As the Romans said - "Si vis pacem, para bellum." - "If you wish peace, prepare for war." Pacifistic, restrained military and civilian leadership paradoxically can invite violence against you.
There is credible deterrence and there is dangerous lunacy - Powers appears to have been uncomfortably close to the latter. Especially when he was wanting to initiate a strike which would probably have killed rather more than a billion people.
And North Korea went ahead and invaded the south even though everybody knew that Harry Truman had OKed dropping atomic weapons...
... the entire "madman theory" of coercion was flawed in its essence, depending as it did on twisted logic that assumed an adversary would respond to a calculated show of irrationality with something other than irrationality of its own. [1]
[1] http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0614-20.htm
In that article you can see what kind of danger unchecked assumptions and arrogance can lead people into, specially when these traits are carried by people with access to WMD.