PC: Korean War escalates?

I'm going through a survey of modern Chinese military history and just hit the Korean War chapter, which makes me wonder - could the Korean War have escalated into WW3, or at least Pacific War 2.0?

The former seems more likely - how can you get a PRC-USA war at the time without Soviet intervention? - but the latter has a novelty factor (to me) that I like. Any way to bring that about? Can we get Stalin to blink somehow?
 
he former seems more likely - how can you get a PRC-USA war at the time without Soviet intervention? - but the latter has a novelty factor (to me) that I like. Any way to bring that about? Can we get Stalin to blink somehow?

By 1953, Stalin had learned from painful expreeince to listen to his military commanders. The Korean War was too soon after WWII and the exhausted Soviet Union did not have the strength to get into a full shooting war with the U.S. war machine. An attempt to do so, could lead to unrest in the USSR whose long suffering people had been promised a new dawn after the WWII victory only to find Stalinism re instituted.

If the war spread, it was only going to spread to the PRC. The Soviet contribution would be increased number of volunteer pilots flying Chinese Migs and more importantly, providing the Chinese with lots of heavy artillery and armour.
 
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