The doctrine of benevolent empire posits that unilateral security governance has become a necessary and legitimate form of global governance. After first assessing if imperial governance can even be considered an instance of global governance, its claim of legitimacy is scrutinised. It is argued, with reference to the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, that its strategy of legitimation is eventually doomed to fail because benevolent empire appears to downplay both the importance of education in forging legitimacy and the context-specific nature of legitimacy.