This book examines contemporary militarism in international politics, employing a variety of different theoretical viewpoints and international case studies. Militarism and militarisation are key phenomena in international politics, yet seem to have disappeared from the International Relations agenda since the 1990s. This is partly a response to the end of the Cold War, and the cuttting back of military budgets, and partly to the rise of the discourses of human rights and humanitarian intervention in international relations. The militarised US-led response to 9/11, characterised by the war in Iraq and rising military spending around the world, has signalled a return to centre stage of military force as an arbiter of international relations and has prompted a resurgence in the literature on empire and imperialism. Yet the language of militarism and militarisation has not been a strong feature of IR debates on post-9/11 global politics. The guiding questions behind this book are: to see what the current state of play is in the literature on militarism; what we can learn from old debates and what newer debates can contribute; and how the phenomenon of militarism can be theoretically, empirically and practically located at the crossroads between international political economy, security studies and international relations. The book is arranged in three core sections: political economy, security and theory, and each focuses on a particular way in to thinking about the phenomenon of militarism. Within each section and across the book as a whole there is a variety of theoretical approaches and geographical foci, offering a broad examination of the different ways militarism plays out around the world and the different ways that we can think about it. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, war and conflict studies, international political economy and IR/Security Studies in general.