INDIA-CHINA AGREEMENT-Chance to Shift Course

their disapproval of Yeltsin's comprehensive usurpation of the powers nominally belonging to the different branches of government. They have threatened to withhold the transfer of tax proceeds to Moscow and to flout Yeltsin's directives. The latter could nor care less. He has solid western support, which means a larger inflow of both foodgrains and armaments in the immediate period. The inflow of in- vestible capital is likely to be at a more modest pace. Recession-hit west Europe and north America have other priorities than give massively to rebuild former socialist edifices. Yeltsin and his cronies will therefore be in control in Moscow; they will be duly recognised as official Russia in the UN and its forums. The domestic military brass will obey him because he will be the conduit of arms from the west. But resources will remain short; money with which to try to bribe the outlying provincial councils will simply not be there. The internal insurgencies will therefore continue. True, since the federating provinces themselves will have little disposable surplus in the absence of any economic revival worth the name, the prospect will be of the system disintegrating at all levels, chaos to the left of us, chaos to the right of us, chaos in front of us, chaos making up our rear. The affluent countries will perhaps be unmoved. With no cold war around, the crusading zeal for ideology too ebbs away, fast and inexorably. It will be a different matter if the pervasive state of chaos induces a resurgence of socialist ideology. But the west will cross that bridge only when it has been reached.