The recent agreement is a good first step, but peace and security in this Central African conflict will require persistent diplomacy.

After months of intense fighting, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda signed an initial peace deal, which had been brokered by the Trump administration in June. The agreement has reduced, but not completely ended, the fighting that plagues the region. The situation is now fragile, and keeping the peace process on track will require a trait most challenging for any US administration: patience.

US officials have pushed the DRC and Rwandan-backed M23 rebels to wrap up negotiations during upcoming talks, scheduled for August 8-18. However, the Trump administration should embrace more flexibility. The United States has linked a proposed economic framework to a successful DRC-M23 deal, which means a viable peace plan would pave the way for billions of dollars in US investment and American access to critical minerals used in technologies ranging from smartphones to defense systems.

However, a lack of clarity has hindered past agreements, including the June deal and the subsequent Qatari-brokered July ceasefire, allowing violence to continue.

While an initial rush to tamp down fighting was sensible, the United States and its Qatari partners, who are mediating the talks, should now have the patience to prioritize a sustainable peace framework. Mediators should focus on ensuring that any deal promotes accountability through dispute resolution mechanisms and clearly defines what is expected of each side.

This will take more than the mere 10 days allotted for talks this month, which is unlikely to be enough time to comprehensively resolve the key issues surrounding M23’s territorial control in the region and the root causes of the decades-long conflict. At this stage, a rushed agreement would only serve to repeat the mistakes that have contributed to generations of cyclical violence in the region. This continued instability would further stymie the Trump administration’s stated goals by driving away US investment and snuffing out Trump’s vision for a mutually beneficial security framework.

Patience does not equal passiveness, and US officials must remain engaged with the various parties to push them toward a sustainable agreement, even if it does not come this August. In the past, Congolese, Rwandan, and local actors participated in drawn-out peace talks with no genuine intention of making concessions. This pattern has continued into 2025, with all sides having incentives to appear committed to peace and reap the benefits of US engagement without following through on any agreement.

Here, greater US and international pressure could help all sides back down from their maximalist demands. The DRC, for example, has demanded M23’s unconditional withdrawal and dissolution, despite lacking any real military leverage. Meanwhile, M23 rebels have pushed for autonomy, and the group’s backers in Rwanda have been accused by UN experts of “not show[ing] a genuine commitment” to the peace process. With a conditional promise for greater American investment, security, and diplomatic opportunities, the US can draw both sides away from their mutually exclusive goals.

Coupled with these opportunities for peace should be penalties for perpetuating violence.  The EU and the United States applied some targeted sanctions on Congolese and Rwandan actors involved in the conflict in early 2025, but there is more that can be done. The recent round of sanctions is a far cry from the internationally coordinated effort to punish Rwanda’s support for M23 in 2012, which levied potent penalties on the Rwandan government. The gulf between those sanctions and those imposed now shows there is plenty of room for the United States and its partners to push. The US Congress has encouraged the Trump administration to make greater use of targeted economic sanctions and visa restrictions, demonstrating bipartisan support across the government for such efforts.

Even if the United States and its Qatari partners can get a DRC-M23 deal over the line, getting pen to paper is often the easiest part, and numerous challenges remain that will require continued US engagement. The United States and its partners should push for greater clarity—on both economic and security issues—as they continue to build and enforce the peace framework.

On the economic side, addressing corruption rampant throughout the DRC and its mining sector will be key to attracting economic investment. Better contract transparency standards, greater mineral traceability, and improved mining conditions will make the regional economy more accessible and lucrative for US businesses, while improving the living standards of the local population.

To bring stability—the most important factor for greater investment in the mineral-rich, conflict-affected Kivu provinces—the peace platform will need greater clarity on security provisions and dispute resolution mechanisms. The United States already made some progress toward the latter in late July, although Qatar has struggled to secure buy-in from the DRC and M23 on a ceasefire enforcement mechanism. There remains a lack of clarity surrounding joint DRC-Rwanda operations to dismantle the FDLR—an anti-Tutsi rebel group based in the eastern DRC—and the future of M23’s territorial control. These two key provisions could torpedo the peace framework without greater consensus.

Other non-state armed groups can play spoiler in the eastern DRC, and African Union-supported inter-Congolese peace talks will be necessary to bring these actors into the framework. The United States will need to pressure Congolese actors—namely the Congolese president, who has signaled he has no interest in such talks and may even try to use the US agreement to marginalize opposition factions—to ensure these talks happen.

The Trump administration and its partners have made commendable progress in limiting the fighting in the eastern DRC, but there’s still a long way to go. Trump’s vision for the region will require patient, yet sustained engagement. Beyond bringing peace to the region, doing so will also improve the odds that the president achieves a defining foreign policy victory.