Navigating a Fractured World Order: Strategic Autonomy for the DRC

The international system is broken and the world order as we’ve known it is dead.

In an era of intensifying great-power rivalry, deglobalization, and eroding multilateral institutions, traditional alliances no longer guarantee security or prosperity. Many developing nations, especially resource-rich ones, risk becoming pawns in zero-sum contests between major powers.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with its vast deposits of cobalt, copper, lithium, and other critical minerals essential for the global energy transition, has a unique opportunity to avoid this trap through deliberate strategic positioning.

How Countries Like the DRC Can Avoid Zero-Sum Dynamics

1. Diversify partnerships: Engage simultaneously with the United States, China, the European Union, India, and Gulf states on terms that maximize technology transfer, infrastructure investment, and local processing capacity rather than raw exports.

2. Strengthen regional integration: Deepen ties within the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), East African Community (EAC), and Southern African Development Community (SADC) to build collective bargaining power and reduce dependence on any single external actor.

3. Assert resource sovereignty: Enforce value-addition requirements, renegotiate unfavorable contracts, and channel mineral revenues into sovereign wealth funds and domestic industrialization.

4. Pursue pragmatic non-alignment: Maintain diplomatic flexibility, avoiding exclusive blocs while cooperating on shared interests (climate, trade, security).

This approach transforms potential vulnerabilities into leverage, turning competition among external powers into convergent benefits for the DRC.

Internal Challenges and Pathways Under President Tshisekedi

The DRC’s ability to execute this external strategy depends on overcoming severe domestic obstacles, particularly chronic insecurity in the east and fragile institutions.

Security challenges
Persistent conflict involving M23 and over 100 other armed groups has displaced millions, enabled illegal resource extraction, and undermined state authority. Alleged foreign support for certain groups further complicates resolution.

Institutional weaknesses
Endemic corruption, limited state presence outside urban centers, and a poorly equipped military hinder effective governance and revenue collection.

Steps President Tshisekedi can take

Accelerate military reform: Professionalize the FARDC through better training, equipment, and payroll transparency to reduce desertion and human rights abuses.

Advance regional diplomacy: Sustain engagement in Luanda and Nairobi peace processes, while pressing for verifiable withdrawal of external support to armed groups.

Strengthen institutions: Expand anti-corruption efforts (building on recent high-profile prosecutions), decentralize fiscal resources to provinces, and invest mineral revenues in basic state functions (justice, education, health).

Prioritize disarmament and reintegration: Combine military pressure with credible DDR (disarmament, demobilization, reintegration) programs tied to local economic opportunities.

By stabilizing the east and building credible institutions, Tshisekedi can create the domestic foundation needed to negotiate from strength internationally.

In a world where old rules no longer apply, the DRC’s success will depend less on choosing sides and more on mastering internal cohesion and external diversification. Strategic autonomy, grounded in stronger governance and regional solidarity, offers the clearest path beyond zero-sum games.

Gedeon Baleke

MGA ,Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy ,University of Toronto

SG,African Coalition for Development