If the gap cannot be narrowed then there will always remain a substantial dormant demand for small arms. Ignorance compounds profound suspicion, making the process of SSR even more difficult. A genuine security threat can complicate matters even further. A reforming security sector is even less able to address threats than its unreconstructed predecessor. Successful civil control of the security sector is a function of political stability and apolitical professionalism, neither of which is likely to be present in a transitional state.
States tend to address distribution through politics.
To succeed in addressing a threat, therefore, a state must use its security structures as the means and politics as the end. A large part of unreconstructed states' inability to resolve long-standing security threats stems from a threefold inability to offer political solutions, to tailor the security sector's actions to other than absolutist political goals, and to achieve military victory, even over the most inconsequential of enemies. By creating stronger links between a more accountable political structure and a more responsive, competent security sector, SSR may also provide transitional states with the ability to address the threats that jeopardise the process. But it is important to make sure that the process, once embarked on, is thoroughgoing. There is a danger that SSR can become a developmental fad, whose trappings are assumed as camouflage for old ways.