Trump promises peace in Congo. But at what price?
De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump probeert ook zijn transactionele benadering van vrede toe te passen op het huidige gewapende conflict in Oost-Congo. Maar zoals Koen Vlassenroot, Kasper Hoffmann en Judith Verweijen in deze bijdrage voor de London School of Economics schrijven, zal de door Trump gepatroneerde ‘deal’ heel waarschijnlijk geen vrede brengen als de onderliggende problemen niet worden aangepakt.
Begin december 2025 stond Trump glimlachend in het Witte Huis, geflankeerd door de Congolese president Félix Tshisekedi en zijn Rwandese ambtgenoot Paul Kagame. “We maken een einde aan een oorlog die al decennialang woedt”, verklaarde hij. Maar achter deze grootse woorden gaat een nieuw soort diplomatie schuil, waarbij vrede een onderhandelingsmiddel wordt en de toegang voor Amerikaanse bedrijven tot de kritieke mineralen van Congo de belangrijkste doelstelling is. Wat betekent deze ‘deal’ nu eigenlijk voor de vrede in Congo en voor de wereldpolitiek?
The agreement between both countries builds on the original accord reached on 27 June 2025. It includes a wide range of provisions: the withdrawal of Rwandan troops from eastern Congo; the neutralisation of the Rwandan FDLR rebel forces operating in Congo; the disarmament and reintegration of armed groups; the return of refugees and internally displaced people; guarantees of humanitarian access; and, crucially, the creation of a regional economic cooperation framework, mainly centred on critical minerals.
What stands out is not the promise of greater transparency in critical mineral supply chains (mechanisms for that already exist) but the fact that this will happen in partnership with the US government and American companies. Washington has signed separate bilateral economic agreements with both countries.
The Trump administration’s attempt to broker a peace deal in Congo should be viewed in the context of its broader approach to global politics, centred on securing resources, such as oil in Venezuela and critical minerals in Congo.
While the methods differ, the underlying objective is the same: to guarantee access to strategic economic assets and reinforce the US position on the world stage.
In pursuing these goals, Washington has disregarded multilateral institutions and existing cooperation frameworks, opting instead for unilateral action.
The Congo-Rwanda deal is the result of months of quiet diplomacy led by Massad Boulos, Trump’s special adviser on African affairs. At first glance, it looks promising.
But a closer look reveals a troubling logic: a complex war with deep historical roots reduced to a question of mineral access, ignoring the drivers that have fuelled violence for more than three decades.
When approached in this way, peace becomes a bargaining chip rather than a political process. Even more alarming, it legitimises, and some would say rewards, Rwanda for sending troops into a neighbouring sovereign state in violations of fundamental principles of international law.
This violation of territorial integrity sets a dangerous precedent and reflects a broader tendency that we have seen with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s attacks in Lebanon. It moves us further away from any sustainable solution to a conflict that has caused immense humanitarian suffering for years.
The Trump administration has consistently sought to broker peace through such a transactional approach. It relies on economic incentives ranging from mineral agreements to tariff threats to influence the behaviour of conflict parties. It’s the same playbook it has used in the Thai-Cambodian border dispute and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So far, this has met with mixed results.
One key reason is that such deals fail to address the complex historical drivers of these conflicts, including identity-based grievances, legacies of state repression, fragile public institutions, and broader geopolitical competition.
The promised economic incentives are often tied to investments that may only materialise in the distant future. As a result, they fail to deliver the immediate trust-building needed for parties to commit to a peace process.
US-led peace processes have also run into problems of enforcement. Under Trump’s leadership, the weight of US security guarantees remains unclear. The same goes for the actual leverage it wields over potential spoilers. It comes as no surprise that after the initial announcement, several of the peace or ceasefire deals have been violated or never implemented.
This was also the case with the Rwanda–Congo peace deal. Even as the leaders were standing side by side in the White House, fighting on the ground was already intensifying following a new Rwandan-backed offensive by the AFC/M23 rebel force.
On 10 December 2025, the group even occupied Uvira, South Kivu’s second-largest city, a major escalation of the conflict, with broader regional implications.
While the Trump administration was far from pleased and deployed considerable diplomatic pressure, its influence on the ground remained limited. The rebels announced they would withdraw from the city, but in the meantime, tightened their grip on it.
During an earlier military campaign by the M23 in 2012 and 2013, the US, regional actors such as South Africa and EU member states exerted considerable pressure on Rwanda, through sanctions and threats of aid withdrawal, which contributed to the withdrawal of its troops.
That kind of multilateral collective action now seems like a thing of the past, despite some sanctions imposed by the US and the EU following the occupation of Goma by the Rwandan-backed AFC/M23 rebels in January 2025.
The Trump administration’s prioritisation of US economic interests has weakened the broader international response needed to develop and implement a comprehensive peace accord.
A central stake in today’s international rivalry over Congo is access to its vast reserves of critical minerals. These include coltan, cassiterite, gold, and lithium in the eastern provinces, as well as enormous copper and cobalt deposits in the southeast near the borders with Zambia and Angola.
To secure supply chains, the US has invested heavily in the Lobito rail corridor, designed to redirect mineral exports westward to the Atlantic coast and onward to US markets.
For the Trump administration, peace-making in Congo appears less an end in itself than a means to guarantee access to these strategic resources. Supply, however, is far from guaranteed: only a handful of countries extract and process these resources, and some of them are active war zones.
This helps to explain Trump’s interest in brokering deals not only in Congo but also in other mineral-rich regions such as Ukraine and Myanmar.
The geopolitical and economic drivers behind US peace-making efforts undermine their effectiveness, including in Congo. They showcase Washington’s disregard for international law, which creates a permissive environment where violations of territorial integrity are gradually escalated.
It is hardly a coincidence that AFC/M23, supported by the Rwandan military, took Goma only a few days after Trump was sworn in on 20 January 2025. It underlines that the current conflict in Congo is both shaped by, and in turn shapes, a global order that is drifting ever further from the norms of international law.
Civil society groups are calling Trump’s deal a ‘peace-for-extraction’ pact. Armed factions in Congo go further, branding it a sign of US and Rwandan imperialism to justify their continued struggles.
Meanwhile, the Rwandan-backed seizure of Uvira by AFC/M23 is putting Washington’s credibility as a peace broker on the line.
When such blatant breaches of agreement go unanswered, it sends a clear signal: Trump’s vision of a new Pax Americana rests on shaky grounds.
Koen Vlassenroot, Kasper Hoffmann en Judith Verweijen
Koen Vlassenroot is Professor in Political Science at Ghent University.
Kasper Hoffmann is an Associate Professor at Roskilde University.
Judith Verweijen is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University.
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Dit artikel verscheen op 13 januari 2026 als een blog op de website van Africa@LSE (London School of Economics) https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2026/01/13/trump-promises-peace-in-congo-but-at-what-price/
Lees ook:
– Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior adviser for Africa: ‘Our policy is based on peace, partnerships and prosperity’ (Le Monde) https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2025/10/02/massad-boulos-trump-s-senior-adviser-for-africa-our-policy-is-based-on-peace-partnerships-and-prosperity_6746022_124.html
– From Congo to Sudan, time is running out for Trump’s Africa dealmaker Massad Boulos (The Africa Report) https://www.theafricareport.com/398241/from-congo-to-sudan-time-is-running-out-for-trumps-africa-dealmaker-massad-boulos/
– Hoe kan het geweld in Oost-Congo gestopt worden? ‘De wereld blijft falen in Oost-Congo’ https://cimic-npo.org/2024/11/18/57-008/
– M23’s territorial advances in May – From Doha to Goma: The disconnect between diplomacy and reality in Eastern Congo https://cimic-npo.org/2025/06/24/64-003/
– The rising spotlight on coltan: Understanding its strategic importance and role in the Eastern Congo conflict https://cimic-npo.org/2025/04/18/62-011/
– Why is Congo putting Apple on the spot? https://cimic-npo.org/2024/05/27/53-008/
– Protesten tegen het Westen in Congo: afleidingsmanoeuvre of legitieme actie? https://cimic-npo.org/2024/02/29/50-003/
– Partijen spelen welles-nietesspelletje: zijn er huurlingen in Kivu? Nepnieuws gooit zware rookgordijnen over Oost-Congo https://cimic-npo.org/2023/03/31/41-006/
– The deepening Crisis in Eastern DRC: An International Diplomatic Stalemate that Calls for Urgent and Stronger European Actions for Peace in the Great Lakes Region https://cimic-npo.org/2025/11/24/67-012/
– New investigation suggests EU trader Traxys buys conflict minerals from DRC https://cimic-npo.org/2025/05/28/63-010/
– Critical minerals were once for renewables. Now they’re for war https://cimic-npo.org/2025/04/18/62-013-2/
– Vijf vragen en antwoorden over het WK Wielrennen in Rwanda https://cimic-npo.org/2025/09/27/65-009/
Lees ook (inhoud januari 2026)
