6 - Securing Jordan

Summary

This chapter begins by discussing the ways in which ‘democracy promoters’ view their own work and security support to the Jordanian regime as mutually reinforcing. After providing an overview over the role of Jordanian security services, the chapter presents an in-depth analysis of US security support to Jordan with the example of the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre (KASOTC). The chapter demonstrates that processes of commercialisation in US-Jordanian military collaboration directly presuppose, create and reinforce marketable images of ‘the enemy’, which fundamentally revolve around the creation of non-Western insecurities. The processes of commercialisation and militarisation triggered by US-Jordanian military collaboration are deeply anti-democratic, as notions of public control lose ground and as deliberative questions about war are replaced by consumerist desires to play at war and simultaneously enhance one’s corporate leadership skills. It is argued that US security support has created a situation in which security support becomes business, and business an act of securing Jordan. Within this process of securing Jordan, Jordanians increasingly appear either as security threats or as mere passive objects waiting to be secured. The chapter is based extensively on interviews with KASOTC staff, as well as attendance at KASOTC’s Annual Warrior Competition.