Captain Maxwell, Star Trek: The Next Generation In the episode “The Wounded”, he doesn’t think he’s a traitor for taking advantage of the U.S.S. Phoenix Launching unauthorized attacks against Cardassian targets.
As he later explains to Picard, the Cardassians (with whom Starfleet had previously been at war) had rearmed, and the powerless “science station” he attacked was actually a military base.
Furthermore, he claims that a seemingly innocent Cardassian freighter in the area was secretly carrying weapons.
Picard, being the good Star Trek captain he is, ends up calling Maxwell in and harshly chastising him for being a traitor to Starfleet’s ideals, but even Picard later admits to the Cardassian leader that he was only doing it to keep the peace, so it seems Maxwell was right: not only was the science station in a strategically important area, but the freighter was specially shielded against Federation scanning technology.
It was clear that these aggressive aliens had truly rearmed, and about eight years later, the Cardassians joined the Dominion and once again went to war with the Federation.
