Thomas E. Donilon
Thomas Edward Donilon is an American lawyer, business executive, and former government official who served as the 22nd National Security Advisor in the Obama administration from 2010 to 2013. Donilon also worked in the Carter and Clinton administrations. He is now Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the firm's global think tank.
Originally from Providence, Rhode Island, Donilon spent his early career in Democratic politics and then in foreign policy and national security. He has advised the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, designing policy, managing conventions, preparing candidates for debates, and overseeing presidential transitions. In 1992, Donilon was named chief of staff and assistant secretary of state at the State Department. During his tenure in the Clinton administration, Donilon played a leading role in NATO's enlargement and the Dayton Agreement, and conducted diplomacy in more than 50 countries.
During the Obama transition, Donilon served with diplomat Wendy Sherman as Agency Review Team Lead for the State Department. Upon Obama's inauguration he joined the administration as Deputy National Security Advisor, and was appointed National Security Advisor on October 8, 2010. Donilon tendered his resignation as National Security Adviser on June 5, 2013, and was succeeded in office by Susan Rice.
Since leaving government, Donilon has served in an advisory role as chair of the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, appointed by Obama; and as vice chairman of the international law firm O'Melveny & Myers. During Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, Donilon was co-chair of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project and its foreign policy lead.
In 2020, Joe Biden reportedly offered Donilon the position of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Early life and education
Donilon attended La Salle Academy, a Catholic school in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1977, he earned a B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from The Catholic University of America, and received the President's Award, the highest honor. In 1985, he received a J.D. degree at the University of Virginia, where he served on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review.Early career
Democratic politics
After graduating from Catholic University, Donilon began working in the Carter White House as a staffer in the Congressional Relations Office in 1977. At age 24, Donilon managed the 1980 Democratic Convention, at which Senator Ted Kennedy challenged President Carter for the nomination. A profile from 1980 described him as, "one of those Wunderkinder who spring out of nowhere to become driving forces in politics." Carter defeated Kennedy's challenge for the nomination but lost the general election. In 1981, Donilon temporarily moved to Atlanta to assist the former president's transition to private life. He served as a lecturer at his alma mater, Catholic University.In 1983, Donilon took a leave of absence from law school to work on Walter Mondale's presidential campaign, as the national campaign coordinator and convention director. Donilon helped prepared Mondale for his presidential debates. Donilon met his wife, Catherine Russell, on the Mondale campaign. Both Russell and Donilon then worked on Joe Biden's 1988 presidential campaign. After Michael Dukakis won the Democratic nomination, Donilon prepared him for his debates.
During the George H. W. Bush administration, Donilon was recruited to the law firm O'Melveny & Myers by Warren Christopher, the firm's senior partner and the former Deputy Secretary of State under President Carter.
In 1992, Donilon led Bill Clinton's general election debate preparations and served as counsel to the transition directors.
State Department chief of staff and assistant for public affairs
When Warren Christopher became Secretary of State under President Clinton, Donilon worked as his chief of staff and as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, from 1993 to 1996. In those posts, he traveled to more than 50 countries. According to The Washington Post, in the Clinton administration, Donilon was "intimately involved in many major foreign policy issues, including negotiating the Bosnian peace agreement and the expansion of NATO." During the Srebrenica massacre, Donilon advocated intervention and lobbied members of Congress and worked with allies to approve intervention.Private sector
Donilon worked as executive vice president for law and policy at Fannie Mae, the federally chartered mortgage finance company, as a registered lobbyist from 1999 through 2005.Before his appointment to the Obama Administration, Donilon had returned to the Washington office of the law firm O'Melveny & Myers, where he advised companies and their boards on a range of "sensitive governance, policy, legal and regulatory matters." In addition, he "led the firm's successful effort to revitalize its pro bono commitment."
Out of government, Donilon continued to participate in foreign policy, including as a member of the House and Senate Majority's National Security Advisory Group, under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Obama administration
In 2008, David Axelrod recruited Donilon to head Obama's presidential debate preparation team. After the election, Obama's pick for chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, recommended that James L. Jones, Obama's pick for National Security Advisor, hire Donilon as his deputy. In October 2010, Donilon replaced Jones as National Security Advisor. According to The New Yorker, he took inspiration for the NSC process from former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.National Security Advisor (2010–2013)
As National Security Advisor, Donilon "oversaw the U.S. National Security Council staff, chaired the cabinet level National Security Principals Committee, provided the president's daily national security briefing, and was responsible for the coordination and integration of the administration's foreign policy, intelligence, and military efforts." Donilon also "oversaw the White House's international economics, cybersecurity, and international energy efforts" and "served as the President's personal emissary to a number of world leaders, including Chinese leaders Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, President Vladimir Putin, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."A profile in Foreign Policy magazine described "the extraordinarily tight leash holds over the foreign-policy apparatus, his demanding treatment of staff, and the way he allegedly undercuts or elbows aside challenges to his power." Another profile, by Jason Horowitz in The Washington Post, defined the "Donilon Doctrine" as one that "envisions a re-balancing of resources and interests away from Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe and toward Asia, where he sees America building bigger, better relationships with China and India."
In June 2013, when Donilon announced he was leaving the White House, Obama said, "Tom's that rare combination of the strategic and the tactical. He has a strategic sense of where we need to go, and he has a tactical sense of how to get there." Joe Biden said in a statement, "I've worked with eight different administrations and even more national security advisers, and I've never met anyone with more talent and with greater strategic judgment."
David Rothkopf wrote of Donilon's legacy:
"Donilon's greatest contribution was his strategic mindset, leading to a conscious shift away from the issues that preoccupied the NSC under George W. Bush in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the broader post-9/11 "Global War on Terror" to one that centered on next generation issues: China, cyber issues, the strategic consequences of America's energy revolution, introducing new economic initiatives in the Atlantic and Pacific that have broad geopolitical consequences, moving to a next generation Mideast strategy focused on regional stability, along with new partnerships with regional and global players and addressing emerging threats in places like Africa."
Asia
Donilon was a prominent advocate of the Obama administration's "pivot" or rebalance to Asia. Donilon described the policy in a speech at the Asia Society in 2013: "The United States is implementing a comprehensive, multidimensional strategy: strengthening alliances; deepening partnerships with emerging powers; building a stable, productive, and constructive relationship with China; empowering regional institutions; and helping to build a regional economic architecture that can sustain shared prosperity."In July 2012, Donilon met with then Chinese leader Hu Jintao and Dai Bingguo. The next year, he traveled to China again and met with Xi Jinping; during his visit, Donilon called for a "healthy, stable, and reliable military-to-military relationship" between the United States and China.
Donilon was also critical of China at times. He was the first American official to publicly admonish China for its cyber espionage. In 2013, in a speech to the Asia Society, Donilon said "Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber-intrusions on an unprecedented scale." Donilon said China must recognize the risk such activities pose to the reputation of Chinese industry, to bilateral relations, and to international trade. Beijing, he said, must also "take serious steps to investigate" allegations of hacking.
Before leaving the Obama Administration, Donilon coordinated a two-day informal summit between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Obama held in Sunnylands, California, in June 2013.