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Not so long ago, the thinner French relations of John Kerry, one of Mr Blinken’s predecessors as Secretary of State, drew chuckles from Tories who hinted that Mr Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, was somewhat less than entirely American (or “seems French,†as President George W. Bush’s Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans once said).
Compared to Mr Blinken, however, Mr Kerry – who learned French at a Swiss boarding school and spent summers with his grandparents on the Brittany coast – was a dumbfounded tourist in front of the Eiffel Tower.
After Mr Blinken’s mother married her second husband in 1971, Samuel Pisar – a prominent diplomat, lawyer and prominent politician of Polish descent who had moved to Paris years before – she brought 9-year-old Antony to live there with them.
Judith Blinken quickly established herself in the French capital. A former musical director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, she flourished as a sort of cultural ambassador in Paris, helping to promote institutions like the American Center in Paris, which is now closed. A 1993 Chicago Tribune profile described her as a flawless French speaker and “impeccable hostess” who “dresses with the aplomb and confidence that are innate to French women.” She has often entertained in the family home just off Avenue Foch in the 16th arrondissement, “a very modern, all white apartment on two levels filled with major works of art”.
Mr. Blinken attended the Active Bilingual School, a school in central Paris, not far from the Arc de Triomphe. His classmates included Robert Malley, a longtime friend who is now the State Department’s special envoy to Iran. Mr. Blinken quickly learned French and integrated into the culture while finding ways to embrace his American roots: when the first McDonald’s opened in Paris, he ran there with friends and became a regular client. He also fell in love with American rock music, playing guitar in a band that performed when he graduated from high school.
As a teenager in Paris, he became interested in international politics and countered hostile views of the United States from his friends at a time when left-wing criticism of the Cold War was common there. In an interview with the New York Times in June, during his first visit to France as Secretary of State, Mr. Blinken called his stay in Paris “a life-changing experience” which allowed him to ” to be able to see my own country from a different perspective, and that was a very powerful thing.
Mr. Blinken left France in 1980 to study at Harvard University and Columbia Law School, then returned for two years to work in a law firm in Paris.
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