WORLD ROUNDUPGermany Must Choose: The West or China | China’s Past & Xi’s Future | Brazil Is Back, and more

The Cult of Modi  (Ramachandra Guha, Foreign Policy)
How India’s prime minister dismantled the world’s largest democratic experiment

Germany Must Choose Whether It Is with the West or with China: It Cannot Have It Both Ways  (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph)
A Faustian pact with Xi Jinping is no solution to Germany’s existential economic threat

India Gambles on Building a Leading Drone Industry  (Priti Gupta, BBC)
In February this year India banned the import of drones, except for those needed by the military or for research and development.
The government wants to develop a home-grown industry that can design and assemble drones and make the components that go into their manufacture.

Channel Crossings: Albanian Migrants Recruited to the U.K. by Gangs  (Lucy Williamson, BBC)
Albanian drug gangs are using the migrant camps of northern France as a recruitment ground, offering to pay the passage of those prepared to work in the U.K. drugs industry on arrival, the BBC has been told.

The Israel We Knew Is Gone  (Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times)
The coalition that Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu is riding back into power is rowdy alliance of ultra-Orthodox leaders and ultranationalist politicians, including some outright racist, anti-Arab Jewish extremists once deemed completely outside the norms and boundaries of Israeli politics. As it is virtually impossible for Netanyahu to build a majority coalition without the support of these extremists, some of them are almost certain to be cabinet ministers in the next Israeli government.

The GOP’s New, Russia-Friendly Campaign-Trail Buddy: Tulsi Gabbard  (Andrew Desiderio, Politico)
She once drew Republican daggers for her tolerant comments about Vladimir Putin. But these days many party players are embracing her as a Democratic dropout, despite the headaches it may bring them on Ukraine.

Inside the Growing Republican Fissure on Ukraine Aid  (Yasmeen Abutaleb and John Hudson, Washington Post)
At first, Republicans enthusiastically supported aid to Kyiv. Now, some want to cut it. Inside the internal GOP fissure over helping Ukraine.

What China’s Past Can Tell Us About Xi’s Future  (Howard W. French, Foreign Policy)
In Chinese history, long-term emperors and generalissimos have been far more common than rules-bound leaders.

Brazil Is Back  (Catherine Osborn, Foreign Policy)
Foreign leaders have rallied around Lula after his win. How will he navigate a changed world?

Securing the Taiwan Strait Will Require More Than Arms  (Darren Spinck and Liam Gibson, National Interest)
An invasion of Taiwan would be a human tragedy and a strategic catastrophe America will not recover from.

Cryptocurrencies: The New Age of Terror Financing  (Hans-Jakob Schindler, NE Global)
Technological advances have changed the way we combat terrorism in the modern world, but these developments have also allowed violent extremists and terrorists to exploit a rapidly changing landscape for their own nefarious gains. Historically, terrorist financing included donations, the misuse of non-profit organisations and criminal acts such as kidnapping, theft or the illicit drug trade and more recently, the exploitation of natural resources. However, with the growing adoption of new technologies, the misuse of cryptocurrencies by violent extremist groups and individuals has emerged as a new and additional financing technology. Cryptocurrencies provide an alternative method of payment using encrypted algorithms. The system is entirely decentralized and exists outside of government control on blockchain technology, the digital ledger that logs each transaction and is duplicated and circulated across computers. This peer-to-peer network offers enhanced levels of anonymity for the sender and receiver, a very appealing prospect for extremists. So-called “anonymity enhancing technologies” such as mixers and tumblers have also been identified by the Financial Action Task Force as a “high risk” to terrorist financing.  These applications obfuscate transaction paths and hinder investigations attempting to connect crypto assets to violent extremists and terrorists.

How Putin and Friends Stalled Climate Progress (Somini Sengupta, Steven Lee Myers, Manuela Andreoni and Suhasini Raj, New York Times)
A handful of powerful world leaders rallied around Russia and undercut global cooperation.