[Nate the Great]

I said Andorians MORE. I remember Shran. I actually prefer Shran to Weyoun, but probably not Brunt. Making cameos in a few episodes certainly doesn't give one the impression that they are galactic powers on the level of the Vulcans, Romulans, and Klingons.

"Appeared" does not equal "the enemy."

You are probably right that any "continuity" from the first half a dozen episodes should be taken with a drop of salt. This whole UESPA/Starfleet thing is further evidence of the creator's newness at this. Apparently it never occured to them that such a thing might be important later, especially given how many of their own rules Kirk was breaking.

"Over (?) temporal violations on record."
"The man was a menace."

If the NX-01 existed in the "real" universe, wouldn't it be more important for purposes of the wall display than that tube thing, which looks more like a long-range, presubspace, generational colony ship than anything.

Maybe UESPA is a part of Starfleet, but certainly not the other way around.

Nada. A show needs ratings to survive in syndication and get renewed. A show needs QUALITY to survive in reruns and in the public eye. Enterprise's quality was good, and it was improving, but they started off on a bad foot and scared or ticked off a portion of their key demographic.

I was in college at the time, and I was often busy. I watched Enterprise when I could, but I never taped it or reshuffled stuff to watch it. That shows the shift from TNG/DS9/VOY to ENT. I know guys were shuffling their schedule or were much more diligent taping to watch those shows. I know, I was one of them. ENT was a nice show, but they never compelled me to care for it to the bitter end.

They never used the Romulan War because:

A: They just spent four years on the Dominion War, and it was too soon for another one.
B. A war in which you never look at the enemy would be boring pretty quick. If they actually had Archer face-to-face with a Romulan, it would be the last straw for those paying attention for such things.
C. Unlike DS9, the NX-01 would be doing war-stuff ALL the time. The Starfleet is just two starships plus maybe a few dozen smaller ones. If you're doing espionage and weapons testing you can't explore or have comical subplots.