this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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DS9 is probably the best-written Star Trek show, but what worries me is how many of its fans think that Sisko's war crimes are "badass" and that his worldview should be emulated. Many DS9 fans seem to think that the show's shades of grey renders the Roddenberry vision on display in TOS and TNG invalid - dismissing it with "it's easy to be a saint in paradise".
There are a lot of things to criticize with Discovery, but what it absolutely nailed was the Lorca twist. Lorca arguing about how rules are made to be broken, sometimes you gotta commit a war crime or two, and "context is for kings", was a perfect summation of the mindset of these kinds of Trek fans. So when it was revealed that he was actually from the universe where humanity had given in to this mentality and thus failed to create the Federation, that was the perfect "sci-fi twist" that Star Trek excels in.
I enjoy DS9, but not uncritically.
I remain quite annoyed by how the major driver for resolving both the Borg and Dominion conflicts hinged on a very illegal, extremely immoral thing that someone did.
DS9 had the Morphogenic virus that Section 31 unleashed, and Voyager had the neurolytic pathogen.
It being the thing that won the wars in the Federation's favour ends up implying that it would not have succeeded without either of them, and that all their talk of morality was simply pretence.
It defeats the entire point of the Federation existing, as part of them having those moral stances in the first place was that they could succeed without having to stoop to underhanded means like their peers did. It might be a harder road, but ultimately more rewarding.
Going by those two conflicts, if you're in a war with the Federation, and they don't see you as an organic humanoid, they will happily have someone attempt/commit genocide on your populace to win, allow it to happen by inaction, or reward them for it. There's no real difference between the Romulan Star Empire or the Federation, except that the Federation pretends to be moral.
It might be easy to be a saint in paradise, but the Federation is proof that it's possible to begin with. It won't be easy, but that hardly means it's impossible.
It's also one of the things about the DS9 mirror universe episode that ticks me off. "Mirror, Mirror" ended on a nice, optimistic, hopeful note, where for the Terran Empire's flaws and atrocities, being ethical was ultimately a more successful strategy, and that with time and much work, they too, could be like the Federation. DS9 throws all that out the window with "Spock's reforms softened the empire, causing its destruction", and the hopeful ending, that anyone, even the worst civilisation seen thus far, could become like the Federation, was ruined.
As it turns out, you can only be the Federation, if you're human, in this universe, with this perfect set of circumstances. Anyone else would be making a fatal mistake.
Its particularly irritating in both those cases, because there's groundwork in both DS9 and Voyager to end the war through other means. DS9's ending of the war could be done through helping/freeing the Jem'hadar, talking with the Vorta, and convincing the Founders solids aren't actually all that bad. Same for the Borg, where Voyager very clearly states many a time that what the Borg seek is perfection, and they believe assimilation to be a manner of achieving it. It would not be a great stretch for Voyager to repeatedly interact with the Borg, and eventually convince them that cooperation is a superior method, gradually pushing toward the end of the war in so doing.
Instead, what we got took the easy route, where the Dominion were forced to the negotiation table in the face of extinction, and Borg civilisation/the Collective was outright destroyed.
Its just a terribly cynical viewing of the Federation, where they can only succeed by being underhanded, or having people "do the dirty work" for them. If that's the case, why does the Federation even exist to begin with? It may as well be an empire like any other.
I love DS9, but Sisko should have been court martialed.
What war crimes did he commit?
S5E13 “For the Uniform: he hunts down that Marquis spy and poisons the atmosphere of Maquis colonies, forcing evacuations. Deliberately targeting civilian habitats to make them uninhabitable is a straight up war crime.
Eh, we do the same to our own planet.
It wasn't portrayed as "bad assed", it's explicitly a retelling of Javert from Les Mis.
Remember, Eddington was using the same tactic on multiple Cardassian worlds and was planning to do it again. It's not presented as "Whoa Sisko is so awesome for doing that!" but more as a moral dilemma, do you poison one planet to save many more from the same fate? Sisko did poison a planet's atmosphere, but he prevented Eddington from poisoning many more. And of course the fact that Sisko was indeed a bit too obsessed with capturing Eddington makes it all a grey area. If it wasn't a so personal, could Sisko have found another way to prevent Eddington from continuing to do the war crimes he was committing?
So it's very reductive (and missing the point of the episode) to call that a "straight up war crime".
He was accessory to assassinating a romulan diplomat to get them into the dominion war.
How could that be a "war crime" if the Federation wasn't at war with the Romulans?
Also he was an accessory after the fact. Garak did the deed, but nobody complains about everyone gushing over him.
You're technically correct that killing Senator Vreenak wasn't a war crime. It was a crime of aggression, and is still one of the four core crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression, and war crimes), so Sisko would still be at the Hague for it.
I don't think courts would see Sisko as an accessory after the fact as he was conspiring to bring the Romulans into the war using false pretenses. Senator Vreenak got killed by one of the conspirators while in commission of the conspiracy. I think this would definitely be an arguable court case.
According to the ICC a crime of aggression is "the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, integrity or independence of another State." What Garak did (again it wasn't Sisko that did it) in no way threatened the sovereignty or independence of the Romulan Empire.
I don't think lying is a war crime. If it were, every politician in the world would be on trial.
A crime (but not a war crime) was committed by Garak. Sisko was an accessory after the fact because he didn't report what Garak did. It's just our culture has gone towards being hyperbolic with the use of terms like "war crime" so it's often repeated that Sisko committed war crimes.
He was active in a conspiracy to draw the Romulan empire into a war, which resulted in the death of a Senator. Sisko engaged Garak into the conspiracy. How do you not see Garak blowing up Vreenak's ship as "the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, integrity or independence of another State". Garak was engaged in the conspiracy by a federation captain. It was the very definition of a crime of aggression. It doesn't matter if Sisko intended the result, he (and the Federation by extension) orchestrated the conspiracy.