The purpose of this article is to review and refine the notion of ‘liberal militarism’. It is based on the assumption that no society, even a democratic one, can do without militarism as all of them consent to considerable budgetary efforts to provide for their defence. But this consent and the ways in which it is expressed are prone to variations. More than an exceptional use of force at the international level, or an exaltation of servicemen or of the military within society, the notion of liberal militarism denotes here the social representations ascribed by the political and social actors to defence policy in liberal democracies. Over the past 30 years, defence policy has seen a number of changes towards economic and/or political-cultural liberalisation both in terms of their objectives and in terms of their means. This twin liberalisation process, which took on different forms according to the national cases considered, has given rise to different ‘varieties of liberal militarism’.