kaltenbrunnerpress - ANTONY BLINKEN — DIPLOMAT, LAWYER, MUSICIAN, AND MAN OF CULTURE

ANTONY BLINKEN — DIPLOMAT, LAWYER, MUSICIAN, AND MAN OF CULTURE

A Few Personal Words About One of the Most Interesting American Statesmen of Our Time

By Doctor of Philosophy Mayer Meir Kaltenbrunner

There are statesmen whom history remembers primarily because of the offices they once held.

There are politicians whose names remain associated with wars, negotiations, international agreements, crises, and decisions made within the highest chambers of government.

But sometimes, behind an official title, an entirely different person unexpectedly emerges.

A person who loves music.

A person who picks up an electric guitar.

A person who can step up to a microphone not to deliver another diplomatic statement or hold another press conference, but simply to play music.

And at such a moment, the formal portrait of a statesman gives way, for a few minutes, to the human being behind the office.

For me, such a person is Antony John Blinken, the 71st Secretary of State of the United States of America.

His career in public service is well known. He travelled a long road through American foreign policy, served in several presidential administrations, became Deputy Secretary of State, held senior positions on the National Security Council, and ultimately led the United States Department of State during the administration of President Joe Biden. His nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 26, 2021.

Yet this page is not devoted solely to the statesman.

I would like to write about the man.

The lawyer.

The intellectual.

The journalist.

The diplomat.

The musician.

And, finally, about a representative of that great historical Jewish experience which, over the centuries, has connected families and generations separated by national borders, languages, and oceans.

A MAN WHO CANNOT BE DEFINED BY A SINGLE OFFICE

Political office is temporary.

A human being is far greater than the office he holds.

This can be seen particularly clearly in the case of Antony Blinken.

Before entering the highest levels of public service, he received a serious humanities and legal education. He graduated from Harvard College and Columbia Law School and subsequently practised law in New York and Paris.

Moreover, his biography includes another profession that is especially close to me personally: journalism.

He worked as a reporter for The New Republic and wrote about foreign affairs.

Lawyer.

Journalist.

Diplomat.

Statesman.

Musician.

The very combination of these different worlds tells us something about the breadth of a person's interests.

For me, education has never meant merely possessing a diploma.

True education manifests itself above all in a person's ability to see the world through more than one narrow professional window.

A person may be an excellent lawyer and understand nothing about art.

A person may be an experienced politician and remain completely deaf to human emotion.

A person may spend decades dealing with international relations while viewing other nations merely as pieces on a geopolitical chessboard.

But diplomacy, in its finest sense, requires considerably more.

It requires the ability to listen.

To understand.

To appreciate differences between cultures.

And, at the same time, to discover what can bring people together.

MUSIC AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

And this brings us to the side of Antony Blinken's personality represented by the video published on this page.

Music.

At first glance, there may appear to be something unusual about seeing a United States Secretary of State holding an electric guitar.

But for Blinken himself, this is by no means an accidental appearance on a stage.

Music is part of his life.

In a conversation officially published by the United States Department of State, Blinken spoke about music as an extraordinary means of connecting people. When his interviewer mentioned his guitar playing and musical recordings, Blinken, with characteristic self-deprecation, did not pretend to be a professional rock star.

But the conversation reveals something much more important: music is a genuine personal interest for him rather than a piece of political theatre.

I find that particularly appealing.

Talent does not have to remain confined within a professional job description.

A person can discuss matters of international security in the morning and pick up a guitar in the evening.

He can read diplomatic cables and still love the blues.

He can be a graduate of law school and possess a profound feeling for music.

There is no contradiction in this.

Quite the opposite.

It is often precisely these unexpected combinations that make a personality particularly interesting.

WHEN A DIPLOMAT PICKS UP A GUITAR

Blinken's musical interests also became part of American public diplomacy.

In September 2023, during the launch of the United States Department of State's Global Music Diplomacy Initiative, he personally took to the stage with a guitar and performed a blues song.

The Department of State subsequently included this episode in its own presentation of music diplomacy.

The idea itself is remarkable.

Diplomacy does not exist only in diplomatic notes, treaties, negotiations, and official photographs.

Culture is also diplomacy.

Music is diplomacy.

Literature is diplomacy.

Art is diplomacy.

Sometimes a single melody can cross a border that political declarations have failed to cross for years.

The United States Department of State gave this concept an institutional form: music could be used as an instrument for bringing people together and promoting peace.

In 2024, the U.S. Global Music Ambassadors programme was introduced to use music as an international platform for human connection.

This philosophy is close to my own understanding of diplomacy.

Because diplomacy ultimately does not exist between ministry buildings.

It exists between human beings.

BLINKEN WITH A GUITAR IN KYIV

One particularly memorable musical episode took place in Kyiv on May 14, 2024.

During his visit to Ukraine, Antony Blinken visited a music venue and joined musicians on stage with a guitar.

The United States Department of State preserved an official record of the event.

Before the performance, Blinken spoke about the extraordinarily difficult circumstances faced by Ukrainian citizens and soldiers and about American support for Ukraine.

Then the music began.

People may hold different opinions about the policies of any government.

They may agree or disagree with the decisions of any Secretary of State.

But there is something worth noticing in the human image of a diplomat holding an electric guitar.

For at moments such as this, the distance between office and individual disappears.

Before us is no longer merely a man whose name appears on the official letterhead of the United States Department of State.

Before us is a human being who loves music.

THE LAWYER

For me, it is particularly significant that Blinken's professional background includes the law.

Columbia Law School forms part of his education, and before entering government service he practised law in New York and Paris.

Legal education encourages a particular discipline of thought.

It teaches us to distinguish between an assertion and evidence.

Between a political position and a legal fact.

Between an assumption and an established circumstance.

Between authority and responsibility.

Between law and arbitrariness.

Of course, a law degree alone can never guarantee wisdom.

But the combination of legal training with international affairs, journalism, and culture creates an extraordinarily interesting intellectual profile.

Blinken belongs to precisely this kind of statesman.

THE JOURNALIST

There is another detail of his biography that I do not wish to overlook.

Before his long career in government, he was connected with journalism.

For me, as a journalist, this has particular significance.

Anyone who has ever seriously engaged in journalism knows how important it is to ask the right question.

Journalism does not begin with an answer.

It begins with a question.

Why?

When?

Who?

On the basis of what document?

What does the other side say?

Which facts can be independently verified?

This is an intellectual discipline that can remain with a person even after he moves into another profession.

For that reason, I find it especially interesting that the biography of an American Secretary of State includes not only government offices and diplomatic negotiations, but also journalistic experience.

JEWISH FAMILY MEMORY

There is another dimension that carries deeply personal significance for me.

The Jewish history of the twentieth century is not merely the history of a people.

It is the history of millions of families.

Families torn apart.

Emigration.

Europe.

America.

The Holocaust.

Survivors.

New generations.

New lives.

Blinken himself has publicly told the story of his stepfather, Samuel Pisar, a Holocaust survivor.

He recalled how Pisar escaped during a death march, hid in the Bavarian forest, and eventually encountered American soldiers — an encounter that became his road to freedom.

Blinken has spoken about growing up with such family stories.

Stories like these cannot be regarded merely as biographical footnotes.

They become family memory.

And family memory helps shape the human being.

For Jewish families scattered by history across Europe, Israel, the United States, and other parts of the world, genealogy can sometimes resemble the painstaking reconstruction of a vast shattered mosaic.

One branch ends up in America.

Another in Europe.

Another in Israel.

Decades pass.

Surnames change.

Languages change.

But memory remains.

OUR GENEALOGICAL LINE

Here I would like to make a personal authorial observation.

On the basis of my own genealogical research, I associate Antony Blinken's family line with the broader historical branch of American Ashkenazi Jewry with which the history of my own family is also connected.

I deliberately formulate this as the conclusion of my own genealogical research.

Genealogy requires documents.

Archives.

Birth records.

Marriage records.

Migration documents.

Comparisons between family names and family lines.

Sometimes it requires decades of research.

For me, therefore, such a connection is not a reason to appropriate the name or achievements of a prominent person as part of one's own family history.

Quite the opposite.

It is an opportunity to reflect once again on the extraordinary ways in which history has scattered the descendants of a great people throughout the world.

THIS IS NOT POLITICAL HAGIOGRAPHY

I would like to make one important distinction.

Respect for a person does not require agreement with every political decision that person has made.

I do not believe that a Secretary of State, president, minister, or any other public official should be transformed into an infallible figure.

Politics must remain open to critical analysis.

Decisions must be discussed.

Mistakes must be recognised as mistakes.

Historical consequences must be assessed independently.

But there is an enormous difference between criticising political decisions and losing the ability to recognise the human being behind them.

I want to preserve precisely that distinction.

One can disagree with a diplomat and still respect his education.

One can criticise a decision and still recognise talent.

One can hold an independent political position and still smile when a Secretary of State picks up a Fender guitar.

That, in my view, is what a mature attitude towards public figures looks like.

A GIFTED AND CREATIVE MAN

I regard Antony Blinken as an unusually versatile individual.

Not because a Secretary of State is expected to play the guitar well.

Of course he is not.

Rather, because the ability to preserve the creative dimension of one's personality after decades of demanding public service is itself something that inspires human sympathy.

High politics can make people extremely serious.

Sometimes too serious.

It surrounds a person with security, protocol, advisers, documents, meetings, and cameras.

Gradually, the office can begin to consume the individual.

That is why it is especially refreshing to see the opposite.

Behind the Secretary of State remains Antony.

Behind the diplomat stands the musician.

Behind the lawyer stands a man of culture.

Behind the official statement there is a melody.

MUSIC DOES NOT ASK FOR YOUR PASSPORT

Music possesses an extraordinary quality.

It does not ask what passport a person carries.

It does not ask which political party he voted for.

It does not investigate his political biography.

It requires no visa.

It simply plays.

Blinken has spoken about music's capacity to connect people, and during his tenure the United States Department of State developed that idea into a distinct form of cultural diplomacy.

It seems to me that there is something here that goes beyond a beautiful diplomatic programme.

In a world in which governments increasingly find it easy to speak to one another in the language of threats, music reminds us that another language exists.

The language of human culture.

WHY I PLACED THIS VIDEO ON MY WEBSITE

I did not place this video on my website as political advertising.

Nor is it a declaration of support for every position taken by an American administration.

And it is certainly not an attempt to use a famous name merely to decorate my own website.

The reason is much simpler.

I liked seeing the man with the guitar.

I liked seeing a creative personality within a distinguished diplomat.

I liked the very idea that, after endless international negotiations, a person can walk up to a microphone, pick up an instrument, and play music.

There is something wonderfully normal about it.

And something profoundly human.

WITH ANTONY BLINKEN'S PERMISSION

Respect for authorship and intellectual rights is a matter of principle for me.

I therefore wish to state separately:

I have published this video on my website with Antony Blinken's permission.

I am grateful for the opportunity to present it here.

I regard that permission as more than a mere formality.

For me, it represents an expression of human respect between people whose lives and professional circumstances may be entirely different, yet who can nevertheless meet within at least one common space — the space of culture.

That is why this video is here.

With respect.

With gratitude.

And without any attempt to turn it into something it is not.

BEYOND POLITICS

One day, historians will write extensive studies of the foreign policy of the Biden administration.

They will argue about it.

Some decisions will be defended.

Others will be criticised.

Archives will be opened.

Memoirs will be published.

New evidence will emerge.

Historical distance will alter contemporary assessments.

This happens to every statesman.

But I would like to preserve another, smaller historical image.

Antony Blinken stands before a microphone.

A guitar strap rests over his shoulder.

An electric guitar is in his hands.

Musicians stand beside him.

And at that moment, the Secretary of State ceases to be merely the Secretary of State.

He becomes simply a man who loves music.

THE HUMAN LANGUAGE OF DIPLOMACY

Perhaps this is precisely what international relations particularly need today.

A human language.

We have become accustomed to words such as:

sanctions,

war,

security,

threat,

crisis,

ultimatum,

retaliation.

All these words are sometimes necessary.

But civilisation exists not only because states possess the ability to defend themselves.

It exists because human beings possess the ability to create.

Music.

Books.

Paintings.

Science.

Law.

Philosophy.

And friendship.

That is why the image of a diplomat with a guitar carries, for me, a much broader symbolic meaning.

It reminds us of something simple:

A HUMAN BEING SHOULD ALWAYS REMAIN GREATER THAN THE OFFICE HE HOLDS.

MY PERSONAL RESPECT

This page is also an expression of my personal respect for Antony Blinken.

As an educated man.

As a lawyer.

As a diplomat.

As someone with experience in journalism.

As a representative of the American Jewish historical experience.

And as a musician who is not afraid to reveal to the world a part of his personality that exists far beyond diplomatic protocol.

I do not know what final judgement history will make about his years in government.

No one today can know that with certainty.

Historical judgement requires time.

But I am certain of something else.

The creative side of a creative person also deserves to be remembered.

THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC

And so I would like to conclude this page very simply.

Not with a diplomatic formula.

Not with a political slogan.

Not with an academic conclusion.

But with a few human words.

Dear Antony,

Thank you for the music.

Thank you for allowing us to see a statesman beyond the walls of official protocol.

Thank you for reminding us that seriousness and creativity can coexist beautifully within the same human being.

Thank you for the guitar.

Thank you for the music.

And thank you for the simple truth that music continually brings back to humanity:

WE HAVE FAR MORE IN COMMON THAN WE SOMETIMES REALISE.

Political offices come and go.

One administration succeeds another.

Historians will debate decisions.

But music remains.

Human dignity remains.

And memory remains.

ANTONY BLINKEN — LAWYER, DIPLOMAT, JOURNALIST, STATESMAN, AND MUSICIAN.

A MAN WHO REMINDS US THAT PUBLIC SERVICE AND HUMAN CREATIVITY NEED NOT EXIST IN DIFFERENT WORLDS.

WITH RESPECT AND GRATITUDE.

❤️🇺🇸✡️🎸