THE DAD-ROCK DIPLOMACY OF ANTONY BLINKEN

Two major wars. A rising China. Hackers everywhere. He's from the US government, and he's here to help.

- GARRETT GRAFF

HERE'S A FLASH OF ANTONY J. Blinken's turn as US secretary of state: In his first year, he navigated America's messy exit from Afghanistan. In his second, he tried to rally the world to Ukraine's side following Russia's invasion in February 2022. His third and, now fourth, have been defined by the IsraelHamas conflict. In between, he has tried to box in rising Chinese aggression in Asia and slow Iran's march toward a nuclear weapon, even as the Islamic republic has (repeatedly) plotted to assassinate his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, for his role in killing Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani. Don't forget either about the normal mix of crises, coups, summits, treaties, global elections-more humans will vote in 2024 than in any year in world history-and, this summer, the biggest prisoner swap with Russia since the end of the Cold War.

Blinken, 62, once thought he might become a musician-or maybe, even less lucratively, a journalist. Instead he has spent virtually his entire career in the Washington foreign policy establishment, which is something of a family business: Both his father and uncle were ambassadors during the Clinton administration. In the 2000s, Blinken was the Democratic staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he cemented his partnership with then chair Joe Biden. During the Obama administration, Blinken was Biden's national security adviser, a role that delivered him a cameo in that presidency's most famous picture: Look carefully at the 2011 snapshot of Obama and top officials monitoring the killing of Osama bin Laden from the White House Situation Room and there is Blinken, peeking over the shoulder of White House chief of staff Bill Daley.