For decades, the U.S. line was that embracing China in the world economy and global order would inevitably help modernize and liberalize that country. Now, there’s a growing sense among members of Congress that this was a miscalculation – and there’s an urgent need to wake up and correct course.

In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, Republicans and Democrats across a range of committees are highlighting what they see as the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and pushing to counter its ideological, economic, and military advances. 

“This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century – and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake,” said Chair Mike Gallagher at the first hearing of a new House select committee on China.

“The CCP laughed at our naiveté while they took advantage of our good faith,” added the Wisconsin Republican, a former Marine intelligence officer. “But the era of wishful thinking is over.”

The select committee hearing, held in prime time, was one of several on Tuesday that underscored how serious this new Congress is about taking on China, with the House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services committees also making the case for a tougher approach toward Beijing.

Those efforts have gained new urgency in the wake of the recent Chinese spy balloon incident, and frustration with China’s lack of transparency about the COVID-19 pandemic. FBI Director Christopher Wray this week blamed China for interfering with efforts to determine how the pandemic began, and confirmed publicly for the first time that the FBI believes it started with a lab leak in Wuhan, an assessment made with “moderate confidence.” That theory, which China has criticized as political and which was initially dismissed by many in the United States, garnered renewed attention with news that the Department of Energy also now views a lab leak as the most likely source, albeit with “low confidence.” Four other intelligence elements concluded that the virus emerged naturally, also with “low confidence.”

Nathan Howard/Reuters

Members of the House select committee on China watch an introduction video about Chinese leadership, in Washington, Feb. 28, 2023. One clip quoted Chinese leader Xi Jinping as saying that “our struggle and contest with Western countries is irreconcilable, so it will inevitably be long, complicated, and sometimes very sharp.”

Among the key concerns for Congress is China’s theft of intellectual property, giving it an unearned leg up economically and militarily. There is also growing momentum to counter the influence it wields via the social media platform TikTok, which is increasingly becoming a source of news for Americans and also collects personal information that Beijing could exploit. This week the Biden administration required the app to be removed from all government devices within 30 days.

On the security front, there’s growing concern about a potential takeover of Taiwan, which produces more than 90% of the advanced chips used in smartphones, laptops, and military equipment. And human rights issues, particularly the mass incarceration, sterilization, and forced labor of China’s Muslim Uyghur population, are also at the top of the list.

That’s not to say there’s total agreement on these complex issues – between or even within parties. Within the Biden administration, economic interests argue for more engagement, while national security interests take a more hawkish approach. Amid those divides, Congress could shift the balance by pressuring the White House to take further steps on TikTok, for example, or on U.S. military assistance to Taiwan. That pressure campaign includes, in part, an effort to galvanize American citizens by driving home to them that the CCP is not a faraway problem but one that threatens the American way of life. 

“Americans don’t want to be in a cold war, hot war, a clash of civilizations – or any kind of hostilities with any country,” says Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the top Democrat on the House select committee on China, in a phone interview. “But they want to protect themselves, their interests, and their values.” 

“We have many tools” 

The success of any recalibration on China policy will ride in large part on lawmakers’ ability to carve out specific areas of bipartisan cooperation in an otherwise fractious Congress. And it will require allaying some colleagues’ concerns that the efforts to prevent a bigger conflict with China may inadvertently provoke one.

Rep. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat on the select committee, takes issue with what he sees as the recent proliferation of “unhelpful metaphors” – such as referring to a new “cold war.” 

“We’re framing this problem with such an immediate pessimism. That puts us in a place where we’re forgetting our strength,” he says in a phone interview. “When you’re running a race, you don’t need to spend all your time trying to slow down your competitor.”

Nathan Howard/Reuters

Witnesses (from left) Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing; Tong Yi, Chinese human rights advocate; former national security adviser H.R. McMaster; and former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger are sworn in prior to their testimony during a House select committee hearing, in Washington, Feb. 28, 2023.

The framing is important, he adds, because it affects the “temperature” in the country, and determines how the U.S. will respond. It also affects America’s ability to build coalitions. 

“We have many tools we need to focus on,” says Representative Kim. “It can’t just be about our military and our military strength.”

Some of the tools proposed in congressional bills include isolating China financially, including through the International Monetary Fund and financial sanctions on senior Chinese officials to deter and/or punish aggression toward Taiwan. Another pair of bills in the House and Senate would open the way for sanctions against TikTok. Others involve supporting allies facing economic coercion by China and reducing Beijing’s financial influence abroad by removing China’s designation as a developing country, which qualifies it for low-interest loans. 

Another key tool is preventing U.S. technology and investment from fueling the rise of companies connected to the Chinese government. House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, focused much of his hearing yesterday on export controls, grilling Undersecretary Alan Estevez of the Department of Commerce about why its Bureau of Industry and Security approved more than $23 billion in licenses to sell U.S. technology to blacklisted Chinese companies in just one quarter last year.

“If BIS continues to mindlessly greenlight sensitive technology sales, the CCP has proven they will use our own inventions against us,” said Chair McCaul.

Framing the relationship between China and the U.S. as a “race” incorrectly implies that the two countries each have their own lane – and are staying in it, says Ivan Kanapathy, who directed the National Security Council’s China and Taiwan work under the Trump and early Biden administrations. 

“If you want to call it a competition, it’s not a race – it’s a boxing match,” says Mr. Kanapathy, now a senior associate with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Irreconcilable systems?

Representative Krishnamoorthi says the U.S. wants to ensure a market-based economic system; freedom of thought, assembly, and speech; and a world that is “hospitable” to democratic values. 

“What folks have to understand is that in [CCP] Chairman Xi’s conceptualization, these particular values are not consistent with his ideology necessarily,” says Mr. Krishnamoorthi. He emphasizes that the select committee’s scrutiny focuses on the CCP, not on the people of China or people of Chinese origin, and cautions against inflaming anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S.

A video clip played at the beginning of the select committee hearing quoted Chinese leader Xi Jinping as saying that “our struggle and contest with Western countries is irreconcilable, so it will inevitably be long, complicated, and sometimes very sharp.” It also showed a clip of him garnering applause when he said, according to translated subtitles, that any foreign force that tried to bully, oppress, or subjugate the Chinese people would “bash their heads bloody on a great wall of steel.”

Tong Yi, a Chinese human rights advocate who now lives in the U.S., told the select committee Tuesday, “In the U.S., we have to face the fact that we have helped to feed the baby dragon of the CCP.”

Mr. Xi now sees a “fleeting window of opportunity” to act while he perceives weakness in the U.S., said another witness, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster. He cited a joint statement between the Chinese leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of the Beijing Olympics last year, which he summarized as, “Hey, United States, West, free world – you’re over. It’s time for a new era of international relations – and we’re in charge now.”

In the statement, Russia and China criticized unnamed global powers of efforts to employ “unfair competition practices, intensify geopolitical rivalry, fuel antagonism and confrontation, and seriously undermine the international security order and global strategic stability.” It laid out an alternative vision of a more multilateral global system. 

“It’s not a choice between Washington and Beijing,” said Lt. Gen. McMaster before the congressional panel. “It’s a choice between sovereignty and servitude.”

Coming off some of the most tense years since Japan and South Korea normalized relations in 1965, the two countries appear to be entering a new era in defense cooperation. 

The Asian neighbors recently stepped up military ties, along with their treaty ally, the United States, in response to geopolitical pressures including North Korea’s growing missile and nuclear weapons program, concerns surrounding China’s military buildup, and the war in Ukraine. They have held joint anti-submarine warfare exercises and ballistic missile defense drills, and pledged at a trilateral meeting in Washington last month “to further strengthen and diversify security cooperation to counter the threat” from North Korea. 

Today, following the trio’s first economic security dialogue on Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol marked a key anniversary in relations by saying Japan has “transformed from a militaristic aggressor of the past into a partner” that “shares the same universal values.”

​​“You’ve seen a marked shift in bilateral relations over the past six to 12 months,” says Frank Aum, senior expert on Northeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a former U.S. defense official.

Yet solidifying such gains in security ties between America’s two most important allies in Asia ultimately depends on progress in resolving their nagging historical conflicts – disputes dating from Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula that are deeply rooted in the national identity of both countries, experts say.

Today, Seoul and Tokyo have a rare and limited window of opportunity to do just that, following the election of two conservative leaders: President Yoon in 2022 and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in 2021. The two sides are negotiating a deal to provide compensation and an apology to Koreans forced to labor for Japan during World War II. But Asia experts say any deal must have Japanese and South Korean domestic support – especially from the victims and their advocates – or risk unraveling as have past agreements. That will require strong leadership and political courage, they say.

“It’s not a lack of ideas and solutions to these particular problems that is halting progress, it’s a lack of political will” by politicians to mobilize public backing, says Daniel Sneider, a lecturer in East Asian studies at Stanford University in California. “The window of opportunity exists, but it’s not going to be open for a long time.” 

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, center, speaks during a news conference with Japan’s Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Takeo Mori, left, and South Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyundong, Feb. 13, 2023, at the State Department in Washington.

Past and present tensions

A 2018 decision by South Korea’s supreme court triggered the implosion of Japan-South Korean relations by ruling in favor of South Koreans claiming compensation for wartime forced labor. The decision fundamentally challenged Tokyo’s position that its occupation of Korea was legal and that the 1965 normalization treaty settled all claims.

“South Korean courts said these claims are active and actionable now,” says Timothy Webster, an authority on the forced labor issue who teaches International and Comparative Law at Western New England University.

Japan responded in part by canceling favored trade ties with South Korea and imposing export controls on chemicals vital to South Korea’s semiconductor production.

“That was a huge event,” says S. Nathan Park, an attorney who is an expert on the 1965 agreement. “Japan was threatening the semiconductor supply chain over this issue,” a move that “crossed the red line between defense cooperation ... and historical issues” that had previously been dealt with on a separate track, he says. 

“For the first time since 1965, the Japanese government leveraged economics to get resolution on a historical question. South Koreans saw that as a major issue of trust,” says Mr. Park, a nonresident fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. 

Today, the supreme court is poised to enforce its ruling by ordering the seizure of Japanese companies’ assets in South Korea – a step that would again plunge the relationship into turmoil, experts say. “The judgments are very close to being enforced against business assets in South Korea, and the Japanese government has threatened an all-out economic war,” says Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, a legal scholar at Seoul’s Catholic University of Korea. 

The court was scheduled to rule in August but delayed the decision, as South Korean and Japanese diplomats try to hammer out a political compromise to address the sensitive claims issue.

Ahn Young-joon/AP

Lee Yong-soo, right, who was forced into sexual slavery by Japan, and Yang Geum-deok, a South Korean victim of Japan's wartime forced labor, attend a rally against the South Korean government’s move to improve relations with Japan in Seoul, March 1, 2023. South Korea's president on Wednesday called Japan “a partner that shares the same universal values” and renewed hopes to repair ties frayed over Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

“The big sword of Damocles ... is that the court will finally order the seizure of the assets of Japanese companies to make those payments,” says Mr. Sneider. “If you get to that point without having made a deal, everything collapses. ... The build-up of momentum for strategic reasons to create a closer trilateral security system – all that can go by the wayside in a snap of the fingers.” 

As South Korean and Japanese government negotiators hold talks aimed at working out a deal, a central question is whether the outcome will be seen as legitimate by domestic audiences in both countries. 

Public buy-in

Past efforts to resolve this and related historical disputes have failed because they were viewed by the public as top-down, undemocratic, and insufficiently reflective of the concerns of victims and their descendants. “What most of the victims want is an apology ... that expresses genuine remorse,” as well as commemoration in the form of a ceremony, statue, or inclusion of the forced labor history in Japanese textbooks, says Dr. Webster.

In South Korea, conservative leaders are constrained by the perception that they are overly pro-Japan. Most South Koreans hold unfavorable impressions of Japan, polls show. “There is this broad sentiment that links conservatives as both having been collaborationists during the colonial period and [colluding] in the post-colonial period,” says Eun A Jo, a fellow at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University and a doctoral candidate at Cornell.

This makes prioritizing outreach to victims imperative, experts say. “Without this consensus domestically, the South Korean government trying to ram through a settlement is not going down well with the forced labor survivors, to put it mildly,” says Dr. Shin.

South Korea Defense Ministry/AP

South Korean Navy’s Aegis destroyer King Sejong the Great, front, sails with U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry, center, and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s destroyer Atago, top, during a joint missile defense drill between the three countries in the international waters off the east coast of Korean Peninsula, Feb. 22, 2023.

In Japan, a political shift to the right in recent decades has lessened the government’s incentives to strike a deal, particularly amid concerns that it won’t be lasting if South Koreans reject it. “In Japan, there’s hesitation about moving ahead too quickly and having to deal with backlash [in South Korea],” says Kristi Govella, director of the Center for Indo-Pacific Affairs and an assistant professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

The biggest political hurdle for Tokyo is that within “the general public, even on the opposition side, there are no voices asking the Japanese government to do more to reach an agreement with the South Koreans,” says Kunihiko Miyake, a special adviser to Mr. Kishida’s cabinet, speaking in his personal capacity.

Fewer Japanese believe relations with Korea are important – less than half, compared with three-quarters a decade ago. “The general public is still skeptical,” says Mr. Miyake, a former career Japanese diplomat who is now research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo.

A key question is whether Mr. Kishida will forge ahead despite this political atmosphere, as well as the reluctance of the right wing of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. “It’s a moment where Mr. Kishida is going to have to show some real leadership relative to conservative voices within the party,” says Mr. Sneider. In South Korea, President Yoon’s government “wants this agreement badly,” he says.

Negotiators are actively exploring possibilities including Japan funneling compensation funds to victims through a Japanese business federation and issuing an apology in the form of reaffirming key past statements, says Mr. Sneider. An agreement could be penned as early as this spring, with a visit by President Yoon to Japan prior to the May G-7 summit in Hiroshima, he says. But will these steps be enough?

“Mr. Kishida is trying because he understands the strategic importance of Japan-South Korea relations,” says Mr. Miyake. “That’s not the big issue – the issue is how to do it.”

For Raúl Ibañez, Peru’s political crisis and the sometimes-violent unrest shaking the country in recent months are rooted in what he calls the “scourge of our country.”

“Corruption has been the downfall of our presidents for the past 30 years,” he says, including former President Pedro Castillo, who has sat in prison since early December following an attempt to dissolve Congress and rule by edict.

Mr. Castillo joins a dubious club of seven recent presidents who have either been imprisoned or investigated for graft. But corruption isn’t contained to Peru’s top leadership; for the past two decades it’s touched everything from the delivery of public services like health care and education, to members of Congress. Mr. Ibañez, a radiologist sitting in a shaded Lima Park with his wife and university-student son on a recent afternoon, is among the many Peruvians who say corruption is a central factor in the country’s instability and the government’s failure to develop conditions for people like him to build better lives.

“By filling their own pockets through corruption, [politicians] are harming the ability of others to provide for their families,” says Mr. Ibañez. “That’s what so infuriates people.”

Some 88% of Peruvians believe that between half and all of their political leaders are involved in corruption, according to a 2021 AmericasBarometer survey conducted by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) at Vanderbilt University. That’s the highest of any country in Latin America, a region where public perceptions of corruption in politics is generally high.

Peruvians’ perception of high corruption leads, in turn, to a collapse of trust in the country’s institutions, says Noam Lupu, associate director of LAPOP.

“You can see that as the perceptions of corruption go up, the trust in institutions and confidence in the political system go down,” he says. “People lose faith that the political system is representing them and their family’s interests.”

Martin Mejia/AP

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte gives a press conference at the government palace in Lima, Peru, on Feb. 10, 2023. Peru is in the midst of a political crisis as protestors seek Ms. Boluarte's resignation and the dissolution of Congress after former President Pedro Castillo was arrested for trying to carry out a "self-coup" in December.

“Pockets of the powerful”

Mr. Castillo’s replacement, his vice president Dina Boluarte, was quick to zero in on weeding out corruption when she assumed the presidency on Dec. 7. But nearly 60 deaths among pro-Castillo protesters since she took office – most coming at the hands of riot police – and other accusations against her have poisoned her ability to make headway, analysts say.

Protests have largely retreated to Mr. Castillo’s stronghold of support in the country’s south, where makeshift anti-Boluarte roadblocks and workers strikes continue to pop up.

Many Peruvians who sat out recent protests say they might be tempted to hit the streets if there were a march focused specifically on corruption.

“I didn’t march, but I can assure you my outrage over corruption is as strong as the sentiments the demonstrators were expressing,” says Rosario Madrid, a retired schoolteacher visiting family in Lima.

Ms. Madrid says that accompanying her German husband on long-term work assignments in Chile and Germany revealed to her that her native country’s corruption is not the norm.

“When you go outside Peru and see other realities, you ask yourself why the corruption is the way it is here,” she says. “Peru is a country of riches, but it seems that here more than elsewhere the fruits of those riches go into the pockets of the powerful and wealthy,” she says.

“Certainly not into the public schools,” she adds, “which as a teacher I find especially damaging for the future of my country.”

Indeed Peruvians consider corruption the country’s second most important problem negatively impacting average people’s lives, surpassed only by deteriorating public safety, according to the anti-corruption organization Proética, which conducted a national survey last August.

“That finding goes against the idea we have heard for some time that corruption is an evil that is part of politics, but one that doesn’t really affect the average citizen,” says Carlos Arroyo, director of citizens and open government audits at Proética in Lima. “What we find is that 59% of the population feels strongly that corruption has a direct impact on their family’s economic situation,” he says.

Peru’s office of the comptroller general estimates more than $5 billion is lost annually to corruption, Mr. Arroyo says. “That is money that people feel is coming out of their pocket but is not benefiting them.”

Jose Sotomayor/AP

Soldiers stand off against anti-government protesters outside the Alfredo Rodriguez Ballon airport in Arequipa, Peru, on Jan. 20, 2023. Protesters are demanding the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, the release of ousted President Pedro Castillo from prison, and immediate elections.

How did we get here?

So why is corruption so prevalent, and why do Peruvians report feeling its impact at higher rates than other Latin Americans? The reasons are myriad, experts say, and range from weak institutions generally – but paradoxically a relatively strong public prosecutorial system that has successfully pursued corruption cases – to well-intentioned but counterproductive reforms.

An example of the latter is the ban on congressional reelection for second consecutive terms. The measure had the goal of tackling the problem of entrenched corrupt members of Congress, but many say it instead turned the five-year term into a race to reap as many material benefits as possible while keeping politicians free from the accountability that reelection can provide.

In the current political crisis, holding early elections for a new Congress and president could be one solution, says Gino Costa, a human rights expert and former congressman who recently published a book chronicling the weakening of Peru’s democracy. But, “members of the current Congress are resisting early elections because they would lose the privileges and benefits of their office,” he says. “So, in this case, prohibiting reelection is a problem.”

At least seven members of the current Congress multiplied their income and assets astronomically over their year and a half in office, according to a recent study by Centro Liber, an investigative organization that promotes public access to government information. A number of those congresswomen and men are already under investigation for corruption.

Peru’s harrowing decade of terrorism in the 1980s also plays a role in corruption’s hold on society.

Former President Alberto Fujimori “solved” the terrorism crisis by defeating the violent Shining Path guerrilla organization, says Peruvian anti-corruption expert José Ugaz. But Mr. Fujimori accomplished this through “a total capture of the state” that converted government into a kleptocracy and left Peru with “institutions that were barely standing,” Mr. Ugaz says.

“The Fujimori decade left corruption embedded in the structure of power,” he says, instilling many with the fatalistic refrain concerning corrupt leaders: “He steals, but he gets things done.”

Angela Ponce/Reuters/File

Peru's then-President Pedro Castillo exits Congress after his swearing-in ceremony, in Lima, Peru, on July 28, 2021.

“Essential ingredient”

Mr. Ibañez, the radiologist, says that at the base of Peru’s corruption scourge is the tendency of public officials to act in their own self-interest instead of seeing government as a tool for the betterment of all.

“The sense of the common good has not been at the heart of our national agenda,” agrees Mr. Ugaz, the anti-corruption expert. Instead, he says, since the arrival of the Spaniards, Peru has had an “extractive” development model based on enriching oneself rather than giving back or improving people’s lives.

“Corruption thrives when the focus of our political leaders is ‘I’m providing for me and my people’ rather than a national project based on the common good,” Mr. Ugaz says. “We know that successful countries have a strong sense of common good for building a national project, but the repeated corruption scandals we’ve experienced right up to Castillo tell us we are lacking that essential ingredient.”

Reducing corruption in Peru won’t be easy. It requires two elements that can’t be accomplished overnight: reestablishing public trust in institutions, and a cultural revolution that “makes room for solidarity and a sense of empathy” among Peruvians, Mr. Ugaz says.

“Corruption erodes trust, and if you don’t have trust you can’t build a common good,” he says. Though, he’s seen some encouraging signs that society may be changing.

During the pandemic a number of ollas comunes, community soup kitchens, sprung up in neighborhoods experiencing food insecurity, signaling to Mr. Ugaz the solidarity necessary to build a sense of “common good.”

The Castillo crisis has spawned some attempts at building dialogue across political and class lines, he says. And there are indications that a new class of political actors more focused on building a better Peru for all Peruvians may be emerging.

“We need a renewal … that will put the priority on strengthening our institutions,” Mr. Costa says.

Back on the park bench, Mr. Ibañez is more succinct about the solution to Peru’s corruption.

“We need honest politicians,” he says. “That’s it.”

Walker Dawson

The Christian Science Monitor Africa correspondent Carlos Mureithi was forced to be ingenious, and to rely on local people, to be able to report from Nigeria without any cash.

I slid a mint $100 bill across the counter at a currency exchange shop at Lagos Airport and waited for the attendant to hand me back the equivalent in Nigerian naira. It was Feb. 16, and I had just arrived in Nigeria to cover the country’s much-anticipated presidential election. My mind was spinning with plans to attend rallies, interview voters, and shadow canvassers when suddenly the currency attendant’s voice called me back to reality.

“We don’t have money,” she said, standing in front of boards showing exchange rates for different global currencies. “There’s a naira shortage.”

That was my abrupt introduction to Nigeria’s cash crisis. Caused by a bungled rollout of new banknotes, it had gripped the country for weeks in the run-up to the Feb. 25 presidential election. The crisis is bound to be top of Bola Tinubu’s “do-do” list, now that he has been declared the winner and Nigeria’s president-elect.

In a heavily cash-dependent economy, the shortage has left people unable to buy basics such as food and water, or to catch buses to school and work. For me, the situation was less dire, but it did require some creative thinking.

After the currency exchange attendant in the airport told me she had no cash, I asked if she had any idea how I could buy a local SIM card without it. She told me to give her the cost of the SIM card in dollars, and then she made an instant bank transfer from her personal account to the SIM card vendor’s. The vendor slid the new SIM into my phone. Crisis averted – for now. 

Carlos Mureithi

Customers wait outside a bank in Lagos, Nigeria, on Feb. 18, 2023. A shortage of legal currency has prompted some angry savers to burn banks down.

“Wasting fuel for nothing”

The origins of this cash shortage stretch back to October, when Nigeria’s central bank announced that new naira notes would be introduced in some denominations to fight counterfeiting and hoarding, among other reasons. Nigerians had until Feb. 10 to turn in old notes. Most did so, expecting that they’d get new money right away. 

It turned out, though, that few of the newly designed notes were available. Banks began severely restricting the amount of cash people could take out of their accounts. Every day, Nigerians thronged to banks and ATMs, forming hourslong queues to try to get at their money. In some parts of the country, angry citizens even burned down banks.

All this was going on at a crucial moment in Nigeria’s history. After years of insecurity, rising unemployment, and a failing economy, Nigerians were about to vote in a presidential election that many hoped would turn the country around. Instead, the cash crisis was exacerbating the problems.

Again and again during my election reporting, people I interviewed spoke unprompted of how much pain and anguish it caused them. 

Austine Ajime, who drives a tuk-tuk, known locally as a keke, told me business was way down because people didn’t have the new notes to pay for trips. Some, he added, might have had money in their accounts but they lacked smartphones to do cashless bank transfers.

 “We have just been driving up and down wasting our fuel for nothing,” he said outside a gas station in Ikeja, an area of Lagos, where he was waiting for passengers.

Carlos Mureithi

Genesis Kuba at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos, Nigeria, on Feb. 17, 2023. He was one of only a handful of students to have been able to get to his college that day; the others had no cash.

Usually, Mr. Ajime makes about 13,000 naira ($28) a day, but with the money shortage, he’s been earning less than 8,000 ($17), most of it paid by bank transfers. That means his earnings are locked in the same limbo as his customers’. He can’t buy groceries for his family, for instance, because most of the food sellers he purchases from deal in cash. 

At Yaba College of Technology in Lagos, I found a handful of students sitting outside a classroom chatting. One of them, Genesis Kuba, told me that out of his class of 160, only these few had been able to make it to school that day. Others didn’t have cash for the bus fare. He feels the government has mishandled the currency problem and, like with many other issues, he says, it hasn’t been transparent.

“We just want them to be truthful,” he says. “If the country is in a bad condition, tell us it is in a bad condition.”

“Mobile money” saves the day – for some

As with many crises, Nigerians are finding ways to get by. Those who can pay for goods with banking apps on their phones. Others use debit cards. But in a country where only 45% of adults had bank accounts in 2021, such methods exclude most of the population. 

Carlos Mureithi

Ifeanyi Agha at his stall where he sells fried dough in Lagos, Nigeria. Our reporter was unable to buy any of his wares after an interview. He had no cash.

So, many people without bank accounts have started to use “mobile money,” a service popular in many other African countries that allows users to keep and send money from a digital “wallet” on their phone. The value of mobile money transactions has gone up by 25%, to $5.4 billion, since the currency change was announced. 

After failing to get naira at the airport, I spent the next 10 days figuring out creative ways to pay my reporting expenses. Luckily, my hotel agreed to accept dollars. The Nigerian journalist I was working with paid for our meals and cab rides through bank transfers, and I gave him the equivalent in dollars. But sometimes, not having cash made it harder to bond with my sources. One day, for instance, I spoke to a man selling fried dough on a roadside. Normally after an interview like this, I’d buy a snack from his stall in appreciation. But without cash, I couldn’t. 

It was tiring, and when I left the country on Sunday, the crisis still seemed far from any resolution. As my taxi driver approached Lagos Airport, he veered suddenly onto a different road. He had to take a longer route, he explained to me, to avoid a toll. He didn’t have any cash. 

AP

A girl walks by a mural that shows Serbian, left, and Russian coat of arms, in Belgrade, Serbia, March 1.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been clarifying for Europe about its values – democratic values that helped restrain the ethnic nationalism of its own past wars that also now drives Moscow’s aggression. The latest example is an agreement brokered by the European Union to normalize ties between Serbia and Kosovo, nearly a quarter century after a war between them left thousands killed.

The two states in the Balkans, both remnants of the former Yugoslavia, accepted an 11-point plan on Feb. 27 to improve ties, respect each other’s borders, and deal with the ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo, a nation of mainly ethnic Albanians. If implemented, the plan would deal a blow to Russia’s attempts to control states in Europe with Slavic or Orthodox Christian populations such as Serbia.

The invasion forced Serbia to take steps to partially distance itself from Moscow, such as seeking alternatives to Russian gas and oil. Serbia also voted for a United Nations resolution condemning the invasion and refusing to recognize Russia’s annexations of eastern Ukraine.

Serbia’s decision to accept the EU plan “should bring what everyone has been defending for years – peace, coexistence, a better life for Serbs and Albanians,” wrote Zorana Mihajlović, a former minister under President Aleksandar Vučić, on Instagram. The move might also help accelerate Serbia’s candidacy for membership in the EU.

Since the invasion, the United States has joined EU leaders in trying to end frictions left over from the Balkan wars of the 1990s that erupted after the end of the Cold War.

“What’s new is not only the seriousness of both [Kosovo and Serbia] but the seriousness of our European partners to make this happen in the shadow of one of the biggest crises Europe has seen since the WW2,” said U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar.

The EU plan is designed to make small steps in trust-building, such as easier cross-border travel for business or education. As President Vučić told his nation after accepting the plan: “Let’s make rational compromises that concern real life.” 

That sort of democratic consensus-seeking does not sound like the aggressive nationalism of Serbia’s past. The battlefront against Russia’s war with Ukraine isn’t only in Ukraine.