This phrase was used by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk of the Kennedy Administration at the height of the Cuba Crisis (of nuclear confrontation between the U S and USSR). It implies a puzzled (at that moment extremely fraught) confrontation. In Chinese, the phrase is often used but not necessarily with such intense and perilous connotations. It usually indicate a puzzling situation. The words large and small only indicates two different parties confronting each other.