WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The interception of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) over the Pacific Ocean last week was a needless provocation to North Korea by US President Donald Trump’s administration, Caldicott said.
"The Pentagon is exhibiting behavior which is both extraordinarily childish and provocative," Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the organization that was the co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, said.
"At a time when the world is on tenterhooks worrying about the missile antics of North Korea, America indulges in an antimissile test to make sure that everyone knows that the US maintains its status as ‘King of the Hoop,’" she said.
Washington policymakers should have recognized that the way to defuse tensions and the danger of full-scale war with North Korea was to draw Pyongyang into an ongoing dialogue and slowly but steadily build an atmosphere of trust leaders there, Caldicott explained.
"Even mature people would understand that the way to deal with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-un is to engage him in dialogue, find out what he wants and to treat him with respect which is clearly what he requires," she said.
The Pacific test, in which a Ground-based Mid-courser Interceptor (GBI) launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California intercepted an ICBM, instead reflected an immature and teenage mentality by US policymakers, Caldicott observed.
"The men in the Pentagon are like little boys in a sand box boasting… Where will all this lead?" she asked.
"It is obvious, somewhere sometime a city will be targeted with a North Korean nuclear armed missile and then all hell will break loose," she concluded.
Caldicott is the author of many books, including "The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military Industrial Complex" and "War in Heaven: The Arms Race in Outer Space." The Smithsonian Institution has named her one of the most influential women of the 20th century.
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