It was a warm, humid Bengal evening when a small party of resident foreigners gathered in the Dacca home of an American diplomat. Two journalists, two American diplomats, a French diplomat and the director of a private relief organization in Bangladesh spent five hours talking about the country's bleak economic and political future. The discussion was heated, and the conclusions drawn in the early morning hours ought to evoke nightmares worthy of the cheapest horror film. The evening's host, a diplomat seasoned in the conflicts of Southeast Asia, reluctantly admitted that Bangladesh's rapid decline into absolute economic chaos might be averted only by a dedicated and ruthless party of Maoists. In any case, after more than two years of independence and $2 billion of international aid, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Bangladesh has nothing to expect from the West.