Security sector reform is, as we have seen, something that was largely developed in ‘the West’. Although ‘the West’ is an unsatisfactory shorthand for a complex array of historical processes and relationships,1 it does serve one useful purpose here: like so much else that was originally developed in Europe or more latterly NorthAmerica, SSR reflects a particular set of beliefs and/or practices that is being actively exported from one part of the world to another. In the case of SSR, it is accompanied by the hope, if not the expectation, that its adoption will improve the lives of those on the receiving end. The same sorts of hopes accompanied Europe’s ‘civilising’ mission in Asia and elsewhere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While there are plainly significant differences in the relationships between what world systems theorists like to refer to as the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ these days (see Chase-Dunn 1998), it is worth noting at the outset that there is likely to be a degree of sensitivity about replicating an historical pattern that not only has unfortunate precedents, but which inevitably carries with it a similar sense of superiority and inferiority. In other words, whatever the merits of SSR, its reception is bound to be overlaid with a good deal of historical baggage and possible antipathy.