Game of Bluff: Renowned scholar confronts Western 'neutrality' on the South China Sea

28:00  Professor Antony Carty:   

"I do feel that there is a gangster hooligan element about the way the United States has approached this whole question since the Second World War."

33:00  "It is not part of American or intellectual culture to give any place to international law. It has since the Second World War insisted on the supremacy of realpolitik against law and that is the official position."

34:00  "This whole conflict I have been investigating really is a challenge to the United Kingdom and France to insist that they do have respectable international law traditions and they do have to dissociate themselves from the way the Americans behave."

34:30  "There is a shamelessness about the American claim that the Chinese are interfering with international navigation. It's bare-faced effrontery."

37:00  "The leading power is hopelessly irresponsible at the exercise of its powers at a global level. Racial stereotypes in Europe and America towards China have not changed since the early 19th century."

42:00  "We are dealing with dangerously irrational and confused behaviour by a large number of countries. An American colleague was only saying a few days ago that it does really look like the hysteria that led to the First World War."

42:30   "We are in a dangerous situation where people are behaving irrationally. The general public ... are aware that they are the subject of propaganda and there is widespread public skepticism about what they see and hear and a deep distrust of their politicians."