The adoption of NSC-68 led to a massive increase in American defence spending, rising from US$13.1 billion in 1950 to US$22.5 billion and then direct American assistance to the French forces the Vietminh in Indo-china. But as far as the conduct of the Korea War was concerned, after the Chinese intervention destroyed the hopes of total victory over the North, containment resulted in rather minimalist strategy of seeking to restore the status quo ante, as if to do more might provoke the enlargement of the war to begin a third world war. A more flexibly conceived national strategy might have suggested different option. The immediate effect of the Korean War and the strategy of containment was an attempt to draw a demarcation line between the countries controlled by the communist and the rest of the Asia-Pacific. This included the attempt to establish an economic embargo against China even more severe than the one that applied against the Soviet Union.