Caroline Rose is a Senior Fellow at Orion Policy Institute and a Director at The Soufan Center. Her research focuses on security, defense, and the intersection between conflict and illicit activity, with specialization in the Middle East and North Africa.
She previously served as a Senior Analyst and then a Director at the Washington-based think tank, the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, where she led two programs and generated research exploring the policy implications of military withdrawal and illicit economies around the world. She is an expert on the illicit captagon drug trade and established a special project on the trade’s geopolitical and policy implications at New Lines, supporting congressional and governmental efforts to establish a U.S.-led interagency strategy to combat the trade.
Prior to New Lines, Rose was the Middle East and Europe analyst at the geopolitical forecasting firm, Geopolitical Futures, where she provided cutting-edge analysis on topics such as Eastern Mediterranean energy politics, shifting Middle Eastern defense and diplomatic alliances, and the future of NATO coordination efforts. She was also an Associate Research Assistant at the International Drug Policy Unit (IDPU) at the London School of Economics, where she helped build a program and expert working group on illicit narcotics trades in the Middle East and North Africa.
Rose has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program (SSP), where she taught about the nexus between illicit activity and insecurity around the world, and has held several advisory positions at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), European Union, and other offices and agencies.
She is currently a Senior Nonresident Fellow at New Lines Institute’s Captagon and Methamphetamine projects, where she generates original research and policy recommendations about both drug trades in the Middle East. She also serves on the Executive Board of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) and was a 40 Under 40 Award recipient from the Council in 2025.
Rose has testified before legislative bodies such as the UK House of Commons and legal trials as an expert witness on a range of terrorism, illicit, and geopolitical issues that affect U.S. national security.
Her analysis and findings appear frequently in the media to discuss national security-related matters. Rose is the author of the forthcoming book, Drug Lords of the Levant, which examines the former Assad regime’s sponsorship of the illicit captagon trade and will be published in fall 2026 with Edinburgh University Press.
She has briefed her research and analysis across a range of national and international security forums and agencies, including the National Defense University, U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and its Modern Warfare Institute, and various embassies, military installations, and offices addressing key national security issues.
Rose holds a Bachelor of Arts from the American University’s School of International Service and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science’s (LSE) International History Department.
