Rwanda’s Militarized Involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A Revisionist Account

In 1996, a civil conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) escalated to a continental conflict following the intervention of Rwanda and several other African states. President Paul Kagame’s post-genocide regime has asserted national security and human protection incentives to explain Rwanda’s motivation for intervening in the Congo conflict. However, a critical review reveals a sharp disconnect between the two stated incentives and the extremely intrusive operational dynamics of Rwanda’s intervention. This article critiques official explanations for Rwanda’s military involvement in the DRC. Furthermore, relying on process-tracing techniques while citing relevant literature, the article develops a revisionist account of Rwanda’s intervention accentuating a prestige-seeking, mass mobilization, and regime consolidation agenda amidst state- and democracy-building ambitions as the underlying motivation for Kagame’s regime’s intervention in the DRC.