Going back to Enterprise again, as usual starting with Broken Bow. But this time, I remember Discovery and the concept of the "Vulcan hello" as a way of dealing with the Klingons.
Soval has decided that it best protects humanity for the Klingons to receive the corpse of their courier, who died at the hands of Joe Random Human in the very first encounter. A kind of, "You dropped this. I really don't recommend fucking with them. Even we don't know what they'll do."
After all, the Vulcans are clearly afraid that humanity will become a violent imperial force in the galaxy. The Klingons, not to mention the Andorians and Tellarites, are exactly what they'd like to groom us away from. The Vulcans, after all, aren't so much trying to hold humanity back, as channel us in useful directions. But it couldn't hurt for word to get around, to the more unstable and violent aliens, that humans are best left alone. And then Vulcan reaps the benefits of alliance with us, gets to monopolize our strengths, and gets to point us in whatever direction they need. And nobody fucks with the Vulcans.
But we screwed all of that up. We charged out into the galaxy and showed our whole ass, refused to be a dog on a leash, refused to stick to already-formed alliances, and started making destabilizing peaceful overtures to just about everybody, while figuring out how to shoot back when needed.
