So he's saying that US pilots are more prone to deviate without ATC clearance?
Yes he is, and the safety implications are rather clear, just read con-pilots last post.
Having been in managerial positions around the world, including US and several places in Asia, I can fully appreciate the point. In the US, and western culture in general, professionals are expected to do their job first with full authority and report later on the task accomplished. In Asia even highly qualified professionals will revert to their superiors for permission, even if those superiors are in no way qualified to judge on a particular action. It would be considered extremely impolite not to, I myself have played this game several times, both on the giving and receiving end.
Getting back to the topic of the thread, this discussion may or may not be relevant, however there are some red flags here. The PIC was a military pilot with the majority of his 20k+ hours earned in military aviation with a rigid command structure. He MAY have been hesitant to override ATC clearance. On the other hand he was paired with a French co-pilot who I'm sure would have been both vocal and assertive if there were a recognized threat to safety. I'm not privy to whether this pairing pattern was intentional, but if so I can only concur that indeed AA has balls. I have heard of very few Asian airlines with this pattern, usually it is the other way around with experienced western PIC paired with low hour locals, sometimes with disastrous effect (e.g. AIE Mangalore).