By the early 1960s the chronic instability experienced by Jordan in the previous decade was at an end. The political domain was in the grip of a national security state, with the coercive capacity of the loyalist core of the army increasingly complemented by an emerging domestic intelligence apparatus. Against such a backdrop, the political realm in the kingdom was, in the absence of political parties, a sanitised one, with legal activity easily manipulated by an active political elite moving in orbit around the palace. The allure of radical Arab nationalism was in any case in decline after the collapse of the United Arab Republic in 1961. The growing struggle between conservative and radical forces in the region increasingly came to focus on Yemen after 1962, giving further respite to the kingdom, though regime change in Iraq and Syria in 1963 momentarily re-exposed Jordan’s regional vulnerabilities.