Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is an independent, non-partisan research institution founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1910, making it one of the oldest international affairs think tanks in the United States. Based in Washington, DC, with offices in Brussels, Beijing, Beirut, and New Delhi, it publishes analysis on conflict, nuclear policy, democracy, and great-power competition. Carnegie scholars operate across the political spectrum, giving the institution unusual reach with both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Carnegie analysts have been cited across both active conflicts in Lowdown coverage. On the Iran conflict, researchers assessed the IRGC's relationship with Mojtaba Khamenei and the negotiating dynamics between Tehran and Washington, examining the constraints on any diplomatic off-ramp. On Russia-Ukraine, the institution contributed framing on the stalled peace process, examining why trilateral diplomacy collapsed as the Iran war consumed American diplomatic bandwidth. Carnegie's Sergey Vakulenko of the Russia-Eurasia programme assessed that Ukraine's cumulative refinery strikes caused historically high disruption but remained insufficient to decisively change the war's economic trajectory.

The central tension in Carnegie's position is structural: an organisation dedicated to peaceful conflict resolution is publishing into a moment when two simultaneous wars are deepening, off-ramps are narrowing, and the administration consuming most of its analysis has shown limited interest in multilateral frameworks. Carnegie's Moscow office closed in 2022 after Russia designated the organisation undesirable; former Moscow-based scholars continue publishing under the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center from outside Russia. Whether its analysis shifts outcomes or documents failure remains open.