Yes, that's quite correct. In fact, I doubt that any country currently possessing nukes, or attempting to acquire them, really might have plans to actually use them. And, possibly, they don't even consider handing them off to terrorist organizations to be a good idea either...
The simple fact is that the US still, even after over a decade of heavy work at dismantling warheads, possesses enough nuclear firepower to reduce pretty much any nation to a plain of shattered glass within the span of a few hours.
And it really doesn't matter that, as many people say, "terrorists don't have a return address." Unlike jihadists who can base themselves in any country they can avoid being caught in, Even after adding the DPRK (a.k.a. North Korea) to the list, there's still only a single-digit number of countries that posses such weapons, and it wouldn't be that difficult to figure out, in the case of a nuclear terrorist attack, of where the weapon came from. Especially when said organizations have a habit of bragging about the attacks afterward.
However, if a country is capable of threatening another with a nuclear attack, that CAN provide a very strong deterrent, making it a VERY powerful toekn to have on your side in negotiations... Nuclear arms, in these situations, make conventional forces effectively obsolete. This is a very attractive thing for all the other countries that aren't the United States; none of them can ever hope to match the expertise, technology, and equipment that the US military employs.
This is also much of why many in the US government wish to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses; with such systems in place, one of the most effective methods of delivering a nuclear warhead, through an ICBM, (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) either launched from land or a submarine, would be worthless. Already, very strong air defenses make dropping a bomb from a plane impossible.
Wake up, George Lucas... The Matrix has you...
