Although interestingly it works best if the other side believes you are an insane fundamentalist psychopath. So the US assumed that Russians, being Godless com

Although interestingly it works best if the other side believes you are an insane fundamentalist psychopath. So the US assumed that Russians, being Godless commie atheists were itching to nuke the good old USA if they could. Rather than their generals being a generation that had fought in the ruins of Stalingrad and didn't want to see that happen again. Fortunately the Russians assumed that US were a bunch of bible-thumping God bothering spoiled children who would nuke them rather than have to face the horrors of fighting a Stalingrad type battle. So everything worked out ok! There is still a debate in the global-thermonuclear-war business about whether Curtis LeMay actually was the insane trigger-happy character from Dr Strangelove he appeared - or if that was a deliberate image projected to convince the Russians that the USA was crazy enough to use the bomb.