Looking More Closely At Blinken

I've become more interested in Antony Blinken over the past several months, since he appears to be an independent policy actor within the Biden administration. In early March, less than two weeks after Putin invaded Ukraine, the White House and the Pentagon publicly contradicted Blinken over a plan to send secondhand Polish Migs to Ukraine:

But the proposal isn’t as simple as it seems and apparently caught US diplomats off guard when Poland announced the plan Tuesday. Previously, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had indicated that Poland sending jets to Ukraine would get “the green light” from the Biden administration, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, also supported the plan in an appearance on ABC’s This Week last Sunday.

However, the report said, "Biden administration concerns about escalating US involvement in the conflict appear to have stalled the deal." According to Politico,

[S]keptics inside the Biden administration pushed back on the idea of green-lighting the transfer of Poland’s MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine, and President Joe Biden sided with those skeptics, three U.S. officials said.

But by mid-April, Ukraine was nevertheless receiving "Mig parts" of unspecified provenance, while at the same time, the March fiasco with the White House fostering public internecine disagreements on Ukraine policy hasn't been repeated.

US Defense Department spokesman John Kirby, without wanting to go into details about the type of aircraft supplied to Ukraine or their operational status, commented as follows; "They have more fighter aircraft at their disposal today than they did two weeks ago. Without going into details about what other countries are supplying, I would say they have received additional aircraft and spare parts to augment their fleet," he then added.

My sixth sense tells me somebody got spanked, and Blinken emerged the eventual winner. Why? Let's to to Wikipedia. The first observation to make is that the Blinken family has been a member of the US upper class for generations. Consider Antony's father, Donald Blinken (1925-2022):

Blinken was born on November 11, 1925, in Yonkers, New York, the son of Maurice Blinken and his wife, Ethel (Horowitz). His father and mother were of Jewish descent and his father was originally from Kyiv (now the capital of Ukraine). His grandfather was author Meir Blinken. Blinken had two brothers, Alan and Robert.

The brothers grew up both in New York City and Yonkers. They attended the Horace Mann School. Blinken graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University in 1948, after serving in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II in 1944.

Although Jewish, considering Donald's father was able to send his sons to an exclusive prep school -- a clearer class marker than even an Ivy degree -- and then send Donald to Harvard at a time when Harvard still had a Jewish quota, it seems plain that the Blinkens were "Episcopalian Jews", who had been admitted to New York society since at least the turn of the 20th century. Wikipedia doesn't go into the source of the family's wealth or standing, but it certainly seems to have given Donald a head start:

Blinken met Mark Rothko in 1956 and became an art collector. He was president of the Mark Rothko Foundation from 1976 to 1989. In 1984, the foundation distributed 1,000 art pieces to museums, including to the National Gallery of Art.

In 1966, Blinken co-founded E. M. Warburg Pincus & Company, an investment bank in New York. He served as a director for Warburg Pincus, and served as chairman of the board of directors. From 1970 to 1976, Blinken was president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He was appointed to the board of trustees for the State University of New York by Governor Hugh Carey in September 1976 and was appointed the board's chairman in 1978. The board clashed with Governor Mario Cuomo as Cuomo wanted the board to cut spending. Blinken announced his resignation from the board in October 1989, which took effect with the confirmation of his successor in 1990.

During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Blinken served on a special nomination panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals. In 1994, President Bill Clinton nominated Blinken to be the United States Ambassador to Hungary. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and served in the role until 1997. From 2000 to 2004, Blinken was the secretary-general of the World Federation of United Nations Associations.

We may assume that his nomination as Ambassador to Hungary was on the same basis as other ambassadorships to major countries, typically awarded to highly wealthy and influential political donors. In fact, his brother Alan Blinken , a Harvard alum as well, was also Ambassador to Belgium during the Clinton administration. While Donald was not a career diplomat, he nevertheless was in a position to further his son Antony's career:

Antony John Blinken (born April 16, 1962) is an American government official and diplomat serving as the 71st United States secretary of state since January 26, 2021. He previously 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 from 1994 to 2001. He was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 2001 to 2002. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for Joe Biden's 2008 presidential campaign, before advising the Obama–Biden presidential transition.

From 2009 to 2013, Blinken served as deputy assistant to the president and national security advisor to the vice president. During his tenure in the Obama administration, he helped craft U.S. policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm.

There can be little question that the Blinken family is a locus of power in US political and financial circles and has been, apparently since at least the 1930s. In the period after 2017 and before 2020, he

co-founded WestExec Advisors, a political strategy advising firm, with Michèle Flournoy, Sergio Aguirre, and Nitin Chadda. WestExec's clients have included Google's Jigsaw, Israeli artificial-intelligence company Windward, surveillance drone manufacturer Shield AI, which signed a $7.2 million contract with the Air Force, and "Fortune 100 types". According to Foreign Policy, the firm's clientele includes "the defense industry, private equity firms, and hedge funds". Blinken received almost $1.2 million in compensation from WestExec.

In an interview with The Intercept, Flournoy described WestExec's role as facilitating relationships between Silicon Valley firms and the Department of Defense and law enforcement; Flournoy and others compared WestExec to Kissinger Associates.

But also,

Blinken, as well as other Biden transition team members Michele Flournoy, former Pentagon advisor, and Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense, are partners of private equity firm Pine Island Capital Partners, a strategic partner of WestExec. Pine Island's chairman is John Thain, the final chairman of Merrill Lynch before its sale to Bank of America. Blinken went on leave from Pine Island in August 2020 to join the Biden campaign as a senior foreign policy advisor. He said he would divest himself of his equity stake in Pine Island if confirmed for a position in the Biden administration.

My preliminary estimate is that if anyone is in a position to spank Joe Biden, it's Antony Blinken. Blinken in fact strikes me as someone who may well determine Biden's eventual fate.