This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 11th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

North Korea is rattling sabers again, threatening South Korea and the United States.

But the present U.S. role in managing that tense relationship is unwise and endangers other important

relationships as well.

Rather than play up the fear, the U.S. should downplay the threat.

So says Doug Bandau, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

Well, the good news is there's no indication that Kim Jong-un and his colleagues are suicidal or stupid.

They would lose any war. The U.S.

could vaporize the entire country in a retaliatory strike in the North Koreans.

Know it. They've been doing this for a very long time. What's different now is kind of how concentrated the

threats are, how violent they are. That's got everybody excited, but there's really

no difference. And if you go to Pyongyang today, people are reporting out of

Pyongyang, there's no one's out of Pyongyang there's no no one's

panicking there's no no one's doing anything there they're all taking it very much

in stride I think this is all a show I my guess is that the North Koreans are

just loving it.

They're dominating headlines, they're making all the newscasts,

they've got the greatest power on earth running around,

oh, we got to do this and do that, oh my goodness.

That that's really what they're after. and that at some point they're going to

drop it on the April 15th is the birthday of the great leader the founder of

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