This article attempts to demonstrate the connections between US executive war powers, US interpretations of the international law on the use of force, and the history of US war-making and war-fighting, both at home and abroad. It begins by discussing the status of presidential war powers in the US domestic context, before examining the centrality of national security in US political life. In arguing that the imperial character of US international legal interpretation and defence policy changes very little between Democratic and Republican administrations, regardless of the ‘legality’ of relevant actions subject to the international law on the use of force, this paper illustrates that US ‘exceptionalism’ is situated not in a sphere outside the international rule of law, but rather in an exceptional space within an international legal system that privileges the powerful.