WORLD ROUNDUPIndia-Pakistan Cease-Fire Cements a Dangerous Baseline | China and Russia Are Deploying Powerful New Weapons: Ideas | Rooting for Germany’s Conservative Chancellor, and more

A Russian-Stoked Protest Movement Lifts a MAGA-like Populist in Romania  (Catherine Belton, Washington Post)
Sunday’s presidential election in Romania could have significant implications for NATO and the European Union if the ultranationalist candidate wins.

Apple Used China to Make a Profit. What China Got in Return Is Scarier.  (Hannah Beech, New York Times)
In “Apple in China,” Patrick McGee argues that by training an army of manufacturers in a “ruthless authoritarian state,” the company has created an existential vulnerability for the entire world.

Why We’re Rooting for Germany’s Conservative Chancellor  (Editorial Board, New York Times)
The Alternative for Germany, a far-right political party, is among the world’s most extreme major parties. It echoes Nazi messaging. It has ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and it traffics in anti-Muslim and antisemitic language. The party — known as the AfD, an abbreviation of Alternative für Deutschland — is so extreme that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far right, broke with it.
The AfD is also alarmingly popular. It finished second in this year’s parliamentary elections and first among voters younger than 45. As many Germans have become frustrated with their country’s direction and the mainstream parties, they have looked for an alternative, and the AfD appeals to their discontent.
For all these reasons, we are rooting for the success of Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz. He is a 69-year-old lawyer who leads Germany’s center-right Christian Democrats, the only group to finish ahead of the AfD in the February elections.
In the best-case scenario, Germany’s recent debt agreement can become a model for the Merz coalition government. Mr. Merz and his governing partners have an opportunity to show that the political establishment can still deliver results. Their success matters for Germany and for liberal democracy.

China and Russia Are Deploying Powerful New Weapons: Ideas  (Economist)
The West is retreating from the battle of the narrative.
One example: Sixty lucky students got the chance to train as journalists last year at African Initiative, a new press agency in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Trainees were given online and in-person lessons in reporting, with the promise that three of them would eventually be hired as full-time staff at the agency. The catch, as reported by Forbidden Stories, a network of investigative journalists, was that African Initiative is run by Russian intelligence.
Many Western countries are winding down their efforts to broadcast to the world. One example: In March President Donald Trump pulled funding for Voice of America and its sister networks, and dismantled USAID, which funded thousands of journalists around the world.

India-Pakistan Cease-Fire Cements a Dangerous Baseline  (Sushant Singh, Foreign Policy)
Future conflicts will likely erupt faster and escalate more intensely.