An arms producer may also be persuaded or prevented by another nation or coalition, from either transferring a certain category of weapons, or from exporting to a particular state. Those seeking to deny the delivery of military equipment may take initiatives ranging from, at one end of the spectrum, informal negotiations with the targeted supplier, to the imposition of an arms embargo enforced with military power, at the opposite end. Those countries with a large stake in maintaining the security within a given region, will carefully scrutinize the quantity and quality of weapons delivered there. Arms exports that threaten to seriously jeopardize the capacity of a state or its allies to effectively protect their key interests will likely be challenged. Furthermore, transfers of potent weapons for which a major power has no effective countermeasures will frequently be opposed, regardless of the destination, because of the erosion to that nation's military supremacy that unchecked proliferation might entail.
International regimes serve as a final source of restraint on global arms transfers.
For members, noncompliance can lead to formal sanctions, loss of reputation, the establishment of bad precedents for others to emulate, or retaliation in another issue area. In summary, we can say that a power with both vital interests in a given area of the world and a strong sense of accountability for the maintenance of order there, will be more inclined to define for itself a self-legitimatizing role in regulating arms traffic into that region. By extension, a state with global commitments will have extensive concerns about the qualitative and quantitative flow of weaponry worldwide. Conversely, an arms producer with only local security obligations will tend to evaluate transfers far from its shores in mostly economic terms. At the same time, if such a state does not produce any significant world-class military hardware and technologies, it will be relatively unconcerned with the consequences of proliferation and the loss of proprietary rights, and hence, under less compulsion to restrict its weapons exports.