Antony Blinken

Blinken was born on April 16, 1962, in Yonkers, New York, to Jewish parents. His mother was Judith (née Frehm) Blinken and his father was Donald M. Blinken, a co-founder of the private equity firm Warburg Pincus who later served as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary. His maternal grandparents were Hungarian Jews. Blinken's uncle, Alan Blinken, served as the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. His grandfather, Maurice Henry Blinken, was an early backer of Israel who studied its economic viability, and his great-grandfather was Meir Blinken, a Yiddish writer.

Blinken attended the Dalton School in New York City until 1971. He then moved to Paris with his mother and Samuel Pisar; his mother married Pisar after divorcing Donald Blinken. In his confirmation hearing, Blinken recalled the story of his stepfather, Pisar, who had been the only Holocaust survivor of the 900 children in his school in Poland. Pisar found refuge in a U.S. tank after making a break into the forest during a Nazi death march. In Paris, Blinken attended École Jeannine Manuel.

From 1980 to 1984, Blinken attended Harvard College, where he majored in social studies. He co-edited Harvard's daily student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, and wrote a number of articles on current affairs. After graduating from the university, Blinken worked as an intern for The New Republic for about a year. He earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1988 and practiced law in New York City and Paris. Blinken worked with his father to raise funds for Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee in the 1988 United States presidential election. He aspired for a time to be a journalist or a film producer.

In his monograph Ally versus Ally: America, Europe, and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis (1987), Blinken argued that exerting diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union during the Siberian pipeline crisis was less significant for American interests than maintaining strong relations between the United States and Europe. Ally versus Ally was based on Blinken's undergraduate thesis in which he interviewed Henry Kissinger.

Early diplomatic career (1994–2001)

Blinken has held senior foreign policy positions in two administrations over two decades. He was a member of the United States National Security Council staff from 1994 to 2001. From 1994 to 1998, Blinken was special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning and National Security Council senior director for speechwriting. From 1999 to 2001, he was special assistant to the president and senior director for European and Canadian affairs.

Diplomatic career

Clinton and Bush administrations

In 2002, Blinken was appointed staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position he served in until 2008. Blinken assisted then-Senator Joe Biden, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in formulating Biden's support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, with Blinken characterizing the vote to invade Iraq as "a vote for tough diplomacy". Blinken supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In the years following the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Blinken assisted Biden in formulating a proposal in the Senate to establish in Iraq three independent regions divided along ethnic or sectarian lines: a "Shiastan" in the south, a "Sunnistan" in the north, as well as Iraqi Kurdistan. The proposal was overwhelmingly rejected at home, as well as in Iraq, where the prime minister opposed the partition plan.

He was also a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In 2008, Blinken worked for Joe Biden's presidential campaign, and was a member of the Obama–Biden presidential transition team.

Blinken is Jewish. In 2002, Blinken and Evan Ryan were married in an interfaith ceremony officiated by a rabbi and a priest at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. They have two children. Blinken is fluent in French, and left-handed.

Blinken plays the guitar and has three songs available on Spotify by the alias Ablinken (pronounced "Abe Lincoln"). Blinken performed "Hoochie Coochie Man" by Muddy Waters in September 2023 to launch the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative at the State Department, the video of which went viral. In May 2024, he played rhythm guitar on the Neil Young song, "Rockin' in the Free World", in a bar in Kyiv, Ukraine during the first visit by a Biden administration official since the approval of U.S. supplemental funding for Ukraine's struggle against Russia.