{"id":692062,"date":"2026-10-24T12:45:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T12:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=692062"},"modified":"2026-10-24T12:45:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T12:45:42","slug":"renewed-clashes-in-the-eastern-congo-reinforce-american-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=692062","title":{"rendered":"Renewed Clashes In The Eastern Congo Reinforce American Influence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UN Urubatt armored vehicles securing the streets of Goma as M23 rebels threatened the city, July 2012 file photo. Photo: MONUSCO\/Sylvain Liechti via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Please follow us on Gab<\/a>, Minds<\/a>, Telegram<\/a>, Rumble<\/a>, Truth Social<\/a>, Gettr<\/a>, X<\/a>, Youtube<\/a>, Instagram<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Originally published at Andrew Korybko \/ Substack<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

US influence over the mineral-rich Congo will likely expand no matter the outcome of its war.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was back in the news this month after a former UFC fighter-turned-podcaster was wounded<\/a> in its eastern region while fighting there as part of Blackwater founder Erik Prince\u2019s Vectus Global in support of Kinshasa. For background, the DRC has been fighting against Rwandan-backed rebels in their mineral-rich borderland, which led to the US brokering a peace deal<\/a> last year that made it the DRC\u2019s security patron in exchange for privileged access to these resources.<\/p>\n

At the same time, despite Rwanda\u2019s role in perpetuating hostilities as part of its \u201cforward defense\u201d\/\u201cstrategic depth\u201d against the rebels that found refuge there in the mid-1990s, the US retains close ties with Kigali. Not only does it remain one of the US\u2019 top security partners on the continent in spite of its closeness with China<\/a> and Russia<\/a>, but a US-Canadian mining company formed a tungsten partnership<\/a> with it last month for the explicit purpose of bolstering the US\u2019 defense supply chains.<\/p>\n

This backdrop contextualizes US-sanctioned<\/a> former DRC President Joseph Kabila<\/a>\u2019s newly announced leadership<\/a> of \u201cThe Front for the Refoundation of the Nation\u201d (FRN) in early October that formed after the merger of the \u201cCongo River Alliance\u201d and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels. It was assessed here<\/a> in December that the scenario of Kabila\u2019s return to power as the head of an opposition-led government could lead to \u201cthe country\u2019s devolution into a federal state\u201d.<\/p>\n

The end result could then be \u201cresource-rich provinces like the Kivus and the former Katanga (now divided into several smaller provinces) hoarding most of the national wealth. If the federal states become so autonomous that they command their own security forces, then the country would risk \u2018Balkanization\u2019, after which a scramble for influence and profits could commence all across the DRC.\u201d The abovementioned analysis also assessed that Trump 2.0 might cynically support this scenario.<\/p>\n

The dark reality<\/a> is that the US is likely poised to profit either way. The DRC\u2019s \u201cBalkanization\u201d by Rwandan-backed Kabila (whose father was backed by them<\/a> in the 1990s before waging war against them<\/a> and his other Ugandan ally after coming to power) could empower the US to more effectively divide-and-rule its resource-rich periphery from the distant central authorities. At the same time, the DRC\u2019s victory over the Rwandan-backed rebels with Vectus Global\u2019s support would also entrench US influence, so it\u2019s a win-win.<\/p>\n

The DRC\u2019s mistake, which might ultimately prove fatal for its national unity (whether de jure or only de facto), is that it naively assumed that giving the US privileged access to its mineral resources would ensure enough US support that its aforesaid unity would remain intact, but that was a miscalculation. The only security patron that could have assured that was Russia<\/a>, which doesn\u2019t need the DRC\u2019s minerals due to having its own in abundance, but the DRC dropped the ball so Russia might now back Rwanda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the Congo becomes another Russian-US proxy war after Ukraine<\/a> and possibly soon Afghanistan<\/a>, then the conflict\u2019s strategic dynamics could shift to the point where the US more robustly backs the DRC, but its victory over what would then be the Russian-backed rebels wouldn\u2019t be assured like in the past<\/a>. The best-case scenario is the resource-centric<\/a> strategic partnership<\/a> that Russia and the US now negotiating leads enduring peace in Central Africa so that each can mutually benefit but not at the DRC\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UN Urubatt armored vehicles securing the streets of Goma as M23 rebels threatened the city, July 2012 file photo. Photo: MONUSCO\/Sylvain Liechti via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) Please follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Truth Social, Gettr, X, Youtube, Instagram Originally published at Andrew Korybko \/ Substack. US influence over the mineral-rich Congo… Continue reading Renewed Clashes In The Eastern Congo Reinforce American Influence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-border-security","category-immigration","category-immigration-reform","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=692062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=692062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=692062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=692062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}