During that time, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in something called the competitive escalation paradigm. This comes about when one entity (i.e. A person, business, organization, or even a country) attempts to, essentially, "one up" another entity and the competition between what they have, what they want, or what they can do simply continues to escalate quickly (Bazerman & Moore, 2009). The U.S. And the Soviet Union did that with their missile defense and offense strategies, with both countries focused on building up missiles they could use to attack the other one and defenses they would use to keep the other one's missiles out (Fitzgerald, 2001). It is good to be prepared, and protecting a country from a nuclear ballistic missile strike is certainly important, but both countries took these issues too far. It was not that they needed more missiles or a better defense, necessarily, but that they wanted to have more than the "competing" country had.

This is seen as a behavior in people and in organizations, and...

As tensions escalated between the Soviet Union and the United States, the desire for more weapons and more defenses played out in a back-and-forth battle that did not really create any winners or losers (Fitzgerald, 2001). In something such as a cold war, the idea of a competitive escalation paradigm can be highly significant and very dangerous. The stockpiling of weapons and the focus on having more than the other country has can lead to serious issues such as an escalation of tensions that causes true war to break out and an ignoring of other, important issues with which the country must also deal during that time.
References

Bazerman, M.H. & Moore, D.A. (2009). Judgment in management decision making (7th ed.). NY: Wiley.

Fitzgerald, F. (2001). Way out there in the blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the end of the Cold War. NY: Simon & Schuster.