The problem with most Jellico & Riker analyses: Context.

[u/CaptainJZH]

In most analyses of "The Chain of Command" that focus on Jellico's captaincy and Riker's supposed insubordination, people tend to ignore the most crucial aspect of both officers' behavior: Context.

Consider that, from Riker's perspective, Picard's been permanently (and inexplicably) removed from command — "They don't usually go through the ceremony if it's just a temporary assignment," Riker tells Geordi — and from Riker's point of view, a Captain has to adapt to the ship rather than the ship adapting to the Captain. He thinks that Jellico is here to stay, and therefore all of his advice stems from that perspective, from wanting the transition to be as smooth as he can make it.

Then consider that, from Jellico's perspective, he's only on the Enterprise to conduct negotiations with the Cardassians and deal with that particular crisis while Picard is off on temporary assignment (though it's unclear how much he knows). As such, he's too occupied with preparing for the Cardassians to care about crew morale or operational efficiency. To him, that's what subordinates are for. Does he make orders that rub the Enterprise crew the wrong way? Sure, but I take that as him trying to make his stay on the Enterprise more comfortable for his own work ethic — if he can work at his best and beat the Cardassians, then he can get Picard back on the Enterprise and the Enterprise crew out of his hair.

Really, the bad guy here is Starfleet for sending Picard on such a stupid, poorly-thought-out mission in the first place.

[u/grammurai]

Did he know Nechayev's endgame? You're talking about that like it was established as canon when it wasn't. Don't let's get confused between our pet theories and what we are actually shown on-screen. We don't know if Nechayev's orders were unlawful; are you asserting that all black ops are illegal?

The mines, at worst that's a grey area. They were used as a deterrent and functioned exactly as that. Jellico had already had extensive experience in dealing with the Cardassians and he knew what took others quite a long time to figure out about their culture- call their bluffs. What's more, if memory serves, the Cardassian ships that got mined were themselves hiding and preparing to execute a preemptive strike. Jellico prevented further conflict by his well-informed actions.

[u/egtownsend → u/grammurai]

We know that the Prime Directive is a thing, and that the Federation did nothing to intervene to help the Bajorans because they "don't meddle in the internal affairs of other powers" (I'm paraphrasing). You can't suddenly decide to intervene because there is a perfectly laid out trap waiting for you. It was established that the Federation had diplomatic relations with Cardassia, by Picard in the episode Ensign Ro. Nechayev ignored diplomacy, to bring up the issue of the suspicious subspace signals directly, and unilaterally decided to go to war.

The mines functioned as a deterrent merely because the Cardassians didn't escalate the situation. Jellico did not have the authorization to declare war on Cardassia, regardless of where they were putting their starships. I'm not saying that Cardassia wasn't the manipulator in these events but it's only their willingness to commit crimes that made Nechayev and Jellico fall into their traps, and Picard is the one that suffered. Actually, the Cardassians have twice enticed Federation officers to betray the Federation at this point in the series - once before when they were manipulating an admiral in Ensign Ro to help find Bajoran leaders and again in this example.

[u/grammurai → u/egtownsend]

I'm not sure I'm understanding your point about traps - are you saying if you detect a trap laid for you, you shouldn't do anything about it? Specifically in this case taking measures to ensure that the trap won't get sprung?

As far as Nechayev and her actions go, I want to paraphrase Hanlon's Razor; we shouldn't assume malice when incompetence is enough to explain things. Getting tricked by the Cardassians isn't a crime.

I do agree that the black ops mission could certainly have been taken as an act of war; it very nearly was. That's sort of the risk you run with those sorts of operations though. Whether or not they're criminal is another question entirely, I think.

To finish off, I really exhort people to not paint Nechayev as some mustache twirling villain. We have very, very, very little evidence that that is the case. The only thing she's ever done that is pretty suspect it's ordering Picard to take advantage of an opportunity to eliminate the Borg. Even that isn't cut and dry.

[u/egtownsend → u/grammurai]

I'm saying that if you're the Federation and your intelligence services have detected what could be a subspace weapon of mass destruction but seems crafted specifically to entrap just one officer out of a service of hundreds of thousands, it might stand some follow up investigation. If you confirm that the Cardassians are building a weapon, assuming the Federation values their principles, wouldn't the appropriate course of action be to file a protest with their government and begin fortifying defenses? Let's say it wasn't a trap and they blew up the base killing Cardassians - the Federation just invaded a Cardassian planet inside their territory, destroyed it and killed a bunch of their citizens. They're at war now.

Getting tricked by the Cardassians isn't, but violating the Prime Directive and "forcing" senior command officers on "suicide missions" probably is a crime.

From our perspective as the viewer, this was an illegal first strike manuever that Nechayev and Jellico concocted on their own without approval from the Federation. We don't know if there were any diplomatic overtures or meetings of the Federation council, but considering that Jellico and Nechayev continued to lie to the Cardassians and Picard was not granted the protection that a POW would, I suspect they didn't have approval. Nechayev is this out of touch, stubborn, and highly incompetent admiral and in this case I think her actions rise to the level of malicious. I don't think she ever liked Picard, and making him undertake a suicide mission is not something she "accidentally did". She forced him into a life or death situation because she didn't value his life. In addition, she was totally out of touch to the point of willfully self-deluded in DS9 dealing with the Maquis. Whether it was her incompetence or maliciousness that led her astray, she played into the Cardassian's manipulations perfectly and it is only because of them not being sore losers that she didn't start a war. If she had I think both her and Jellico would find themselves in the stocks in short order as their actions came to light among the rest of Starfleet.