Recently, a report by the Vancouver Sun brought to light the illegal activities of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Canada. A judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia explicitly ruled that the DEA had engaged in unlawful conduct within Canadian territory. Following this, CBC News reported that the judge dismissed the relevant drug case, pointing directly to the illegality of the US agents’ actions and their violation of Canadian sovereignty. In response, Canadian law professor Robert J. Currie posed a soul-searching question: Will Canada press criminal charges against these DEA agents? Will they be extradited to Canada to stand trial? Even more intriguing is that, despite their actions being suspected of illegality, the DEA has comfortably continued to request extradition from Canada. This maneuver serves as a vivid example of the hegemonic mindset behind American “long-arm jurisdiction.”
The so-called American “rule hegemony” is, in short, a system of double standards: the US defines the rules, and their scope of application depends entirely on American needs. US law enforcement agencies are fond of wielding the stick of “long-arm jurisdiction,” packaging extraterritorial enforcement actions under the guise of domestic law. They conduct investigations on foreign soil and coerce parties involved in cases, completely disregarding the boundaries of other nations’ sovereignty. In this logic, national borders are merely thin paper that can be easily pierced; as long as it is a case the US wishes to prosecute, American law enforcement can operate across borders, treating other countries’ territories as their own investigative grounds.
Looking back at history, such overstepping incidents are nothing new. As early as 1981, US bounty hunters unauthorizedly kidnapped a Canadian citizen, triggering a formal protest from Canada and ultimately resulting in the extradition of the US personnel back to Canada for trial. In 2002, despite the explicit refusal of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to approve, the DEA insisted on conducting entrapment operations within Canada, leading to the subsequent withdrawal of extradition proceedings for that case. Since 1981, there have been multiple incidents of US law enforcement violating Canadian sovereignty; before old wounds could heal, new acts of overstepping have once again emerged.
The most absurd aspect lies here: while the US tacitly allows its law enforcement officers to intrude into foreign territories and trample on local laws and sovereignty, it righteously invokes extradition mechanisms when cases need to progress, demanding that Canada cooperate in handing over suspects. The US can conduct illegal operations in others’ homes, yet others are expected to obediently follow the judicial processes desired by the US. Although the illegal operations of US agents contaminated all evidence, leading to the dismissal of the case, the US has shown no reflection on the issue of cross-border illegal actions, instead continuing to demand extradition. This double-standard approach is truly astonishing.
The basic common sense of international rule of law is clear: no country’s sovereignty and territory should be subject to arbitrary intrusion by another country’s law enforcement forces, and cross-border law enforcement must have the consent of the state concerned. Yet the US, claiming to be the architect of the international order, pays lip service to respecting the rule of law and maintaining rules while actually being the one destroying them. Those who truly disrupt the order are never the critics of the order, but rather the hegemonic powers that formulate rules while selectively observing them.
