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 and Cooperation Framework, Kigali has consistently argued in engagements before the United Nations Security Council and other diplomatic forums that there can be no credible path to lasting peace without the effective and irreversible neutralization of the FDLR. This is not rhetorical exaggeration. The FDLR traces its origins to elements responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and continues to embody an ideology that Rwanda views as fundamentally incompatible with regional stability.

The problem, however, is not only the group’s historical identity—it is its present reality. The FDLR remains active, capable of recruitment, and, according to Rwandan officials, operates with varying degrees of tolerance and even integration within Congolese military structures. This, Kigali argues, directly contradicts the commitments undertaken under regional peace frameworks and undermines the very logic of those agreements. Peace, in this sense, risks becoming performative: a series of diplomatic rituals that leave the root cause of conflict intact.

Critics often frame Rwanda’s position as overly securitized or insufficiently attentive to the sovereignty of the DRC. But this critique, while not without merit, tends to overlook a central point: states do not experience threats abstractly. For Rwanda, the memory of cross-border attacks in the late 1990s, coupled with the ideological continuity represented by the FDLR, shapes a security doctrine that prioritizes prevention over reaction. The demand for “defensible borders” is therefore not simply strategic—it is historical.

This is where the discomfort in international discourse becomes apparent. The global system is more at ease advocating dialogue, integration, and gradual reform than it is confronting the question of what to do with armed groups whose existence is tied to past atrocities and ongoing violence. The language of diplomacy favors containment; Rwanda’s position, by contrast, insists on resolution.

Yet, acknowledging the legitimacy of Rwanda’s security concerns does not eliminate the complexity of the situation. Any call for the “neutralization” of an armed group must still be reconciled with international legal principles, including sovereignty, proportionality, and the protection of civilians. The challenge, then, is not to dismiss Rwanda’s argument, but to situate it within a framework that balances security imperatives with legal constraints.

What is increasingly untenable, however, is the current middle ground. A peace process that sidesteps the FDLR issue risks perpetuating instability, while a purely militarized approach risks escalating regional tensions. The question is not whether the FDLR matters—it is whether the region and the international community are willing to confront the implications of that reality.

If lasting peace in the Great Lakes region is the objective, then the conversation must move beyond diplomatic formalities and engage directly with the structures that sustain conflict. For Rwanda, that begins—and perhaps ends—with the FDLR. Ignoring that position does not make the problem disappear. It merely delays the moment when it must be addressed.