The King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre (KASOTC) in Jordan, owned by the Jordanian army, financed and established by the US DoD and operated by the US private business ViaGlobal not only offers a base for the professional training of US, Jordanian and other international special forces units, but also for stunt training of actors and for adventure holidays targeted at investment bankers and other affluent professionals who are interested in ‘the special forces experience’. The diverse use of KASOTC indicates that US security assistance to Jordan is much more than mere support to the stability and security of a close regional ally. A deeper analysis of US security support to Jordan therefore needs to also include a discussion of how it contributes to the discursive construction of security threats and how it interacts with discourses of democracy promotion and economic development that frame US-Jordanian relations. Using KASOTC as a lens into US-Jordanian bilateral relations, this presentation discusses the following questions: How do the discourses of former US military staff based at KASOTC reinforce or contradict those of US democracy promoters in Jordan? What is KASOTC’s own business model and can one draw conclusions from it regarding the interaction of security support and promoted models of economic development in the country? And how does the layout and day-to-day running of KASOTC contribute to shaping conceptualizations of ‘the enemy’? This presentation argues that the example of KASOTC illustrates well not only the contradictory nature of US policies pursued in Jordan, but also the increased blurring of boundaries between security and political and economic development. At the example of KASOTC it is shown how US-Jordanian relations reproduce power structures that seemingly confirm the need to securitize the global economy’s periphery, such as Jordanian politics, before it is deemed ready for increased private foreign investment, as well as power structures that uphold claims of US moral superiority. The presentation speaks to the growing body of literature on the securitization of political and economic development and seeks to contribute to filling the gap of empirically grounded research on security sector reform and security support. It is based on extensive qualitative interviews with Jordanian government officials, employees of KASOTC and the US Embassy in Jordan, observations made during the attendance of a KASOTC hosted event in 2013, as well as on interviews with current and former employees of the US DoS in Washington D.C.