Tony Blinken

Tony Blinken

Antony John Blinken is an American government official and diplomat. He served as Deputy National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2015 and Deputy Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. He has been chosen by President-elect Joe Biden as his nominee for the position of Secretary of state.

About Tony Blinken in brief

Summary Tony BlinkenAntony John Blinken is an American government official and diplomat. He served as Deputy National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2015 and Deputy Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. During the Clinton administration, Blinken served in the State Department and in senior positions on the National Security Council staff. He was also a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of the Obama–Biden presidential transition team. On November 7, 2014, President Obama announced that he would nominate Blinken for the post, replacing the retiring William Joseph Burns. Of Obama’s 2011 decision to kill Osama bin Laden: “I’ve never seen a more courageous decision made by a leader” Blinken supported the 2011 military intervention in Libya and the supply of weapons to Syrian rebels. He condemned the 2016 Turkish coup d’état and expressed support for the democratically elected and democratically elected Turkish government. He supported the U.S. –led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has held senior foreign policy positions in two administrations over two decades. Blinken has been chosen by President-elect Joe Biden as his nominee for the position of Secretary of state.

He attended Harvard University, where he majored in social studies and co-edited the weekly art magazine of The Harvard Crimson. He earned his J. D. at Columbia Law School in 1988 and practiced law in New York City and Paris. He is also a partner in a private equity firm and a members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign policy think tank. His uncle, Alan Blinken, served as the United States Ambassador to Belgium. He attended the Dalton School in NewYork City until 1971, when he moved to Paris, France, and attended École Jeannine Manuel. He moved there with his divorced mother and her new husband, attorney Samuel Pisar, who had survived both the Auschwitz and Dachau camps in the Holocaust. He worked for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 1988. In 2008, Blinkes worked with his father Donald in fundraisers for Michael Dukakis. Blinken was appointed staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position he served in until 2008. He helped craft U. S. policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran.