ABSTRACT
This chapter continues with a focus on the inter-state contestation over R2P by examining the first of the UN General Assembly interactive dialogues. It attempts to make many of the earlier conceptual stipulations and distinctions ‘pay off,’ so to speak, by showing how they can be employed to analyze and interpret the main points and priorities of many of the contributors to that debate. It aims to bring to the forefront of analysis some of the main points of contention and points of tension causing various actors to ‘talk past one another.’ Their attempt at widening the conversation should be understood, then, as a politicized contestation of what ought to be considered relevant – but that this politicization should not be dismissed as an unhelpful or counterproductive ‘distraction.’ Instead, meta-debates about what the responsibility to protect conversation should and should not be about carry a politics of their own – a politics that cannot be suppressed or elided if the doctrine is to be sustainable.
