Not so sure I buy the poking the bear argument.
At the risk of exhausting a metaphor, said big-scary bear has actually turned out to be pretty skeletal, flea infested, with a bad case of mange and missing most of it's teeth.
It keeps growling and threatening to pull the house down - but is sounding increasingly lame.
If all you effectively have is a nuclear deterrent to threaten people with - then that leaves a lot of wiggle room for your opponent to ratchet up the pressure in small incremental steps doesn't it?