Joseph Dunford Quotes

Freedom of navigation through international waterways is critical to the international community and to nations in the region, including Iran.

The Channel is an international waterway through which the Russians are quite free to pass - and over which we have no exclusive right.

Japan is opposed to any actions that escalate tensions in the South China Sea.

America is the one that leads the effort to make sure the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is protected.

Among various demands and charges I gave them, was, that the said flag should be delivered to me, and one of the United States' flags be received and hoisted in its place.

). Dozens of nations have agreed to join in monitoring and, if necessary, intercepting and boarding ships on the high seas in the event they are suspected of engaging in one or both of these threatening activities.

I had been brought up in the law and had this sort of instinct that international law operates and was there to protect principles and not to be the plaything of power and might - which I now know, of course, to be an absolute nonsense. International law should be spelled l-o-r-e.

The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway, and it is not helpful for any nation to suggest that it would attempt to restrict traffic through the strait.

The United States Navy has kept the sea lanes open for the entire world.

The United States, therefore, works to ensure that any actions we take are consistent with international laws and norms - including those reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention. It's worth remembering that our presence in the region is nothing new.

The United States believes that every nation should respect international law, including in the South China Sea.

If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations

I wish to see the Hague Court greatly increased in power and permanency

International law has no simple enforcement mechanism.

Foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.

My work at the United Nations discomforted some members of the U.S. government, which exercises its power beyond collective understandings and international law.

I believe it is the responsibility of our government to protect the U.S., including U.S.-flag vessels.

The U.S. is not a claimant state in the South China Sea or in the China-Japan dispute over the Senkaku Islands. But, of course, the 7th Fleet has been a presence in the region since the Second World War, and it is the most powerful fleet in the region.

We could try and establish a world in which the great and the powerful adhere to that international law which they require ordinary mortals to adhere to. In other words, there is one international law, and even America and even Russia and China and Japan must adhere to it, and Australia must adhere to it.

International summits and organisations like WTO take decisions, which will bind us, and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.

The U.S. - the idea that the U.S. has introduced and imposed principles of international law, that's hardly even a joke. The United States has even gone so far as to veto Security Council resolutions calling on all states to observe international law. That was in the 1980s under Reagan.

My basic advice to the Chinese with respect to the South China Sea is, 'Hey, guys, cool it.'

I think we are realizing that we are going to have to have an international rule of law.

The U.N.'s driving mission is to accumulate power at the expense of the sovereignity of individual nations and fundamental individual rights, and its gun-ban treaty proves it.

Britain must be the champion of international law.