The United States’ Active Compliance and Trump’s Peace Plan: The Retreat of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in the Gaza Genocide

Abstract

This paper analyses the issues of the applicability of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm in the light of the present-day Gaza genocide. It highlights the United States' active complicity in the preservation of Israel's conduct and its contradictory peace plan for a ceasefire in Gaza. It contends that Washington's diplomatic, military, and political aid to Israel has exposed the discriminatory usage of humanitarian principles, undermining U.S. legitimacy as a protector of worldwide human rights. By juxtaposing the academic concept of R2P with its active failure in Gaza, the research highlights the United Nations' passivity, the resolve of great-power vetoes, and the preponderance of realpolitik over humanitarian principles. Employing constructivist and realist theories, it exemplifies how double standards by the United States, through its intervention in Libya and criticising Russia's actions in Ukraine while covering for Israel, corrode its normative leadership in the global order. Finally, the paper contends that the decline of R2P, combined with American complicity in Gaza, foreshadows a wider legitimacy crisis that can accelerate the geopolitical realignment towards a multipolar world order.