Alignment Strategies of Weaker States Under Insecurity and Great-Power Competition: The Case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

As geo-political and geo-economic tensions among major powers escalate, weaker states face renewed pressure to take sides. This article looks at how the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) handles this dilemma. Drawing on leadership statements, policy documents, and economic, security, and diplomatic data from the 2007–2008 Sicomines agreement to early 2025, the article argues that Kinshasa pursued a context-specific, autonomy-seeking form of hedging, shaped less by fear of distant major powers than by elite concerns over regime survival, territorial integrity, and access to economic and security benefits. Hedging predominated but proved contingent: Western disengagement pushed the DRC towards constrained bandwagoning with China (2012–2018), whereas renewed US and European Union engagement after 2019 reopened room for manoeuvre and enabled greater assertiveness towards Beijing. The article reconceptualises hedging around the risks of exclusive alignment rather than great-power threat, explaining how weaker African states hedge amid insecurity and great-power competition.