I think that the problem might be even more fundamental than that. Ownership of a strategic nuclear deterrent seems to short circuit some of the internals of the modern Westphalian state apparatus. Possible mechanisms include 1) centralizing the threat of force into one singular technical system, and 2) making any condition of peer conflict necessarily existential.
With such technical systems under state control, the state is able to focus on little other than its own powers of destruction. It becomes a zombie state, a tottering shell around an ever-growing national security apparatus. Looking around at the world, this seems to be a common morphological stage in the development of nuclear powers. There is no "collapse of commmunism" nor "collapse of financier capitalism", but different shadings on the same depressing chrysalis.
One aspect of being stuck in such a chrysalis is the utter inability to solve non-existential conflicts. There is an overwhelming tendency to make all conflict existential so the full power of the state may be brought to bear, but it's a tendency offset - so far - by the presence of deterrence. The zombies can smell each other.
The most dangerous scenario, by far, is when a nuclear power has uncertain territorial borders. Ukraine, Taiwan, Korea, Kashmir, a fair hunk of Israel - there is a reason we focus on these places in the news.
This also transforms non-nuclear states into "half sovereign" states, something which we have been seeing play out especially with the end of the SU-US Cold War.