P. Michael McKinley

Peter Michael McKinley (born January 1954) is an American diplomat who is the current United States Ambassador to Brazil and is the former United States Ambassador to Afghanistan.

McKinley joined the Foreign Service in 1982. He was based in Bolivia from 1983 until 1985 and had three tours of duty in Washington from 1983 until 1985. He then served in the U.S. Embassy in London from 1990 until 1994 and as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d' Affaires at U.S. Embassies in Mozambique, Uganda, and Belgium from 1994 until 2001.

From 2001 until 2004, McKinley served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. He then was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels from 2004–07.

He previously served as the United States Ambassador to Colombia, based in Bogotá, Colombia after the Senate confirmed him to that post on August 5, 2010. McKinley served as the U.S. Ambassador to Peru from 2007 to 2010.

On December 9, 2014, the United States Senate confirmed McKinley to be the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan in a voice vote. On September 8, 2016 the United States Senate confirmed McKinley to be the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil by a vote of 92–0. He formally succeeded Liliana Ayalde on January 11, 2017.

McKinley was born in Venezuela and grew up in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He did his undergraduate and graduate studies in the United Kingdom, and has a doctorate from Linacre College at Oxford University. His history of colonial Venezuela was published by Cambridge University Press as part of its Latin America series, and has also appeared in a Spanish edition.

He and his wife, the former Fatima Salces Arce, have three children.