again with fewer older ships and far more newer ships.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2003-11-03 08:01am

The Dominion seemed to sport little else other than the bugs, their heavy cruisers and the Battleship we saw in the episode "Valiant". The bigger ships were fewer in number compared to the far more numerous literal swarm of bugs.

So, lacking in big ships and with their bugs reduced to cannon fodder by mid war, why were they so overwhelmingly succesful, going so far as to invade Betazed and Trill, threaten Vulcan, and then simply collapse in the span of a few episodes of DS9.

But the Dominion's bigger ships are very powerful. For example the Dominion battleship is twice the length and three times the strength of a Federation Galaxy class. No idea about the battlecruisers but considering their size they must be equal to a pre-war Galaxy.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2003-11-03 10:37am

Chris OFarrell wrote:
aerius wrote: It's not surprising that they get slaughtered in the opening phases of the war with the Dominion, the Fed ships are unprepared and most importantly haven't drilled in large fleet engagements.

And your evidence of this is....where? The large defense fleets had clearly been established before the Dominion war broke out and prepositioned near the Cardasian boarder, though probably somewhat out of sight for the sake of diplomacy appart from forward scouts. One of the fleets with a KDF contingent indeed was ready and deployed to make a raid into Cardasian space, destroy the shipyards on Taurian II, then get back out again with minimal loses.

Yes, a surprise raid with the aid of Sisko's character shield, the only fleet action success they're to have until the Romulans join in. Every other fleet gets slaughtered or stalemated at best.

Would you like to provide even a BIT of proof of the assertion that they were untrained and unprepared to work in large groups?

ST: First Contact. We have a small fleet of Fed ships attacking a Borg cube and what do they do? The swoop in and attack individually and in small groups. A few ships go in, shoot up the cube, get shot up, and fly back out, and they get a bit of covering fire. If they had any training in fleet action they'd be launching large co-ordinated salvos of torps and phaser fire at the cube. You'd have 50 ships unloading everything they have into the cube at once, then recharging their weapons to do it again & again. Instead they attack in groups of 5 or less with fewer than 10 ships firing on the cube at any one time until Picard rides on on the Enterprise.

1. The Dominion had a high tech sensor system capable of tracking Federation ship movements accross the entire frontier, deep into UFP space, capable of even detecting cloaked ships at light year distances. So that whenever a fleet tried to attack, they would arrive at teh target to be greated with three times their numbers in defenders who should not have been there and gotten slaughtered.

Agreed, this allows them to concentrate their fleets against the feds.

3. And a reason a lot of people overlook is that there isn't anything saying that the Dominion were also not taking loses equal or even worse then the UFP. Remember that the Dominion has shown an ability to bread Jem'Hadar and build ships for them at a rate grossly above the other AQ powers. They effectivly lose no strength while each lost Federation / Klingon ship means that much fewer personnel and that much firepower gone for a long time. The inital strike by the UFP/KE against the shipyards at Taurian may have been to try and reduce this edge, but it clearly failed.

In contrast, even well after the retake of DS9, the Federations industry was still not on a full war footing, even in the critial shiphyard stakes. To quote the Romulan senator Vreenak from 'In The Pale Moonlight":

As I said, they were not prepared for it. You said it yourself, they were not on a full war footing.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-11-03 10:41am

Why are we delving into such detail and argument over this? It's plainly obvious that the Dominion achieved initial success because the Federation and the Klingons are fucking incompetent. The battle scenes in DS9 are painful to look at, they're so damned stupid. Especially that Chin'toka one. But eventually, the Dominion just ran out of equipment; they were probably just riding high on the initial supply of manpower and equipment that they brought over from their home territory.

I know this contradicts the onscreen dialogue about their vast shipmaking capabilities, but how do they even know this? They had no idea what was waiting for them at Cardassia Prime yet they knew exactly what their shipmaking capability was? They were working on misinformation.

Kamakazie Sith · Post by **Kamakazie Sith** » 2003-11-03 01:23pm

Stravo wrote:
Kamakazie Sith wrote:
aerius wrote:Simple ruthless brute force tactics. They didn't care about negotiations or rules of war or any of that other garbage, they just shot the crap out of anyone they ran into. The Federation wasn't ready for this. They have not fought a full out war since Kirk's time, even the war they supposedly had with the Cardassians was more of a border action than an all out war with mass fleet engagements. It's not surprising that they get slaughtered in the opening phases of the war with the Dominion, the Fed ships are unprepared and most importantly haven't drilled in large fleet engagements. They might've done some work in small taskgroups of maybe 5-10 ships, but not in fleets of hundreds of ships. Without proper co-ordination it's no wonder they drop like flies until they get their act together later on.
The fact that Fed shields were useless against Dominion weapons, for a time, had an impact on that.
Not by the time the war started. When the war started they were on even ground as the Feds adjusted their shields against the DOminion and their weapons were just as effective against the DOminion (DS9 destroyed 50 ships in the opening assault. a testement to their weapons' effectiveness)

Aerius' explanation makes alot of sense to me and is one of the best I've heard yet.

Technically the war started before then because in previous episodes the Dominion was ambushing starfleet ships near the Cardassian border. However, officially it started with the attack on DS9 and yes then the Federation did figure out the shielding issue.

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2003-11-03 04:06pm

The Dominion gained so much ground is because they threw everything at the Federation and Klingons hoping that reinforcements arrived. When they didn't, they were completly routed to pre-war borders!

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2003-11-03 07:30pm

aerius wrote:
Chris OFarrell wrote:
Yes, a surprise raid with the aid of Sisko's character shield, the only fleet action success they're to have until the Romulans join in. Every other fleet gets slaughtered or stalemated at best.

*sigh*

Firstly, Sisko had nothing to do with the raid on the shipyard. He rejoined that fleet after they had finished the raid. I can't belive you consider character shields a valid debating point...

And the fact that the other fleets were slaughtered or stalemated as I SAID was mostly the result of the strategic situation. The Dominion knowing the movements of the Federation fleets over the entire frontier and with far supperior numbers of ships to play with, could great any Federation ship movement with far greater numbers and cut them appart. A Federation fleet still made up of mostly older designs which may or may not have been upgraded against the phased poloron technology. While the Defiant was not vunurable to it from the start, this is probably an artifact of its shield technology desigend to defeat Borg shield penetrating weapons. Other ships were still easy targets for PP beams and it was clear the General Federation fleet was still vunurable to them, hence Weyouns comments in Call to Arms.

Not because of any lack of training or co-ordination that your implying without any kind of proof, its simply that the Dominion knew where they were going, what they were doing and were prepared to beat the s#*t out of them when they arrived.

ST: First Contact. We have a small fleet of Fed ships attacking a Borg cube and what do they do? The swoop in and attack individually and in small groups. A few ships go in, shoot up the cube, get shot up, and fly back out, and they get a bit of covering fire. If they had any training in fleet action they'd be launching large co-ordinated salvos of torps and phaser fire at the cube. You'd have 50 ships unloading everything they have into the cube at once, then recharging their weapons to do it again & again. Instead they attack in groups of 5 or less with fewer than 10 ships firing on the cube at any one time until Picard rides on on the Enterprise.

Firstly, we see the very final bit of the battle with whats left of the fleet. The flagship had been destroyed which may well have meant the fleet was uncordinated and fighting for themselves. Saying that they never used mass fire tactics is a rather interesting assertion given that we saw a tiny fraction of the total battle. The inital contact sounded like a concentrated volley against the Cube to start off with, though thats only my opinion of the starfleet command chatter. Regardless, they were not doing that bad. The cube wasn't exactly in perfect shape by the time the E-E arrived.

As I said, they were not prepared for it. You said it yourself, they were not on a full war footing.

Just making a point that claiming the reasons for their early defeat were totaly due to inexperenced commanders or uncordinated fleets or what not is somewhat of an oversimplification. There were rather large strategic reasons behind it that were far more to blaim then reasons at the tactical level.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2003-11-03 09:13pm

Chris OFarrell wrote:Firstly, we see the very final bit of the battle with whats left of the fleet. The flagship had been destroyed which may well have meant the fleet was uncordinated and fighting for themselves. Saying that they never used mass fire tactics is a rather interesting assertion given that we saw a tiny fraction of the total battle. The inital contact sounded like a concentrated volley against the Cube to start off with, though thats only my opinion of the starfleet command chatter. Regardless, they were not doing that bad. The cube wasn't exactly in perfect shape by the time the E-E arrived.

Once again that points to a lack of training in fleets if the destruction of a flagship is what causes the fleet to break apart into small taskgroups and individual ships. Yes it's a hit to morale but if they've trained together they should have contingency plans to keep the fleet working together when shit happens. Should it take Picard on the E-E ordering all ships to fire on target to get more than a handful of ships to fire a the same time? It shouldn't. If there had been any training in fleet ops any captain on the surviving ships coulda done that, and none of them did.

Go to "Way of the Warrior" where the Klingons attack DS9. Despite having a sizable fleet of ships I don't remember seeing more than 5-10 of them firing on the station at any one time. Instead of having a few hundred torps and disruptor shots hitting the station at once, we see maybe a dozen or 2 hits going in. The Klingons attack individually and in small groups, there is no fleetwide co-ordination. I doubt that within a year or so the Klingons can form a joint fleet with the Feds to whack the Dominion shipyard and somehow come up with co-ordinated fleet tactics at the same time. My opinion is that their "fleets" functioned as small taskgroups and individuals when engaging the enemy for the first part of the war and perhaps even well into the war. They were fleets only when travelling together.

As best as I can remember, the largest number of ships I've ever seen co-ordinating fire on a target was in "The Die is Cast" when the secret Romulan/Cardy taskforce fires on the fake founder planet. That was what, all of 20 ships?

Just making a point that claiming the reasons for their early defeat were totaly due to inexperenced commanders or uncordinated fleets or what not is somewhat of an oversimplification. There were rather large strategic reasons behind it that were far more to blaim then reasons at the tactical level.

The other reasons can be summed up as "gross incompetence at all levels, political and military". As in "let's be a bunch of pacifistic dopes and prepare for peace instead of war".

BenRG · Post by **BenRG** » 2003-11-07 05:49am

The only explanation that holds water with me is that there were several significant changes in technological advantage. In the early contacts, the Dominon's shields were capable of resisting full phaser barrages and direct torpedo hits while suffering only minimal damage. By the beginning of the true war, with the Dominion capture of DS9, this advantage had been nullified. From that point on, the Dominon's main advantage was numbers and manoeuvrability. Apart from that, the two sides were mostly equal. However, the use of cloned soldiers (whose value to their masters ran only to their dying to deliver victory) allowed the Dominion to be far more aggressive in battle than the Alliance, which had to be careful to preserve trained manpower.

The arrival of the Breen on the Dominion side and the Romulans on the Alliance side both shifted the technological advantage dramatically. It wasn't until Romulan-style shields and power systems were fitted to Alliance ships that any kind of counter-offensive against Breen weapons became possible. Similarly, the introduction of Breen weapons allowed the Dominion to retake the strategic advantage that had been lost when the Romulans declared for the Alliance.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2003-11-07 10:39am

The arrival of the Breen on the Dominion side and the Romulans on the Alliance side both shifted the technological advantage dramatically. It wasn't until Romulan-style shields and power systems were fitted to Alliance ships that any kind of counter-offensive against Breen weapons became possible. Similarly, the introduction of Breen weapons allowed the Dominion to retake the strategic advantage that had been lost when the Romulans declared for the Alliance.

When did the Alliance get Romulan shields? and why would they want them considering they were just as useless against the Breen as the Feds were.

The Klingons had something that made them immune but that couldn't be transferred to Fed/Romulan ships.

On the issue of the Romulans joining the war - not only did it open up a new front against the Dominion (which was very weak) it closed a front for the Federation who up until that point had to maintain a presence on the Neutral zone border

BenRG · Post by **BenRG** » 2003-11-07 10:54am

TheDarkling wrote:When did the Alliance get Romulan shields? and why would they want them considering they were just as useless against the Breen as the Feds were.

Hmmm? Sorry, perhaps I've been misled, but my understanding was that the Romulans had some kind of tweak to their shields that stopped the Breen's power-dampning weapon. I seem to remember Sisco discussing how long that the Alliance could hold the line until they could introduce the modification to Federation and Klingon ships.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2003-11-07 11:22am

BenRG wrote:
TheDarkling wrote:When did the Alliance get Romulan shields? and why would they want them considering they were just as useless against the Breen as the Feds were.
Hmmm? Sorry, perhaps I've been misled, but my understanding was that the Romulans had some kind of tweak to their shields that stopped the Breen's power-dampning weapon. I seem to remember Sisco discussing how long that the Alliance could hold the line until they could introduce the modification to Federation and Klingon ships.

The Klingons were immune not the Romulans and the Klingon immunity coudn't be transfered to Fed/Romulans ships so Starfleet had to come up with another solution to protect their ships.

Crazedwraith · Post by **Crazedwraith** » 2003-11-07 11:22am

BenRG wrote:
TheDarkling wrote:When did the Alliance get Romulan shields? and why would they want them considering they were just as useless against the Breen as the Feds were.
Hmmm? Sorry, perhaps I've been misled, but my understanding was that the Romulans had some kind of tweak to their shields that stopped the Breen's power-dampning weapon. I seem to remember Sisco discussing how long that the Alliance could hold the line until they could introduce the modification to Federation and Klingon ships.

Twas a modification to a Klingon reactor that allow a Klingon Bop to surving the retreat at Chin'toka. As it render the breen weapon ineffective

JME2 · Post by **JME2** » 2003-11-08 02:38pm

1. Same situation with the New Republic and the Yuuzhan Vong in The New Jedi Order - the Dominion maintained order with an iron fist, the Federation through diplomacy. Who's going to have an easier time ordering an attack, then?

2. And besides, the Federation had suffered big losses suring STVIII against the Borg, and so they had a tactical advantage.

3. The Cardassian Union gave them a staging ground without having to conquer one. They were able to hook up with existing shipyards and factories and add Dominion weapons to the output.

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