If the Romulan war in fact was a minor incident of little significance, then it would be all the more understandable how the Earthlings never got to see the Romulans face to face. And nothing in the canonical material really says the UFP was founded becuase of the Romulans.

However, the canonical material *heavily* implies the Romulan war *was* a big deal. These guys were supposed to be the main heavies in TOS, except that the makeup costs of all those ears made it impossible and the Klingons had to be invented instead. The Neutral Zone is a big political thing, too, hardly the result of a minor skirmish. And the latter-day Romulans are a superpower to be reckoned with - making it unlikely that they were originally puny and forgettable. Going against all that would indeed be a sorry mistake for "Enterprise".

It would still be a nice touch if the Suliban were in fact crucial in the formation of the UFP. Paradoxically, the bigger their impact, the more understandable their disappearance: the writers virtually *have* to come up with a grand finale that spells the utter destruction or disappearance of the Suliban race, if they want to retain any continuity at all - and such a momentous thing would nicely be coupled with the equally momentous founding of the Federation.

The alternate is to have the Suliban revealed as weaklings who never stood a chance of surviving till the TOS days anyway. Perhaps they are genetically engineering themselves out of history books? Or perhaps (I sure hope not!) there is time travel trickery involved, and the fate of the Suliban is already sealed by a predestination paradox?

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Actions taken by the Suliban could lead to the creation of the UFP and, perhaps, the eventual submission of the Suliban.

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Or the eventual destruction of the Suliban.

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If the Suliban are from the future, perhaps we have never heard of them becuase they haven't become big by the next gen era.

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Sounds a bit like the Magog and Enigma from Andromeda, no?

Mr. Christopher: Nasty bad guys taking orders from a guy from the future, in mobile ships no less.
Does sound like Andromeda a bit.

1) TOS "Balance of Terror" said the war with the Romulans was fought 100 years prior.
2) The episode also indicated the war was fought by Earth, with no mention of a Federation, so some people felt it to be a good idea to say that the Federation did not exist back then. Others disagreed, but fell into political disfavor.
3) In the post-TOS years, fans decided that TOS took place in the 2260s, to match the initial airing in the 1960s (there were other schools of thought, too, many of which based their timing on actual references in the TOS episodes instead of an arbitrary choice to honor the airdates, but those schools were not favored in the endgame). The early movies went by this convention, suggesting TOS took place sometime in the mid-23rd century and ST2 a few decades later in the late 23rd (after 2283, at least).
4) Putting this all together, Okuda decided that the Federation was founded in 2161 - this was roughly one century before "Balance of Terror", and safely before the exploits of some early Federation explorers (the dating of which Okuda chose to take literally, even though it also consisted of "100 years prior" type references in TOS and TNG).
5) Thus, the Romulan war had to be a bit before this. Okuda chose 2160 since he didn't want to make the war too ancient.

So a lot of the deductive chain relied on choices and arbitrariness. Yet very little of it can be altered now, since the choices have been made canonical in TNG, DS9 or Voyager, or in the later movies.

The only thing we *can* change is 2) - the idea that the Romulan war was fought when the Federation did not yet exist. This is not a canonical fact, nor are there canonical references to the actual date of the Battle of Cheron or other incidents of the war. If we assume the references in "Balance of Terror" to a century of time differential were only approximate, we could say the Romulan war took place in the 2200s, or the 2130s, or any time in between.