NSC 68 is a top-secret policy paper titled United States Objectives and Programs for National Security that arrived on President Harry S. Truman's desk on the 7th of April 1950. Paul H. Nitze drafted this document under tight deadlines to address a rapidly shifting global landscape.
The report called for tripling defense spending to $40 or $50 billion per year from the original $13 billion set for 1950. The Truman Administration almost tripled defense spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product between 1950 and 1953 from 5 to 14.2 percent.
President Harry S. Truman initially did not support NSC 68 when it was brought to him in 1950 because he sent it back for further review until he finally approved it in 1951. North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel north on the 25th of June 1950 which gave NSC 68 new importance immediately after the Korean War began.
Senior government officials including Willard Thorp, William Schaub, George Kennan, and Dean Acheson criticized aspects of the document. George Kennan disagreed particularly with the call for massive rearmament while Dean Acheson wrote that the purpose of NSC 68 was to bludgeon the mind of top government into making a decision.
The Soviet Union had detonated an atomic bomb and communists had solidified their control of China by 1950. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was operational and military assistance for European allies had begun while a British sterling-dollar crisis occurred in the summer of 1949.