Or, perhaps, the optimal survival strategy of a nation-state is to make the thing you don't want used against you until it becomes so onerous that international standards move to ban it.

Gas warfare was banned after WWI, but during WWI, both allies and central powers used it before it was banned. Nuclear weapons are banned... After the Allies used them twice.

International bans on intolerable weapons are a great idea. Unilateral disarmament of a useful weapon with no international ban may be suicidal.