awash

Imagine a room awash in gasoline and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches, the other has seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned whose ahead, whose stronger. Well that's the kind of situation we are actually in. The amount of weapons that are available to the United States and the Soviet Union are so bloated, so grossly in excess of what's needed to dissuade the other, that if it weren't to tragic it would be laughable.