Photo, above: Binh-Ba Island, Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-hosts: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.

Hour One

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, in re:  $400 billion between Russia, selling, and China, buying, Russian gas.   Deal been in the works for more than a decade; means that a political accommodation has been reached.  A few years before gas actually arrives – need pipeline. China got a fairly low price; complicating factors: Russians and Chinese do not trust each other.  What they have in common is that they don’t like the US.  Note that Russia is about to sign an energy agreement with Iran – Russia wants a new security architecture for Asia.  HSBC issues numbers; purchasing managers's  index, PMI: above 50 = positive expectations; below 50 = heading the wrong way.  Current: Low 48 – China's economy is weak and remains so. Double-digit growth not on the horizon.  Pres Putin – if you’re listening: The Chinese people who signed the agreement with you –their income isn't reliable; they may not be able to pay you for what they've agreed to buy. 

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 1, Block B:  Arthur Waldron, Lauder Professor of International Relations in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, in re:  China and Vietnam and Putin's visit to Shanghai.

Chinese never imagine that the Filipinos, Japanese, others, will take effective countermeasures; in a year or two Southeast Asians will be rather well prepared  militarily, so China has to grab everything it can now – getting more and more people angry, so it may all go out of control.

Three bites out of Filipino territory this year, no response from Manila.  We can see coming a more or less permanent US presence in Subic and Cam Ranh Bay.  It was the Chinese who were belligerent in 1979. Vietnamese are masters of diplomacy – played Beijing off Moscow throughout the whole Vietnam war in order to ensure a continuous arms flow.

Hard for Vietnam to take down the oil rig, so it'll just keep buzzing China. Note that Vietnam is a thousand miles deep [long].  If China actually attacks, all bets are off.

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n. Anatoly Zak, Russian Space Web, and author, Past Explained, Future Explored;  in re: China has just increased Roscosmos budget by $52 billion; it’s now reached the size of the European Space Agy. Manned space program is expensive in general.  Russia expected to start dvpg large rockets; working on designs for the Moon rocket.  Bill Harwood of CBS: Yes, the cosmonaut program is worried about its future because of the new cold war.  Any ambitious program – Moon or Mars – obviously needs very good political relations.  

Proton failure in the third stage last week: the workhorse of Russian space program – a main moneymaker for Russian commercial, also important for future of the manned space program, in launching ISS; also, for 2018 rover launch. Russia could separate its module from the ISS and have its own independent space station US has nothing like that.   Politically and from engineering POV, almost impossible for US and China to collaborate.  New cosmodrome in Amur oblast: same latitude as Baikonur, can launch in an easterly direction into same orbit as they use now, same orbital inclination.   Hard for US to go to higher orbits – "big math penalty" for US  to send from Canaveral, need smaller payload.  If Russia dropped the US?  Assuming Russia could make the agreements work, we'd have nothing and the Russians would have a space station.  Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 1, Block D:  Abheek Bhattacharya, Heard on the Street, WSJ,  in re: Modi's huge victory (337 out of 545 seats in lower House of parliament; BJP doesn’t yet control the upper House, which is needed for big projects privatize state-owned monopolies, e.g.) : he presents a better business platform than the oppositions doe, but he may not be able to come through. In two years, elections for the upper House.  What does Modi want to do? He's good on admin, but he tends to approve small things, not willing to endorse big-ticket reforms.  He's probably not an ideological free-marketeer,  He's a do-er. 

Russia-China relations : the longer it takes to consummate the marriage, the larger a dowrey Russia will have to pay – shale revolution, Russia needs the political capital to show the West ("We have a buyer, don’t need Europe").  In the just-signed deal, China has favorable pricing, whereas if the deal hadn’t gone through, Russia would have had a handful of ashes. 

China, Russia sign $400 billion gas deal
  China signed a long-awaited deal for Russian natural gas Wednesday, giving China a new energy source and Russia a diplomatic ...  China and Russia Ink $400 billion gas deal   Russia and China Agree on Long-Sought Natural Gas ...

Hour Two

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen Yates, chief executive office of D.C. International Advisory and former aide to Vice President Cheney; in re: Two large authoritarian states, reminiscent of Ribbentrop-Molotov.  The deep narrative is het power of energy, by which authoritarian states can hold power and leverage. In South China Sea, potential independent dvpt for neighboring states which China does not want to see occur. Disintegration of the intl system; consequences of provocative weakness: when the US becomes too passive . . . . When the US chooses nt to lead or have influence, our allies choose not to cohere. Good allies in Japan and in India, but there's no replacement for American vision.  We do have problems at home – but usu crises occur in the world, and when we have to get involved, we're a mighty force -but we do not want to get to that point again; it’s very expensive. 

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 2, Block B:  Nitin Gokhale, anchor at New Delhi Television and author of Beyond NJ 9842: The Saichen Saga, in re:  Congress rejected in the elections; it'll take a long time for it to recover - leadership is confused. Modi will have a little more muscular natl security policy, will not brook delays from the entrenched military, wants speedy upgrade of military. In case of a strike will make a quicker decision. He's a workoholic, can delegate and ask for advice.  Opposite to previous PM, who was hobbled by his own party, and past defense minister was more concerned preserving his own image of pristine honesty being preserved;  effete in response to Pakistani provocations and Chinese incursion into Ladakh. . ..  India's nuclear policy is being reviewed; China will be ore careful of provoking India that n it is of doing so to Vietnam and Philippines.

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Heather Timmons, Quartz: Asia correspondent, in re: Narendra Modi is the Indian stock market’s $300 billion man.  China, Russia, and Iran are having a friendly get-together to sort out security in Asia Congress ran one of the most spineless campaigns I've seen in my life, and the Indian electorate has been desperate for a change.  A lot of these votes were against Congress more than pro-Modi. Everything needs to be built: roads, electricity, all infrastructure, everything.   Extreme unhappiness in Vietnam over the oil rig; Russia and China have signed an oil deal.  Putin gave a great media interview in China about "his trusted friend, China" – to elbow the US and Japan out of the way. However China doesn't think that Russia is a model to be followed.  Note that the Shanghai Cooperation Mtg excluded Japan and Vietnam. China can't grasp why, if it shows up with gunboats, people get bent out of shape.  "They've become either aggressive or unhinged, depending on your POV." Not working with the same logic as their regional neighbors are.  Vietnamese PM has just announced a signed agreement with Philippines. Want the dispute to be raised to intl arbitration.  So many bad things happening that it must reach a denouement. The scale of Modi's victory: impassive to the rest of Asia that democracy works in this largest democracy. 

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 2, Block D:  Sadanand Dhume, WSJ, in re: Modi's Next Moves. How can the Senate have 44 seats?  The great Congress  Party has 44 seats. What do they say or do now?  Numbness, state of denial?  The dominant political force in India since 1947,ruled the country for all but 13 years. The scale of this defeat raises question of survival.  Modi has been Enemy No. One to Congress, a personal grudge match – Modi asked for "An India free of Congress" and the voters obliged.   Congress is a family business; the anointed leader has no competence in politics, and it has no other candidate for leader.  Sister can give a decent political speech, but she's been a mom with children and the Indian middle class and the educated are fed up with the dynastic culture.    When Modi goes back to the voters in 2019, he’ll have to have delivered economically or he'll be out: "We want smooth roads, reliable electricity, and jobs, as in Gujarat."   For he first time, an election pivoted decisively on the economy, on development. In a very broad sense, this is India's Reagan or Thatcher.

Hour Three

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 3, Block A:  Monica Crowley, Fox, in re: In state after state this primary season, entrenched politicians are proving that incumbency counts for something after all, leveraging the stature and financial firepower that comes with high office to demolish challengers from the activist right.

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 3, Block B:  Eli Lake, senior national security correspondent, Newsweek/Daily Beast, in re: Over My Dead Body’: Spies Fight Obama Push to Downsize Terror War  The Obama administration concluded in 2012 that al Qaeda posed no direct threat to the U.S.—and has sought to scale back the fight ever since, over intell officials’ rising objections.

In 2012, the Obama administration produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate that reached a surprising conclusion: al Qaeda was no longer a direct threat to America. That classified assessment, which has never before been publicly disclosed, was in keeping with the message coming from the White House. President Obama rode to re-election in 2012 partly on the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. At rallies and in press conferences, the president and top officials publicly said al Qaeda was on the run. ut some senior U.S. intelligence officials, like Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn, fought hard against that assessment, which amounted to an official pronouncement of the American intelligence community’s collected wisdom. Flynn and his faction won a partial victory, striking the judgment that . . .

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 3, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: The first preliminary list of candidate landing sites for NASA’s next Mars rover have been proposed.  At the conclusion of the workshop, attendees voted informally on the nearly 30 candidate sites that researchers had presented—ranking the sites as being of high, medium, or low scientific interest. Floating to the top was a site called Northeast Syrtis Major, a terrain at the edge of the Isidis Basin, the remnant of one of Mars’s biggest and most ancient asteroid impacts. Jack Mustard, a planetary scientist at Brown University and an advocate for the site, says material from the impact could offer a precise date for that event. Scientists also want a piece of nearby lava flows, thought to have oozed out and cooled several hundred million years later.   Nothing is even close to being decided yet, however.

In related news, a new study suggests that dozens of microbes might have stowed away on Curiosity when it left for Mars.  Emphasis must be placed on the word “suggests,” however.

Like a phoenix: NASA has officially approved the new mission for the crippled Kepler space telescope, allowing observations to continue for another two years.

During the K2 mission, Kepler will stare at target fields in the plane of Earth’s orbit, known as the ecliptic, during observing campaigns that last about 75 days each. In this orientation, solar radiation pressure can help balance the spacecraft, making the most of Kepler’s compromised pointing ability, team members said.

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 3, Block D: Andy Sullivan, Reuters, in re: 
With ads and foot soldiers, Republican 'establishment' squeezes Tea Party On a recent Saturday, foot soldiers in the Republican Party's civil war fanned out across a neighborhood of winding streets and manicured lawns to beat back the Tea Party.

Hour Four

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 4, Block A: Hundred Days: The Campaign that Ended World War I by Nick Lloyd, Part Two (1 of 4)

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 4, Block B: Hundred Days: The Campaign that Ended World War I by Nick Lloyd, Part Two (2 of 4)

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Hundred Days: The Campaign that Ended World War I by Nick Lloyd, Part Two (3 of 4)

Wednesday  21 May  2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Hundred Days: The Campaign that Ended World War I by Nick Lloyd, Part Two (4 of 4)

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