I find it quite peculiar that this became the archetypical no-win situation among Trekkies, because, as it is described above, it isn't a no-win situation. It lacks the defining characteristic: the difficult choice between two evils. The initial decision between violating the neutral zone and not helping the vessel under attack might be considered one, but there is a very strong bias towards helping the vessel, both morally (breaking a treaty vs. letting people die) and in the expectations of the testers.
It might be of interest that Kobayashi is a common Japanese family name (meaning "small grove") while Maru is the generic Japanese suffix for cargo ship names.