The United States, which often has double standards on global affairs due to its "empire mentality", would be "the last country" that can lecture other countries about international law, a prominent American lawyer told Xinhua.
"We (The U.S.) expect other countries to comply with international decrees but we don't, because we don't feel like it," Bruce Fein, a veteran constitutional and international law attorney, said in a recent interview with Xinhua. "There is a double standard here. It's glaring."
Fein criticized the U.S. for refraining as much as it can from adhering to international instruments that would limit its ability to "act just based upon sheer power." "We figure why we should bind ourselves at all? We will just do whatever we want," he said.
An arbitral tribunal last week issued the so-called award on the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government. The U.S. has said that the award was binding on both parties and expected both China and the Philippines to comply with their obligations under it.
Noting that the U.S. hasn't ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Fein said, "How do we lecture on other countries on complying with UNCLOS? We aren't even a signatory ourselves."
In his analysis of the nature of the ruling, Fein said the tribunal was deciding "a political matter rather than a legal matter."
He pointed out that the tribunal is not a permanent court and only comes together "in an ad hoc fashion" in response to a particular case, which makes it "more political than otherwise."
"It's a situation where China itself does not have any representation," he said. "The court only heard one side of the matter. It undermines the legitimacy of the ruling."
The attorney on international law said that as a matter of custom, it's not often that countries accept international adjudications and they "pick and choose which decisions they wish to honor."
Moreover, Fein blasted what he said the U.S. attempts to "encircle" China, citing Washington's moves to increase its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, from agreeing with South Korea to deploy a sophisticated missile defense system called THAAD, to enhancing security ties with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
"What gives the United States the moral authority to police shores that are thousands of miles away?" Fein said, adding that if China meddled with affairs in the Caribbean, the U.S. would not permit that "for a second."
In recent months, U.S. warships carried out repeated operations in the adjacent waters of some Chinese islands and reefs on the excuse of exercising what Washington calls the "freedom of navigation." China has insisted that commercial and civilian vessels have never encountered problems in the region.
Comparing these U.S. maneuvers to "preemptive attack", Fein faulted the logic behind these operations.
"The fact is that they can't point to an actual obstruction of freedom of the seas, so they just say you are endangering it because you have the potential to do it," Fein said.
"The Unites States could clog the artery of commerce everywhere in the world if it wanted to," he added.
Fein also expressed worries about the rising tensions in the South China Sea region and called on the U.S. to come back to senses and abandon its mentality of exceptionalism.
To diffuse tension in the region, the primary responsibility lies with the United States, because "it is the United States that has gone way beyond the customary sphere of influence and tried to project ourselves there," Fein said.
