In a globalized world, hot pursuit across nation's borders is going to be near impossible to avoid. But look at the reasons it happens - nation's fail to maintain control of the people in their borders.

The existence of the PPK is a failure on the part of the Iraqi\kurdish government.

The fact that FARC was in Ecuador represented a tacit loss of sovereignty from the Ecuadorian government to a nongovernmental, alien armed force which was allowed to camp in their borders. Either Ecuador aided and abetted FARC, which is an act of war, or they turned a blind eye, in which case their sovereignty over that patch of land controlled by FARC was lost. Either colombia was striking at Ecuadoran agressors, or they were striking within territory owned by FARC.

If we had a crazy vermont militia trying to annex part of Quebec, it would be incumbent on us to reign them in. If we didn't, then Canada can attack. We're not allowed to complain about the violation of our sovereignty if we, in fact, have no sovereignty over a region.

Thus, after the vermont-quebecoix dustup, we can reclaim our vermont territory from the militia, and reassert our sovereignty there.

As you will notice, these cases are only issues when the "sovereign" nation happens to have an affinity for what the rogue armies inside their borders happen to be doing.

I am very proud of Colombia/Uribe for going after those terrorists. Ecuador has failed to rein them in, and probably gives them alot of support. I an not Colombian, but I have been to Colombia.

Is it any different when we went after the Taliban in Afghanistan for 9/11? Iraq war was a mistake, though, and not the same thing.

Now Chavez wants to get in on the act. Chavez/Venezuela will get soundly defeated . Not only does Colombia have a better military with better armaments than Venezuela, but you know the U.S. will get involved. I am sure the U.S. would like to eliminate Chavez if they could do it legitimately, i.e. if Chavez attacks Colombia.

How long do you think it would take the U.S. to get an aircraft carrier near Venezuela? Heck, they may not need one, the U.S. Air Force could attack Venezuela from bases in the U.S. and Guantanamo. Maybe we could parachute those terrorists at Guantanamo into Venezuela :) We could close the camp in Cuba.

Unfortunately, it is the Venezuelan people who will suffer for Chavez's nonsense. They are already suffering some.

I am very proud of Colombia/Uribe for going after those terrorists. Ecuador has failed to rein them in, and probably gives them alot of support. I am not Colombian, but I have been to Colombia.

Is it any different when we went after the Taliban in Afghanistan for 9/11? Iraq war was a mistake, though, and not the same thing.

Now Chavez wants to get in on the act. Chavez/Venezuela will get soundly defeated . Not only does Colombia have a better military with better armaments than Venezuela, but you know the U.S. will get involved. I am sure the U.S. would like to eliminate Chavez if they could do it legitimately, i.e. if Chavez attacks Colombia.

How long do you think it would take the U.S. to get an aircraft carrier near Venezuela? Heck, they may not need one, the U.S. Air Force could attack Venezuela from bases in the U.S. and Guantanamo. Maybe we could parachute those terrorists at Guantanamo into Venezuela :) We could close the camp in Cuba.

Unfortunately, it is the Venezuelan people who will suffer for Chavez's nonsense. They are already suffering some.

So Nixon was morally in the right when he authorised the bombing of enemy taking refuge and moving supplies just across the border in Laos and Cambodia?

Nixon is right, he is also right for not attacking the supply lines in china. This legitmacy stuff is all b.s, You never see a weak neightor do this kind of stuff to a stronger one, might is right, if you can, do it, if you can't don't

the US supported terrorist/freedom fighters (delete as applicable) that hide out in Iraq?

We all think that the good guys are justified in chasing after those nasty terrorists but once it becomes accepted as a legitimate response we can hardly complain if some of the more dubious regimes around the world use the same logic.

Especially when the response tends to be disproportonate.

So we could have China thinking it has the right to take a swipe at Taiwan using the pretext of chasing after a few terrorists./trouble makers.

Would we Brits have had the moral justification to take out a few Boston Irish bars when the IRA terrorists were active?

All the examples in the last few posts are supposed to conjure up some sort of ambiguous gray area. They don't. They are all pretty clear areas.

We were already at war in vietnam, it was a warzone. We were allowed to go after fighters in combadia. However, we shouldn't have for strategic reasons (namely the fact that it escalated and expanded the conflict, and gave rise to the khmer rouge).

If and only IF taiwanese forces, or a rogue taiwanese element attacks China AND TAIWAN IS NOT WILLING OR ABLE TO REIGN THEM IN, then china is allowed to defend itself. However, that situation is ludicrous because Taiwan would certainly be able to control its forces.

In fact, thats the crux of the issue. Most of these countries don't care about the fact that rogue elements are operating on their turf, or worse, they are actively helping them. Venezuela and Ecuador clearly are. The kurdish government maintained "neutrality" against the PKK. The fact is that most of these issues are in fact proxy wars. Or, back the China situation, it is PRETEXT. A pretext essentially is a lie, so of course then they would not be justified in acting on false charges.

How about that cuba terrorist in miami? is cuba allowed to come here to nab him? you did not answer the boston IRA case either. back to vietnam, because it's a war zone, so we were allowed to go after fighters in combadia, are we allowed to go after fighters in china? also in the korea war zone before that, are we allowed to go cross border to get in china or Russia? This is all about power, the roman empire can go whereever they wants, US now can go whereever they wants, greenada, somalia, kosovo, to iraq. columbia can do this only because it has US backing, nothing else, try to paint as a legitmate case will not work

Cuban terrorist in Miami? What? The IRA in boston bars? What are you talking about?

If you're saying that the IRA was operating out of bars in boston, then the US had the responsibility to work with the british to track them down. I'm really not sure of the specifics of what you're talking about, but the point stands that a nation needs to reign in any radical elements within its borders if it is too maintain a claim to sovereignty.

Of course we were "allowed" to go after the chinese during vietnam. Same with Korea. That was Macarthur's plan - but it would have been a stupid, disasterous idea, which is why we didn't. Hell, we were "allowed" to go after Russia. Just because you're pitted against a foe doesn't mean you need to actually send troops.

Take this example - there are rebel groups in Northeastern Iraq that are attacking Iran. In response, Iran has shelled near (possibly over) the border in Iraq. Are they allowed to? Yes. Does the US like it? No, so its not this stupid Roman empire thing you're talking about. We are occupying Iraq, therefore it is the responsibility of the US and the Iraqi government to reign in radical elements. If those elements threaten other nations, even if they're our enemies, those countries have the right (but not the obligation) to defend themselves.

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"Of course we were "allowed" to go after the chinese during vietnam. Same with Korea. That was Macarthur's plan - but it would have been a stupid, disasterous idea, which is why we didn't. Hell, we were "allowed" to go after Russia. Just because you're pitted against a foe doesn't mean you need to actually send troops."

I'm completely confused. how do you define "allowed"? by who? and what are we "not allowed" to do? Are we allowed to go to Greenada to catch their president? are we allowed to attack Iraq? and who "allowed" us? ourselves? then what's the difference from the roman empire?

Well, try this then. I am a Canadian. I honestly believe that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others have commited war crimes and broken international law while executing military actions against Afghanistan and Iraq. What if I was able to form a militia that invaded Washington D.C. and kidnapped George and Dick. Well, far fetched I suppose. So, what if I kidnapped lesser public officials or military personnel who carried out George's criminal orders? Would the US be so happy to accept this idea of pursuing people you disagree with into their sovereign territory? You see, it all depends on whether or not you agree with the ideals of the pursuer or the pursued. Don't you think? If so, there is no law worth speaking of, one of the troubles supposedly dealt with at Nuremburg.

The arguments thus far are over the area where the norms of international law (as it exists) break down. The initial poster made a good analysis of the impact of national sovereignty, and subsequent posts broke down the overall impact of the responsibilities associated with maintaining order within a given state.

Per this scenario: On the one hand, Ecuador has the reasonable expectation that their national sovereignty should not be violated by the national forces of another sovereign nation. At the same time, they have a responsibility to ensure that forces operating within their national borders do not take hostile action against neighboring countries. For Colombia: on the one hand, they have a reasonable expectation that they should not be subject to attack by persons originating within Ecuador; on the other hand, they recognize that Ecuador has sovereignty within their internationally recognized borders.

Clearly these reasonable expectations have come into conflict, forcing actors on both sides of the conflict to make decisions on what they are willing to suffer and what they are willing to risk. If the Ecuadorian government were actively trying to root out the FARC, Colombia may have decided to let the Ecuadorian military or police deal with the situation. Since This was not the case, the option to resort to self help became the more appealing option for the Colombian military & government.

Effective diplomacy uses both force, economics, and politics in an attempt to reach an acceptable solution to any given conflict. Hopefully a solution short of war can be reached, but I can understand the willingness of both sides to fight for their respective causes. That being said, I favor Colombia's position on this matter.

Yes, Av8R. The reponses and "what if" scenarios are ignoring the red-line issue here, and that is, are these nations actually just fighting a proxy war? If they are, then hot pursuit is an expansion of that proxy war. Thats what happened in Ecuador. If the Ecuadorans were aiding FARC, then thats a proxy war, and Colombia's actions were defending themselves from both Ecuador and its FARC cronies.

I see how there may be some confusion over what is "allowed" and what is a good idea. A good idea is just something that, if done, will accomplish your goals instead of undermine them. Attacking China in vietnam would have been a disaster, and undermined the entire mission in the region. This is a political consideration.

"Allowed" is an ethical consideration, which looks to answer what is harmed by an given situation. Colombia was harmed by FARC, Turkey was harmed by the PKK.

So to take another example, just because we are harmed by EFP's in Iraq that come from the Iranian government, and would be in our rights to attack Iran to protect ourselves, it would be a terrible idea and a political disaster, so we shouldn't do it.

The real issue is why hot pursuit would be necessary: because the host country is unwilling or unable to excercise their sovereignty.

OR, the host country is, in fact, excercising sovereignty and is intending to cause harm through a proxy war.

The solution to all these situations is for countries to not empower rogue elements, and to use diplomacy to ensure the cooperation of host nations before external action is required. In the end, you need to decide whether hot pursuit is going to help in the long term or not. I think the real lesson may be that, in many cases, it doesn't. But that doesn't change the state of nation's sovereignty\responsibility.

Hesperia, it doesn't depend on that at all. It depends on whether or not the canadian government is going to send some mounties after you and enforce its laws\sovereignty against you. If it can't find you, then we'll send in the FBI to help. If canada actually liked what you had done and aided you, well.... you ever seen "Canadian Bacon?"

Well, that's just silly, unless you'd be acting as an authorized agent of the Canadian government, which is the sort of situation that we're talking about when we speak of "hot pursuit."

I agree with jwschmidt for the most part. One has to remember that you can do whatever you can get away with. Obviously, this doesn't solve the question of whether you ought to do it. What consequence, then, might we wish to avoid here?

Last thing: what a moron the quoted expert is. ""The bottom line is there is no such thing as 'hot pursuit,' " argues David Crane of Syracuse University's College of Law. "Maybe if I'm a cop in Macon County, Ga., and the bad guy crosses over into the next county, then it's OK." But in the international arena, he says, Colombian forces cannot simply barge into Ecuador and attack rebels without Ecuador's permission." (emphasis added). I mean, really, this man is teaching Law and he can't even be consistent?