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Modern conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is complicated. Competing networks of local rebel groups, insurgents from neighboring countries, and African states have combined to ravage the DRC since the mid-1990s. This series of interconnected conflicts seems to have an equally confusing array of causes: local disputes over land and resources, the acquisitive goals of rebel groups and predatory neighboring states, and ethnic and political grievances all help explain the outbreak and continuation of war in the DRC.1 A less well-understood feature of the war is its expansion-specifically, why did the conflict known as the Second Congo War that began in August of 1998 draw in states from across Africa?
Susan Rice, then Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under President Clinton, offered one potential answer to this question in October 1998 when she said, "[t]he more countries we have involved, the more complicated it becomes to unravel ... this is becoming akin to Africa's first 'world war.'"2 This allusion to World War I is not exact. Unlike the First World War, which was global in scope, fighting in "Africa's World War" was limited to African actors on the African continent. However, Rice's reference to World War I suggests a plausible explanation for the spread of the Second Congo War. The same dynamics that caused the widening of war in 1914 also led fighting in the DRC to expand into a continental conflict. In particular, war was stimulated by the operation of the security dilemma and the formation of a large and complex network of alliances that resulted from this security dilemma.
Historians and international relations scholars have exhaustively studied the causes of World War I and the reasons it engulfed all of Europe.3 This work has produced a deeper understanding of that war, as well as a broader set of theories that neo-realists believe help explain the outbreak and spread of war in general. Thus far, there has been no serious attempt to apply these neo-realist explanations for war to the dramatic expansion of the Second Congo War during the summer of 1998.4
Applying key neo-realist concepts such as the security dilemma and the balancing behavior of threatened states to the Second Congo War is a useful exercise. If neo-realism...