The mere existence of nuclear weapons is a threat for the simple fact that if they exist, at some point, they are bound to get used. It is pure luck that they haven't been accidentally or intentionally used in a disastrous way.
If you care about the threat of nuclear weapons, you need to realise that you aren't going to disarm foreign powers who have them through force without unacceptable risk that you cause the scenario you claim to want to avoid.
So the obvious solution is something like if the NPT were to actually be implemented as a good-faith vehicle of global nuclear disarmament. But in order to do that, you are then committed to dealing peacefully with everyone and resolving conflict within the framework of a trustworthy rules-based system. ie. A prerequisite would be acting in a way that leads to building trust in international law and order.
Currently no nuclear state is doing that. And it's hard to imagine any leader or party coming to office running on a platform that proposes it. We have all observed the absolute glee we feel when we act out our own aggressive fantasies (too numerous to mention), and the mirroring (and equally corrosive) sanctimonious pleasure we gain from condemning the aggressions of others and responding in unproductive ways which almost guarantee escalations, if not in the actual conflicts, then in the feelings which engender those conflicts (ie. "they are all against me", "this is unfair", "they never act in good-faith", "they are hypocrites", "there are no rules, only power relations", because "to the extent that there are rules, why should they apply to me, when they don't apply to them", etc).
The best we have been able to achieve, so far, in deterring the aggression of opposing powers is either to:
1. Destroy them so thoroughly that they never reconstitute (eg. Carthage)
2. Destroy them so thoroughly that it takes decades for them to reconstitute (eg. Germany after WW1)
3. Delay/frustrate them with limited conflict or sabre-rattling alone (eg. USA/Taiwan 1996, Ukraine/Russia 2014, etc.)
Nuclear weapons just means that the extermination strategy is off the table. But it doesn't look like the avoidance/posturing/bullshit strategy is going to suddenly start working.