I was always under the impression that the one ring—a weapon so powerful it will corrupt and destroy everything good in Middle Earth—was an obvious allegory for the Bomb.
The point of the fellowship was not to study the ring, make their own, and keep the peace in Middle Earth with a mutual assured destruction. Instead they had the fellowship take the ring back to Mordor where it would be destroyed.
Tolken does not seem to share your belief that: “mutually-assured destruction remains one of our best-available options for tenuous stability and peace”.
EDIT: And neither does the United Nations. I encourage you to read the Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons (and subsequently ask your government to sign it if they haven’t already) and see why the presence of nuclear weapons among our nation states is a terrifying and dangerous endeavor.