Xenophon Strategies

Ambassador Stephan M. Minikes

Stephan M. Minikes, who until July 2005 served as the United States Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Vienna, Austria, is Of Counsel to Xenophon Strategies. Nominated by President George W. Bush, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and, in November 2001, assumed the ambassadorship.

Ambassador Minikes is in the U.S. oil and gas production business as an active investor and advisor for a Denver, Colo.-based oil and gas production corporation. He is also a director of A.T. Kearney Public Sector and Defense Services, LLC, a corporation which is part of the A.T. Kearney global consulting firm; a special partner of RPM Ventures, a seed and early stage venture capital firm in Ann Arbor, Mich.; and a senior government consultant and member of the Riverglass, Inc. board of advisors, in Chicago, Ill., where he advises on federal market strategy.

Born in Berlin, Germany, Ambassador Minikes immigrated to the United States as a young boy. He has visited over 100 countries, representing the U.S. government and private interests, particularly in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. He is a life-long student of European and Russian affairs.

As Ambassador, he was deeply involved in the security, economic and political issues that are at the heart of the Euro-Atlantic, U.S.-EU, U.S.-Russia and U.S.-Eurasia relationships. He was engaged on daily basis in a wide range of security-related concerns, including counter-terrorism and arms control, human rights and democratization and economic development.

Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Minikes practiced law for over 30 years in Washington, D.C. and New York. For 17 years prior to his nomination, he was a partner in the national law firm of Thelen Reid & Priest LLP, where he was a member of the firm’s management committee, managing partner of the Washington, D.C. office, and chairman of the firm’s public law and policy strategies department. Prior to joining Thelen Reid, he established the Washington office of the Houston, Texas law firm of Butler & Binion in 1977, and served as that office’s managing partner.

Ambassador Minikes’ Washington practice today consists of representing clients in national defense, energy, transportation, government procurement, infrastructure development, international trade and agriculture matters. In the domain of foreign policy, he provides global government relations strategies for corporations, governments and non-governmental organizations. He advises on the policies and politics of the governments of Europe, the EU, the Balkans, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as on the politics of oil and gas production and transmission, and on the role of the international financial institutions. A well known member of the Washington political, legal and diplomatic communities, Ambassador Minikes combines a knowledge of business and government from the perspectives of the White House, the U.S. Congress and federal agencies, as well as of the roles of U.S. embassies and foreign embassies in Washington, D.C.

In 1974, the late William J. Casey asked Ambassador Minikes to join him as senior vice president and a member of the management committee of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. He served in those capacities until 1977.

From 1972 to 1974, Ambassador Minikes served in the Pentagon as legal counsel to the Chief of Naval Operations, the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., and as a member of the Navy’s advisory staff. During his tenure at the Pentagon, he had a period of service in the White House as counsel to Charles J. DiBona, Special Consultant to the President for Energy, to develop a national energy policy.

Before joining the Department of Defense in 1972, Ambassador Minikes was a corporate, securities and banking lawyer in New York City with the law firms of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and Borden & Ball. He represented underwriters, financial institutions, and public and closely held corporations on corporate, securities law and financing matters. In those capacities, he prepared registration statements, proxy statements, complex loan agreements and other documentation for business transactions.

Ambassador Minikes lectures, principally in university and other academic settings world-wide, on foreign policy, national defense, energy, international trade and finance, and human rights and democracy. He is a 1961 graduate of Cornell University and a 1964 graduate of the Yale Law School. He is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia, the State of New York, the U.S. Supreme Court and various other Federal courts, including the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, and a member of the American Bar Association, the District of Columbia Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, the American Society of International Law and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

Ambassador Minikes serves as a director of the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing democracy, freedom, self-government, the rule of law and the entrepreneurial spirit that fosters economic development in over 60 countries around the world, and has served as a director of the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center, a member of the Executive Committee of the Yale Law School and a member of the board of directors of the American Council on Germany. He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees for his professional and civic work. Ambassador Minikes is married and has a daughter.