A little queer and a little DS9 obsessed

While comparing Julian and Sisko's arcs and episodes is hugely compelling, the way it's done in this quotation seems to overlook the reason why this pairing is compelling: the differences. I don't think IEASL failed in 'compromising' Julian, because I don't think 'compromising' means the exact same thing for Julian as it does for Sisko.

ITPM is interesting because it reminds us that Sisko is a dynamic individual who can never be completely confined by a set of ideals or values, even the ones he is actively protecting. In that sense, he is 'compromised' by the end of the episode; the version of him we thought we knew is undone and remade by seeing his acknowledgement and manipulation of the fragility of Starfleet's ideals. He acts in a way that contradicts the values he protects, and thus compromises his role as a Starfleet officer (referring here to the utopic idealist version of a Starfleet officer and not the more complex muddied version these arcs work to expose).

Crucially, Julian's arc with Section 31 isn't the same story. I'd argue there's two reasons for this. The first (and slightly less relevant) is that the values Julian is most dedicated to are not those of a Starfleet officer but those of a doctor. (Hippocratic Oath probably demonstrates this best - despite the Jem'Hadar being enemies of Starfleet, Julian still sees the opportunity to cure them of their addiction and jumps for it. He says he's thinking about their potential as allies, but considering the thing that made him start cooperating with Goran'agar is seeing the other soldiers in pain when the drug is withheld, I'm inclined to think he was trying to justify his decision to help them (that of a doctor) by making sense of it through a Starfleet lens.)

The second reason ties back to how 'compromising' Julian doesn't mean the same thing as 'compromising' Sisko, because their arcs take different viewpoints of Starfleet. Julian's arc through a number of episodes (Hippocratic Oath, Doctor Bashir I Presume?, Statistical Probabilities, Inquisition, The Siege of AR-558, etc.) is shown to be an increasing disillusionment with the Starfleet ideals that formed so much of his worldview for so long ('frontier medicine' etc.). IAESL is the nail in the coffin because it forces Julian to confront the thing he spends the entire episode up until his fight with Ross staunchly denying: that Section 31 is Starfleet. After a steady buildup of him learning time and again that Starfleet is not the infallible force of good it once appeared, he is struck with overwhelming evidence of corruption. Sure, he gets to avoid actively causing someone harm firsthand, and he gets to confront Ross, but neither of these things constitute winning for Julian here. He still loses, because the vision of Starfleet that he dedicated himself to doesn't exist to him anymore. Julian's 'compromising' is on the level of perspective rather than action: Sisko commits acts that oppose Starfleet ideals to defend those ideals, but Julian acts in a way that aligns with those ideals and in doing so comes to realise that he isn't defending what he thought he was.

I care about this distinction and don't like the idea of so directly measuring IAESL up against ITPM in this way because I think Julian's position in DS9's critique of Starfleet is so important for numerous reasons. It's no coincidence that, of all the Starfleet officers in the show, the one who has this storyline of Starfleet disillusionment is the character who is explicitly othered by Starfleet. Every main character in DS9 is an outsider in some way, but Julian is the one that holds this precarious position of being in Starfleet but not entirely accepted by it, and it's important for him on an individual character level to learn that the institution that others him isn't the pillar of righteousness he once believed it to be. It doubles down on the fact that they are wrong to cast him out, or to make him feel he has to work overtime and hide so much of himself to deserve his place among them. (In a more allegorical sense, it's a very neurodivergent position for a character to be in.) It also works to highlight his privilege and consequent complicity that stems from his having grown up in the Federation (see @fatalism-and-villainy 's section of this post for a more detailed discussion of this.)

I also think that having Julian as a Starfleet officer who doesn't go through this same process of having to break his moral code to defend Starfleet, but instead learns that Starfleet is willing and able to break his moral code, is what allows Starfleet to be heavily imperfect without destroying the idyllic future Earth that Star Trek as a franchise tries to create. It allows the audience to maintain faith in individual people that make up Starfleet, in officers like Julian, even if their faith in Starfleet as an institution is shaken. Julian remains 'good' and uncorrupt by Starfleet standards, and is instead 'compromised' personally, in his own perception of the world and his place in it. While he doesn't do anything unworthy of a Starfleet officer, he arguably begins to perceive himself as less worthy of that role as it's becoming increasingly clear that the truth of said role doesn't align as perfectly with his own core values as he once thought.

A final quick note in terms of 'culpability': I think Julian absolutely saw his actions contribute to a negative outcome. His interference in Sloan's plan involved Cretak, of course, but more than that, his believing he was a step ahead and failing to recognise the depth of the connection between Section 31 and Starfleet Command was what turned him into a working cog in Sloan's plan. As Sloan says in the final scene, he was counting on Julian 'being a decent human being' who 'would only go so far'. Sloan's success depended on Julian being uncompromisable, and it therefore compromises his belief in that quality of himself. He did everything right, he refused to cross the line, and it didn't matter, because the institution crossed the line for him. His being a model Starfleet officer in the idealist sense was the very thing that created the circumstances for Section 31's success. Doing the right thing, even just defending life, is no longer something that is largely simple or easy to ascertain, which is huge considering Julian's core values as a doctor. He's absolutely undone by this episode/arc, and although it's subtler than ITPM, I don't think it's less effective.