Sorry if considered to be a necroposting, but I want just to say "Hi!" to the topic-starter. You are not alone here! We the Enclave supporters are scorned and disapproved among the Fallout community, but we still exist and stay faithful to our chosen faction. And I believe Enclave will return in further games, if not in Fo4 than later, as it's an integral part of the Fallout universe, a kind of a well-known "trademark" which will always attract gamers, and let's remember that without Enclave (pre-war government) the whole story would be impossible. They just can't die so easily, they must have other, even more powerful bases, don't forget about Chicago! Even if Raven Rock is destroyed it doesn't mean the President's death, this is not an easy killable human. In all probability Eden must have reserve copies of oneself. Lets await a great Chicago base and our President safe and sound!
The Enclave is dead. They've been destroyed five times over. First, their headquarters and primary industrial base was nuked, then Navarro was conquered by the NCR, then the Battle of Project Purity wiped out the bulk of their forces, then Raven Rock fell and with it their President and primary East Coast manufacturing base, and finally, their sole remaining stronghold, Adams AFB was conquered by El Dubya and their remaining functioning center of manufacture and command, the crawler, nuked from orbit.
It doesn't get any deader than this. Your argument reduces it to little more than Cobra, a nuisance that keeps popping up, gets defeated, and its commander runs away screaming "ENCLAVE RETREEEEEAAAAAT! DAMN YOU [insert GI Joe knock-off here]!"
By the way, Chicago base doesn't exist. If it did, ED-E wouldn't continue on patched with registration plates and scraps of metal, the hallmark of ad hoc wastelander repairs, not Enclave quality.
Concerning their "racist" ideas I don't think they are just primitive racists. Thereby they don't hate any mutants, they hate "Wasteland mentality" and "Wasteland spirit", they want to get rid of it together with all Wasteland monsters and then turn Wasteland into a normal country. What is a proof?
1) In Fo2 it was possible to serve in the Enclave for non-enclave people.
2) Frank Horrigan from Fo2 was a supermutant, but he was initially in the Enclave and was really trustworthy.
3) Anna Holt from Fo3 is a wastelander, but a gifted scientist, therefore useful.
Everything is covered in this article, with appropriate references everywhere.
But I'll indulge you. The Enclave was planning total global genocide of all humans outside of the Enclave. That is the scope of the project, based on pseudo-scientific racialist bullshit cultivated by the higher ups. Here's a few quotes:
Dick Richardson: "{244}{prs43}{To turn it into a staggeringly effective killer. Any humanoid that isn't inoculated against its effects before its release, will die. That is the Project.}"
Dick Richardson: "{236}{prs40a}{The only way for true humans, and democracy, to be safe is to cleanse the mutants from the globe. We humans will take back that which is rightfully ours.}"
Dick Richardson: "{265}{prs50}{You can't stop it. The tests are complete and the toxin is ready for release. In hours, your villagers will be the first to make the ultimate sacrifice. The other mutants will follow. An unfortunate footnote in the continuing history of the human race.}"
The racialist bullshit is evident in the argumentation:
Charles Curling: "{170}{}{Why, I thought that I had made myself perfectly clear. The conclusion that you, and all your kind, are no longer human. In order to retake the earth and to maintain the integrity of the human race, all you mutants will have to be destroyed.}"
So background radiation makes people no longer human? Gee, I guess survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are subhuman freaks.
Dick Richardson: "{291}{prs61}{So what? If your kind is allowed to flourish it'll mean the end of the human race as we know it. We can't allow radioactive freaks to squeeze humans into extinction.}"
The Chosen One: "{292}{}{I think you're overestimating things a bit.}"
Dick Richardson: "{293}{prs62}{Not at all. Look to the future. Sure muties and men could get along for a while, but before you know it, the numeric pressure of your kind would tell. No, a line must be drawn in the sand - the buck stops here.}"
The Enclave has fabricated an arbitrary criterion to make the global extermination of humanity palatable to itself. It doesn't get any more Nazi than that. Wait, scratch that, at least the Nazis expanded their definition of race to include a few more "races" than just Aryan. For the Enclave, the only requirement for being human is being a part of it:
The Project holodisk: "In either case, the F.E.V.'s toxicity levels are now sufficient to insure a "clean-sweep" of all infested (i.e. non-Enclave) locales. Current releasable levels of F.E.V. Curling-13 show a 95% probability of .00007% average saturation. While the consensus of the Chemical Corps is that this would be a sufficient level to insure the success of the Project, we believe that it is worth waiting until we can accumulate enough F.E.V. toxin to reach our .0001% saturation and 99.5% extermination level goal."
The next three points deserve an individual breakdown:
1) No, it was not possible. There was no non-Enclave personnel in its ranks. The fact that the Chosen One can masquerade as an Enclave transfer is because they masquerade as a transfer from another military base on the mainland. The Enclave's racialist policies preclude this possibility.
2) Frank Horrigan was treated as a living weapon, not a human being.
3) Anna Holt was recruited, yes, because Autumn was the only Enclave leader in the series who wasn't a cartoon villain trying to wipe out the wasteland for fuck all reason.
Enclave doesn't hate all Wastelanders only because of mutations, the key is in the cultural aversion. If they want to restore the world, they need 2 things - safe space and normal citizens. Most of the wastelanders cannot be such citizens due to the absence of education and wild, cruel, obscurant mentality. BoS stands apart here, they are quite a freaky organization, but I'd like to unite them with the Enclave. Except BoS and some civilized oasises like Vegas the Wasteland is a real hell full of dreadful violence, slavery, cannibalism and all sort of disgusting things.
What. Now you're just inventing things. The Enclave seeks to exterminate humanity worldwide because they consider them mutants. There is no other reason. There is no cultural aversion, indeed, the Enclave is far more savage and primitive in its obscurantism and hatred than most of the wasteland.
Your argument that the wasteland is hell with no safe space or normal citizens is laughable. Did you miss the New California Republic? A true nation of 700,000 citizens that has brought prosperity, political franchise, stability, and safety to New California? That achieved everything without committing genocide? Which has achieved everything the Enclave claims it will, but without being cheap Nazi knock-offs?
And the Brotherhood standing out? For M'Atra's sake, they're tech raiders with a xenophobic mentality. It is also pretty telling that you ignore the fact that the Enclave is responsible for lots of dreadful violence and slavery in the wastes: Executions, enslaving people for forced labor, providing guns to mobsters, and so on and so forth.
Enclave is technically advanced but small faction, they cant' control all the Wasteland to provide an order everywhere. What will they do with the bulk of primitive and aggressive tribes? Send them to the school and teach good manners? They have no resources for it. So they choose an evil but the most effective way of clearing the Wasteland of savages and raiders.
Your ridiculous false dichotomy is, well, ridiculous. The Enclave doesn't have to control all of the wasteland to achieve its goals, nor does it have to exterminate anyone. It's not a binary situation. Without the bullshit Nazi racism they could integrate themselves into New California like the Brotherhood did after 2161: As a major research and development house, living in isolated communities outside the power structure, but without killing people for shits and giggles.
You know, become an actual enclave in the wasteland.
Releasing the virus they kill 3 birds with one stone:
1) All monsters, including aggressive supermutants and ghouls are eliminated.
2) They get rid of savages, raiders - communities than cannot be civilized quickly.
3) All other enemies like BoS and NCR army are killed.
It seems you fail to realize that the Enclave wants to kill every human outside its own organization, world-fucking-wide. That's what people take issue with: You defending a completely and utterly monstrous plan to murder humanity on a global scale.
Then again, a million is a statistic, right?
I don't approve all their previous actions and would also change this plan a bit, initiating some kind of a "talent search" program in order to find more scientists and skilled, educated people, and give the fev-cure to the civilized communities. Anyway it would be more logically correct to hire wastelanders instead of risking their own lives.
Kind of like the Nazis allowed Jews with usable skills to live a while longer in concentration camps, eh?