Just ask yourself one thing. What Would Kirk Do?
Totally unmake an entire alien civilization he knows nothing about and hamstring its leaders while forcing them to accept some half-assed solution he spent fifteen minutes thinking of, then beam back to his ship, crack some jokes and cruise off into the sunset without ever thinking another thought about his handiwork.
Once again I wonder if certain people on this board have even watched Star Trek. I really wish people would include facts when making their claims that Kirk broke the Prime Directive at every turn.
It might be because of Kirk that the directive became Prime in the first place. Wanna bet that not long after Enterprise' departure, Starfleet arrived at Sigma Iota to find the entire inhabitants had used reverse-engineered copies of Starfleet phasers to annihilate themselves?
Pretty sweet trick on their part since McCoy left his communicator behind.