Really???
LeMay and policies of the time is why the Navy now controls "most" of the strategic weapons.
The USAF considered strategic weapons as most properly deployed in offense rather than defense.
I'm not talking about tacticals, all major commands have those to use. And I'm not attempting to debate the military or political reasons for the use of strategic weapons.
Times where different in 1960's, hell they where even different in the 1970's but I've never considered strategic nuclear weapons as offensive in nature.
I always figured what started out as tactical would rapidly go strategic anyway, but wtf you either stop them in thier tracks or get rolled over.
The threat of strategic weapons was/is enough to make anyone stop and wonder if it's really worth it.
So while I consider LeMay and his policies as damned dangerous, I do have to grant the fact there were enough people like him to make anyone stop and think.
As to whether he was more prone to escalating a possible exchange of strategic weapons or scaring the other dogs away from that "bone", is something we will really never know.
Since we didn't, and they didn't, probably some of both. The man was definetly not someone you wanted to try and bluff as his plan for response was almost always the same.