No Peace Without Neutralization: Rwanda’s Security Priority in the Great Lakes Region
“Crush your enemy totally.” It is one of the most provocative lines in The 48 Laws of Power—and one that sits uncomfortably within the language of diplomacy. Yet, stripped of its bluntness, it captures a strategic dilemma that the Great Lakes region has yet to resolve: what happens when a threat is not managed to extinction, but merely contained? There is a persistent temptation in international diplomacy to treat peace as a process detached from its most inconvenient realities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Great Lakes region, where frameworks are signed, statements are issued, and yet the fundamental driver of insecurity remains largely unaddressed. At the center of this contradiction lies the continued presence of the FDLR in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—a force Rwanda has, for years, identified not merely as a security concern, but as an existential threat. Rwanda’s position is neither new nor ambiguous. Before and after the 2013 Peace, Security a...