ABSTRACT
Introduction The control of nuclear weapons spread is both an urgent policy problem and a subject matter for contending theories of international politics. In this chapter, I first show how three different theoretical perspectives contribute to the policyrelevant understanding of proliferation. In the second section, I examine alternative and hypothetical nuclear “worlds” for pertinent insights. In the third section, I offer concluding points of argument and interest. The discussion in this chapter necessarily follows, and builds upon, issues raised in the preceding chapter – but it ranges across a broader steppe of theory and shoots its arrows further ahead in time.
