Hello and welcome back to Potsayvilworld. I am your host, Tommy Vitor. I am dropping a bonus episode this week is a double header. So get excited.

First I checked in with Asia expert Evan Maderoos about North Korea's recent provocations. Then I sat down with Eric Fanning. He's the 22nd Secretary of the Army and the first openly gay service secretary in history. We talked a week or two ago.

Eric has had basically every major job you can think of at the Department of Defense. We discuss what it's like to be essentially CEO of the Army, the importance of diversity in our military, Eric's journey in the Pentagon through Don't Ask, Don't Tell to Today, and then Trump's stupid cruel transgender ban.

The conversation was before Trump officially sent over his memo to DOD with formal guidance about the transgender ban. But I think you'll find Eric's arguments against it persuasive and important as we try to marshal Congress to fight against this mean-spirited ban.

So as always if you'd like to show please rate and review us, check out the Potsayvilworld Facebook page for more information on policy and to suggest ideas for episodes and guests. And you can follow me on Twitter at TVTor084ConstantWineEcommentary about the world. Thanks so much.

On Potsayvilworld today I have Evan Madero. Evan is a Asia policy expert who worked on the National Security Council for six years and is now the managing director for Asia at the Eurasia Group, a global consulting firm. Evan, thanks for jumping back on the pod man. I appreciate it.

I appreciate that. So I wanted to ask you about North Korea briefly because it seems like this latest provocation launching a missile over Japan is a pretty significant escalation in North Korea's provocations. But you're an expert and I wanted to ask you and hear what you think.

North Korea's recent launch of an intermediate range ballistic missile is absolutely a big deal. But for reasons different than many of the commentators are discussing currently. In particular the fact that this IRBM launch was focused on testing the alliance, the US-Japan alliance.

It was focused on showing the United States showing Japan that Tokyo is in the crosshairs. And as North Korea perfects its ICBM capability that that could call into question the credibility of the US extended deterrent against Japan. In other words Japan the key ally is just as much at risk if not more as North Korea develops this capability to target the United States.

So over time I mean the North Koreans have fired at Korean islands and killed individuals they sank a ship called the Chonan South Korean vessel. I mean where do you think this provocation ranks in terms of their recent history of lashing out or taking sort of militaristic steps.

Right. I had a great question Tommy. I would say it's more of a medium term risk than an immediate risk. It's not like sinking the Chonan which back in 2010 required the US and South Korea to immediately respond. Rather this is putting Tokyo and Washington on notice that as North Korea develops a broader range of missile capabilities that Pyongyang cannot only threaten the United States, cannot only threaten Tokyo and South Korea.

But Pyongyang is also willing to begin to test and probe the alliance and create debates and divisions between Washington and Tokyo.

It puts more pressure on the US puts more pressure on Tokyo and even so to do more potentially creating frictions in those alliances.

Do you see splits in the alliances that are disconcerting to you?

Not yet, but it's definitely something to watch especially between the US and South Korea. President Moon, President Trump's strategies toward North Korea fundamentally are not aligned and certainly not the way they were under previous conservative governments in South Korea.

President Moon is much more interested in dialogue and engagement and a diplomatic solution than the Trump administration appears.

And South Korea is concerned that Trump might drag South Korea into a conflict. I mean it's one of the reasons why South Korea and President Moon have gone on the record publicly as saying Trump has given me a promise that he won't use military force against North Korea like a surgical strike against North Korea unless South Korea has given its permission.

So I saw that the UN Security Council issued some sort of response but it doesn't look like there's any sort of action associated with it.

Do you think that we should look for more steps to be taken in response to this provocation or the sort of totality of all the launches recently or are we kind of stuck in place here?

I think we're really stuck in place. I mean sure the UN Security Council might debate some more sanctions but the recent UN Security Council resolution 2371 was pretty robust.

I think everybody is very much in the mode of trying to implement it because it had some pretty strong sanctions in it to see whether or not that will push North Korea closer to thinking about getting back to diplomacy.

I think it's going to be hard because the threshold of pain necessary for North Korea to come back to talks is so high and it's not clear to me that any of the other P5 members are going to be willing to walk up to that threshold.

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