The exportation of democracy as a “global responsibility” necessitates a securitized frame of war that serves to embolden US hegemony and legitimize competition and conflict in the global system.

Before I suggest a way of thinking about global responsibility during these times of war, I want. to distance myself from some mistaken ways of approchmg the problem. Those, for instance, who wage war in the name of the common good, those who kill in the name of democracy or security, those who make incursio~s into the sovereign lands of others in the name of sovereIgnty-all consider themselves to be "acting globally" and even to be executing a certain "global responsibility." In the US we have heard in recent years about "bringing democracy" to countries where it is apparently lacking; we have heard, too about "installing democracy." In such moments we 'have to ask what democracy means if it is not based on popular decision and majority rule. Can one power "bring" or "install" democracy on a people ~ve.r whom it has no jurisdiction? If a form of power IS Imposed upon a people who do not choose that form of power, then that is, by definition, an undemocratic process. If the form of power imposed is called "democracy" then we have an even larger problem: can "democracy" be the name of a form of political power that is undemocratically imposed? Democracy has to name the means through which political power is achieved as well as the result of that process. And this creates something of a bind, since a majority can certainly vote in an undemocratic form of power (as the Germans did when electing Hitler in 1933), but military powers can also seek to "install" democracy through overriding or suspending elections and other expressions of the popular will, and by means that are patently undemocratic. In both cases, democracy fails. How do these brief reflections on the perils of democracy affect our way of thinking about global responsibility in times of war? First, we must be wary of invocations of "global responsibility" which assume that one country has a distinctive responsibility to bring democracy to countries. I am sure that there are cases in which intervention is important-to forestall genocide, for instance. But such an intervention with a global mission or, indeed, with an arrogant politics in which forms of government are forcibly implemented that are in the political and economic interests of the military power responsible for that very implementation. In such cases, we probably want to say-or at least I want to say that this form of global responsibility is irresponsible, if not openly contradictory. We could say that in such instances the word "responsibility" is simply misused or abused. And I would tend to agree. But that may not be enough, since historical circumstances demand that we give new meanings to the notion of "responsibility." Indeed, there is a challenge before us to rethink and reformulate a conception of global responsibility that would counter this imperialist appropriation and its politics of imposition. imperialist appropriation and its politics of imposition. To that end, I want to return to the question of the "we" and think first about what happens to this "we" during times of war. Whose lives are regarded as lives worth saving and defending, and whose are not? Second, I want to ask how we might rethink the "we" in global terms in ways that counter the politics of imposition. Lastly, and in the chapters to come, I want to consider why the opposition to torture is obligatory, and how we might derive an important sense of global responsibility from a politics that opposes the use of torture in any and all of its forms. 2