Chris

The Romulan empire is long gone and relations with the Klingons are peaceful. The Dominion threat is assumed to have long been neutralised and nobody has heard from the Borg in decades.*

In any case space is enormous and it is frequently stated in dialogue throughout all the show’s iterations, whenever something goes south, that the nearest ship is ‘X days/hours away’ - never very close. They could never build enough ships to have one pop up anywhere within Federation territory on an hour’s notice, and Starfleet seems to rely primarily on listening posts and planetary defences rather than concentrations of battleships (also remember Starfleet is supposed to be primarily an exploration and research organisation, with local peacekeeping a secondary mission and war-fighting way down the list).


*By which they apparently mean the prime collective ruled by the Alice Krige queen, which was seen being neutralised at the end of ST:VOY. There arehints here that there are now recognised Borg factions, possibly for timey-wimey reasons connected with Jurati becoming a Borg queen in the 21st century and founding a new collective from the hive knowledge she had gained in the alternate timeline spawned by Q’s interference. Jurati’s appeal for help from Starfleet in Season 2 is not regarded as a ‘classic Borg’ encounter and may have been kept secret from Federation citizens.