Quick! What's another word for "pissing match?"?

Verbal spar?

Brouhaha? Kerfuffle? Testosterone battle?

macho show of strength?

@augustlan, Brouhaha wins. Thank you dear.

@everyone else: thanks for the suggestions!

I personally think pissing match is perfectly scholarly in this case.

My mom would say, “Big dick contest.” Same idea.

@everephebe, my professor loves the phrase, but unfortunately, I’m proud enough of this essay that I’m going to turn it in to some competitions, perhaps, and I don’t think the judges are likely to have the same charming sense of humor my professor has.

@laureth, lol, I do enjoy that.

Oh, well, if it’s for a scholarly paper, then “micturational sparring” should work for the first.

As for @laureth‘s excellent contribution, you could use the Latin: gran phallus.

How about “unfriendly frotting”?

Or “mutually antagonistic frotting”?

How about a good ol’ grudge match?

Fight fo dying empires

Nationalistic cock fight?

Lurve score.

I guess “penis measuring contest” wouldn’t be very scholarly either…

Isn’t this sort of technological escalation just called an arms race?

Though there’s always room for “brouhaha.”

Pissing match sums it up so well, it’s difficult to improve on because it does sum it up so well. How about “flawed nationalistic ideological contest.” Naw, I’d go with pissing match. War is so stupid, it deserves a crude description. And the idiots that came up with those tactics probably would think pissing match fits.

Brouhaha and pissing match seem mild to me, when people died by the millions.

I can’t come up with a pithy phrase at the moment but I am thinking it was more like a fight with straight razors or a continental suicide pact.

Perhaps keep the idea of pissing match, but de-vulgar it and go with “urination match”? Sorta like how I put in “flying fig” instead of “flying fuck” in one of my papers”

Well I made an A and got a “freaking awesome essay” from my professor, so I guess Brouhaha worked. Thanks for the tips, guys. Lurve all around.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Not ” Quick! ” enough, but you could have gone with to-do. Far more cynical and understated than the more jovial sounding ”..Brouhaha..”. More dismissively biting.
It depends on what effect you were after though.

There’s also chest-pounding and dominance displays.