Donilon in focus after Bin Laden raid

If Barack Obama’s approval of the raid to get Osama bin Laden showed off his hawkish side, it also pushed into the public eye an adviser whose role in US foreign policy has become as important as it is unpublicised.

In the aftermath of the operation, Tom Donilon was dispatched to handle the diplomatic fallout on television talk shows, his first big moment in the spotlight since becoming national security adviser last year.

Mr Donilon, 56, has been accumulating power quietly from the time Mr Obama came to office and is at the president’s side during his trip to Europe. Behind the scenes, his colleagues and friends say, the Rhode Island lawyer has long been immersed in policy debates, as a state department official in the Clinton administration and through bodies such as the Aspen Institute.

“He is one of the most influential people inside the world of foreign policy while being one of the least known outside. That is not an accident,” said Philip Zelikow, who worked in the George W. Bush administration.

The national security adviser is the spider in the web of foreign policy, helping synthesise often clashing views within the sprawling bureaucracy to set out policy options for the president.

Mr Donilon had a baptism of fire, taking the position at a time of upheaval in the Middle East, strains with Pakistan and rocky relations with China. “No president has had so many disparate but consequential foreign policy dilemmas to deal with all at once,” said Joe Biden, vice-president and a longtime intimate.

Mr Donilon’s brother is the vice-president’s counsellor and his wife Cathy Russell chief of staff for Mr Biden’s wife. “I don’t think since 1975 two weeks have gone by I haven’t sought Tom’s opinion about something,” said Mr Biden.

The qualities Mr Biden sees are the same that others who know him list: meticulous preparation and a prodigious work ethic combined with a sixth sense that picks up “almost the vibrations or the flow of events”.

Read the rest Via:FT

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