Well, lacking troops due to big demographic and agricultural changes outside your control is not the same as being a paper tiger. Their internal turmoil coincided with a military threat.

Also western thalassocracies have been accused of being largely paper tigers a few times in their history, yet from Ottomans to Napoleon to German Empire to USSR no contenders managed to prove it.

OK, what matters is the OP's point on lies. I agree with that entirely. Lies brought the USSR down, and the same has unfortunately caught up with its Cold War adversaries. It just became visible a bit earlier that this state is not going into space colonizing everything and is not building a classless society with everyone equal and free. But 40 years later, I think, we can confidently say that neither is USA fulfilling its own "cold war promise". 30 years ago I suspect even many Americans sincerely believed that it is. Everyone thought it was one side's defeat, while in fact it was a draw with both sides failing.