>>...Many are still in denial about Russia’s status as a superpower,...
Through the 50s and 60s at least, it's been an advantage for both the Pentagon and weapon systems providers to portray the USSR as much more powerful than their assessments showed, use it as a 'boogieman' to get budgets passed.
I don't see it as all bad actors, more a matter of them concentrating on the worst possible case - and these were people who had had to make the choice between fighting the Nazis in Europe *or* the Japanese in the Pacific. We didn't have the resources to do both at the same time (particularly with MacArthur in the Pacific, but that's a separate issue) - and we were *losing* for a while there. Of course they'd do whatever they thought necessary to avoid a repeat - and Kruchev's "We're turning them [nuclear missiles] out like sausages" gave them a lever. Yes it got out of hand (Google 'overkill' if you didn't live through the Cold War) as the Sovs were terrified - particularly of a sudden strike wiping out everyone in Moscow. So they had a system using signal rockets that was impossible to call back. One thing to remember about the internet is that the original intent was to have a communications system that could deal with intermediate points being suddenly gone - gone as in suddenly nuked. Hard to condemn people focusing on the worst possible threat in that situation.