1917-18 and 2003-8, among other periods, witness the invocation of e pluribus unum as a means of twinning the exercise of US national power with the notion of globalising democracy. This panel focuses on the relationship between internal tensions of unity/diversity, and the ideological construction of the USA as fighting for democracy. It aims to map the resulting cultural and political formations by tracing the intertwining of democratic, overtly multi-cultural, and imperial discourses across political and cultural realms, the juxtaposition of ‘internal’ and ‘global’ struggles, debates that connect US foreign policy with its internal politics of difference, and other aspects of American democratic universalism in wartime. The panel as a whole is envisaged as providing the resources to historicise the contemporary moment, connecting political debate with cultural forms, ranging from national political discourse to Hollywood cinema, from scholarly debate to popular culture, from anti-war satire to George W Bush’s invocation of Wilsonian (inter)nationalism.