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The failure to appreciate how paranoid and scared the Soviets were almost started a nuclear war in 1983 with the Able Archer debacle - at least Reagan realised that the "Evil Empire" rhetoric was a mistake and calmed things down.

[NB I'm not trying to defend the Soviets, who were a thoroughly unpleasant bunch, but the colossal failure to understand their motivations and just how one side the Cold War was for most of the time almost ended things.]

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While we may like to think of the Western intelligence agencies as all knowing for large periods throughout the Cold War they were essentially blind as to the inner working / thinking of the USSR. The occasional defectors or agents who could bring understanding are significant because of their scarcity.

The West had many reasons to believe the USSR was stronger than it was, hawks on the right wanted to believe it, fellow travellers on the left wanted to believe it, the Russian political system wanted to believe it (and lied to itself repeatedly).

The "Bomber Gap" and "Missile Gap" were known to be fiction pretty much at the time but for partisan political purposes nobody could actually be seen to publicly acknowledge how small the threat was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap

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