The famous Antony John Blinken is an American government official and diplomat serving as the 71st United States secretary of state since January 26, 2021. He served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama.
Blinken expressed his support for extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia to limit the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads. Blinken said the Biden administration will “review” security assistance to Azerbaijan due to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and voiced his support for the provision to Armenia of security assistance.
Blinken is opposed to the United Kingdom’s separation from the European Union and has referred to it as a “total mess” with adverse consequences to U.S. interests. Blinken expressed concern over perceived human rights violations in Egypt under the presidency of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He condemned the arrest of three employees of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights organization, saying that meeting with foreign diplomats is not a crime. Nor is it peacefully advocating for human rights. Referring to the re-instated Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, declared by the Taliban following their 2021 capture of Kabul, Blinken has stated that the United States will not recognize any government that harbors terrorist groups or that does not uphold basic human rights.
Blinken attended Harvard University from 1980 to 1984. Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, he majored in social studies. He co-edited Harvard’s daily student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, and wrote several articles on current affairs. After graduating from Harvard, 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.
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.
