South and North Kivu, leading to hundreds more civilian deaths. As we report, M23, a Rwandan-backed rebel group that controls most of the region, is building a statelet there and is eager to cut its own deals with America. To its credit, the Trump administration has tried to enforce the Washington Accords. In March it put sanctions on Rwanda’s armed forces to try to persuade Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, to reduce support for M23. Yet it seems unwilling to exert similar pressure on his Congolese counterpart, Félix Tshisekedi. Many locals fear that Mr Trump cares more about getting his hands on Congo’s abundant minerals than he does about peace. Eastern Congo is as bewildering as it is blighted. The state’s authority barely exists. More than a hundred armed groups thrive in its absence. M23 is the strongest of them. It is led by Congolese Tutsis who say they want to topple the government in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital 1,500km away. It is also a tool used by Rwanda to create a buffer zone in Congo. Rwanda denies this, but also claims that any “defensive measures” it undertakes are justified because it is threatened by Congo—and by a militia known as FDLR whose origins go back to the ethnic Hutus who carried out the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The region’s minerals give everyone a lucrative extra reason to fight. So it is too soon to celebrate the Washington Accords. But they are a good foundation to build on. They reaffirm previous commitments by Rwanda to stop supporting M23 and to respect Congo’s territory, and by Congo to end any support for FDLR and other armed groups that threaten Rwanda. Both sides have said they will make it easier for aid agencies to deliver humanitarian supplies in eastern Congo, which are desperately needed. American sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) will influence Mr Kagame, who was once seen by Western governments as an enlightened autocrat with whom it was easy to do business. Having the RDF subject to similar restrictions as the armed forces of Iran and North Korea is not good for “Brand Rwanda”. And since Rwanda’s Ministry of Defence has huge interests in construction, agriculture and other sectors, the sanctions will also force foreign investors to rethink whether it is legally safe to do business in the country.
Pressing Rwanda is necessary to stop the war. But it is not sufficient, since M23 has a degree of autonomy. Talks between Congo and M23, brokered by Qatar with American support, have stalled. All parties to the discussions, including African governments, need to do more to persuade the sides to return to the table and agree on a ceasefire. There is a risk that America is emboldening Mr Tshisekedi. When Mr Trump brokered the Washington Accords he also struck a “strategic partnership” with Congo. The upshot was that America would bolster Congo’s president in exchange for preferential access to minerals. America has intervened in Congolese politics in ways that benefit Mr Tshisekedi; last month it put sanctions on Joseph Kabila, a rival and former president, ostensibly for backing M23. To some in the Trump administration, backing Mr Tshisekedi is sensible realpolitik. But, like miners digging without a plan, they risk the edifice crashing down on them eventually. America’s new deals with Congo are shockingly non-transparent—a criticism America once made of Congo’s dealings with China. Mr Tshisekedi became president with America’s endorsement in 2019 after a fraudulent election. So long as he cuts mining deals with Americans, he may think he can shirk his obligations under the accords. America should disabuse him of that idea. The Trump administration has done more than any other foreign government to try to bring a measure of peace to this war-scorched part of Africa. It is right to be tough on Rwanda, whose support for M23 is the proximate cause of the conflict. But America now needs to ensure that it acts as an impartial mediator, rather than as a cheerleader for one side. ■ Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//leaders/2026/05/14/not-all-donald-trumps-peacemaking- boasts-are-empty
Can Gwadar port compete with the port at Jebel Ali? Also this week, antisemitism, epigenetic medicine, Jan Morris and Wales, family firms, heroic rodents, defence May 14th 2026 Letters are welcome via email to letters@economist.comFind out more about how we process your letter “No way out” (May 9th), an article about Iran and the American blockade, asserted that Iran’s commerce with China is being re-routed by land. It reported that Pakistan has opened six new border crossings (presumably with Iran). And it also mentioned that “traders are speaking” of the Pakistani port of Gwadar becoming an alternative to the United Arab Emirates’ vast port at Jebel Ali.
I would ask you to look at a map and stop quoting anonymous traders. There are two double-lane roads connecting Iran and Pakistan. They can open all the crossings they want but those are the roads available. Gwadar handled 8,300 TEUs (the standard shipping measure) in 2025, which means it can’t compete with the port of Karachi, let alone Jebel Ali , which handled 16.5m TEUs in 2025. Gwadar can service only two or three vessels at a time. The idea that Gwadar will ever replace Karachi, let alone Jebel Ali, in our lifetime does not bear scrutiny. Nor does the notion that Chinese-Iranian commerce at any meaningful level can traverse through some of the most desolate deserts and highest peaks on the planet for thousands and thousands of miles. That includes going through Balochistan, which Pakistan does not keep secure by its own admission. And you throw in moving petroleum by train from Iran to China? At what magnitude? As I say, please look at a map. David HaleFormer American undersecretary of stateWashington, DC It is true that antisemitism caricatures Jews as “catch-all avatars for disorienting change” (“High time to speak up”, May 9th). Antisemitism is a mirror, not a window. Look into it and you’ll learn nothing about Jewish people and much about the anxieties and prejudices of the antisemite. And, like so many other prejudices, it does not depend on the presence of Jews, nor, as your leader notes, does it end with them. All the more reason for non-Jews like me to say plainly and as often as necessary that a society cannot be free or flourish when our Jewish neighbours live in fear, and to stand up for their innate human dignity. You are sceptical of “speech bans”, such as prohibitions on some of the slogans chanted at pro-Palestinian marches. This is not a matter of philosophy; the world needs practical answers. Reasonable, proportional limits on hate speech set by democratically elected governments are possible and widespread in free societies. No law has ever abolished hatred, but law shapes behaviour and signals what a society will and will not tolerate. Without such limits the loudest and most hateful voices set the terms, and that is no freedom worth the name. Alexander McPhersonToronto
The promise of epigenetic medicine (“Exercise and the epigenome”, May 2nd) is nowhere more desperately needed than in paediatric oncology. Adult cancers are overwhelmingly diseases of genetic wear and tear, the result of a lifetime of accumulated mutations to the DNA sequence itself. Paediatric cancers, by contrast, are remarkably quiet on the genetic front. Instead, they are frequently profound epigenetic crises, developmental software bugs where the wrong epigenetic tags leave embryonic growth signals permanently “switched on”. By applying the blunt instruments of adult oncology, therapies that are designed to indiscriminately eradicate mutated cells, to paediatric patients we are in effect trying to fix a software glitch by smashing the hard drive with a hammer. This misunderstanding of the disease’s architecture helps explain why survival rates for several brutal childhood cancers have stalled, and why those who do survive are left with the lifelong collateral damage of highly toxic treatments. It is time we stopped trying to beat children’s tumours into submission, and started learning how to reason with them instead. Dr Jacques Cornwell Cambridge, Cambridgeshire You rightly warn against crude genetic determinism, but risk an overcorrection. Epigenetics shapes how genes are expressed; it does not diminish inherited differences. Estimates that traits such as cognitive ability (about 50%) or autism (over 80%) are heritable are not “just because” claims. They already reflect the interaction of genes and environment, including epigenetic mechanisms. Imperfect though they are, they remain among the best guides to human variation. There is a moral asymmetry. Overplaying genetics can excuse unfair generalisations; downplaying it can moralise outcomes. If success is credited only to effort, those who struggle risk being too readily dismissed as lacking resolve rather than facing different constraints. Nicolas GheeraertAssistant professor of physicsKrea UniversitySri City,
Jan Morris’s reflections on Wales and Welsh independence (Bagehot, April 18th) gain depth when set beside her own life. Raised as James Morris within the English establishment (Lancing College, Christ Church Oxford and the officer corps) she found, after her gender transition, a sense of ease and belonging in rural Wales that had eluded her in England. Her remark that kindness is the most important thing, more important than love, captured the civic temperament she believed Wales embodied. That distinctive social character, which she chronicled in “The Matter of Wales”, published in 1984, remains one of the country’s strengths. It also bolsters the case for a constitutional settlement that reflects Welsh confidence rather than arrangements inherited from Westminster. MEURIG WILLIAMSSarasota, Florida In my experience, the variable that most academic studies of family businesses (“Into thin heir”, April 11th) struggle to explain is “structural coupling”, or the degree to which the founding individual’s values, time horizon for the firm and implicit assumptions have become embedded in its decision-making. This shapes what the firm considers possible, legitimate and necessary, often long after the circumstances that formed those values have changed.