ABSTRACT
Every vision of security has an ethic, but not all are equally ethical. In late 2008, as this chapter was being written, Presidential candidates John McCain and
Barack Obama toured the United States campaigning for election to an office that – more than any other – has the potential to shape the global security environment and affect the very possibility of security for millions of human beings. The statistics are familiar. The USA has the world’s largest economy, and the world’s largest military. Its powerful position in the governance of major global institutions shapes the social and financial landscape of the world economy. Its web of alliances influences the security calculations and doctrines of multiple states, and its use of force, or even the merest threat of it, affects crises from Iraq to North Korea. It has helped to prevent genocides, and stood by as they were perpetrated, and its powerful position in the United Nations has both driven, and frustrated, normative and institutional innovation. As the just war theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain (2004: 6) is fond of saying, with great power comes great responsibility.
