Protection from Whom? Tensions, Contradictions, and Potential in the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle, with the goal of presenting a history of the concept that can be used for inquires along the lines of critical security studies. Secondly, because scholarship on R2P tends to present R2P as a norm prevalent within the United Nations, not the USA, the chapter turns its attention to how R2P has been operationalized within the context of US foreign policy. The chapter draws on these examples to identify two challenges and cautionary notes, while making a normative assertion that the goals of R2P should not be to help create a world where populations are constantly protected by states, but to create a world where people do not need protection.