World not safer with the US as its policeman

When Elizabeth Trudeau, director of US State Department Press Office, read a statement on Tuesday about a US Navy surface ship "exercising the right of innocent passage" while transiting near China's Yongshu Reef that day, she said it was to uphold the rights and freedoms of all states under international law and to challenge the excessive maritime claims of some claimants in the South China Sea.

She was soon challenged by an Associated Press reporter about who determines what constitutes an excessive maritime claim. Trudeau, who, like most people, clearly does not understand much of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, said this is consistent with UNCLOS.

She was then reminded that the US has not ratified UNCLOS, unlike more than 160 other countries. The US' concern is that ratifying the convention would subject it to international laws that would diminish the US' sovereignty on the high seas.