Book excerpt: The United States and her allies have found themselves plunged into ‘a war over [humanity’s] future social and political organization’ with criminal challengers to the nation-state form. These new wars are currently being fought globally with Al Qaeda, in Iraq with shifting coalitions of criminal gangs, insurgents, and Jihadi groups and throughout the Americas with the Maras (the first group of 3rd GEN Gangs to emerge). More new wars are poised to develop and the on-going ones are far from over, with more attacks upon the homelands of the US and her allies expected. This cutting edge book looks initially at the theoretical and legal side of criminal-state and criminal-soldier emergence and growth, before focusing on criminal-states and criminal-soldiers themselves, with particular attention paid to Al Qaeda, Hizballah, Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13), Caliphate and Mahdi concerns, Islamic Fundamentalist Use of Beheadings, Criminalization of Russian State Security, Nuclear Materials Trafficking, and Outlaw Private Security Firms. With the contributions from international experts, this book makes for critical reading for political scientists and criminal justice students and researchers, policy makers, and military and law enforcement practitioners. This book was previously published as a special issue of Global Crime.