What do Al-Qaeda, Human Rights Watch and NATO have in common? They can all be understood as emotional communities. Emotional communities are "groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value - or devalue - the same or related emotions". This article develops a conceptual framework for a particular type of emotional community in global politics: a security community. It is argued that emotion norms - the expression of appropriate emotions in a given situation - stabilise a security community during conflict between allies. The argument is illustrated with an empirical case study of NATO's military intervention in Libya in 2011. The article shows that the conceptualisation of security communities as emotional communities has significant implications for the study of regional peace and security.