Alexander Stubb, President of Finland: We live in a world of disorder

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Hello, I'm Matt Chawley, BBC presenter,

and this is the interview from the BBC World Service,

the best conversations coming out of the BBC.

People shaping our world for all over the world.

If you're not a little bit afraid,

then you're not paying attention.

You have never seen a people so united.

Do not make that boat crossing.

Do not make that journey.

Being born in America, feeling American,

having people treat me like I'm not.

We're more popular than populism.

For this interview, I met Finland's president, Alexander Stube,

while he was on a visit to London.

He believes the world is at a point of transition

with political priorities and allegiances shifting,

a process of change that started with the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

and has continued to pace under the second Trump administration.

We are currently living, he tells me,

in a world of disorder.

Alexander Stube is also believed to have the ear of the US leader.

They share a love of golf,

but does he agree that NATO should be doing more to support America

in its ongoing war with Iran?

It's not Article 3, Article 4, or Article 5 of NATO,

because that for us is about protecting ourselves in a situation.

So what I've always said, that NATO is a defense alliance.

It's a military alliance.

It's not an alliance that attacks.

That's the basic idea.

When NATO 2.0 was sort of founded after the end of the Cold War,

we went a lot into crisis management or peacekeeping.

We did that in Kosovo.

We did it in Afghanistan.

And then there was always a UN mandate to do that.

So that's fine.

But this is not, you know, NATO per definition.

This is very much the US and Israel.

Welcome to the interview from the World Service with Alexander Stube.

We meet at a moment where it feels like the world order is being redrawn.

How do you see the world falling into different groups,

different blocks like that?

Well, we are right now in a transition.

So it's a little bit from a Western perspective,

the 1918-1945 or 1989 moment when the order is changing.

And we don't know where it's going to settle.

So after World War I, the League of Nations wasn't strong enough.

We end up in World War II, after World War II.

The United Nations is strong enough to, you know,

keep world peace for 40 years or four decades.

And then after the Cold War, we kind of get intellectually lazy.

And we think that everyone wants to be like us,

you know, 200 nation states of the world.

History is over.

Let's do liberal democracy, social market economy and globalization.

And then something started happening early on.

And for me, the changing date was the war in Ukraine on February 2022.

And then probably the new American administration.

So we don't know where the world is going to land.

So we live a little bit in a world of disorder right now, unfortunately.

One of the blocks you talk about is the global west of liberal democracies

led by America.

But right now we find America at odds with lots of the liberal democracies you're talking about.

Yeah, probably we have to be realistic.

And don't get me wrong.

I'm pro-American and an average transatlanticist.

But the US has a very different foreign policy right now.

It's quite ideological.

It's quite interest-driven.

It acts as a headgemon.

So in that sense, it's quite different from what I envisage.

It was one of the scenarios, but nevertheless.

At these things move quickly.

Let's focus on some of what President Trump has been saying literally

in the last few hours and the last few days.

In the wake of his decision to launch an attack on Iran,

he's been very critical of allies who didn't join him and who haven't,

in his view, anyway, been supportive enough.

And now he's saying it will be very bad for the future of NATO

if allies don't work with him to help secure the strait of our moves.

What's your take on that?

Should NATO allies, including Finland, join the US?

The US, when it was more or less benign headgemon,

it used to consult allies and international institutions before something happened.

This was the case in Kosovo, this was the case in Libya,

this was the case in Iraq, and this was the case in Afghanistan.

So it sort of went with the allies.

This was a surprise attack, so none of us knew about it.

And that's why probably there's been reluctance and a little bit of a pushback.

Then for a country like Finland,

we're up there in the northeastern corner of Europe.

So we have our own backyard to take care of 1,340 kilometers

or border with Russia.

So that's the part that we do for the alliance.

We wouldn't have much to give.

You know, we don't have basis,

these kinds of things to give.

What I think I'd like to see now is more peace mediation.

You know, we need to find a way out in negotiations.

So that's what I'd probably be flagging for right now.

But it feels like President Trump is turning this into a sort of

ability test of NATO allies.

He said today, just this afternoon,

talking about NATO again, he says,

I know we'll protect them.

It was honestly, if we ever needed help,

they won't be there for us.

They will be.

You have to remember that the Arctic,

especially northern Finland,

northern Sweden and northern Norway.

It's the key for protecting the United States.

Why?

Because most of Russia's nuclear weapons are up there in more months,

and the Kuala Peninsula.

So, you know, if push comes to shove, of course,

we are part of Article 5.

Collective defense.

One for all, all for one.

Out of the question that we wouldn't support the U.S.

And I think that's actually,

it's very much in the interest of the U.S.

as well to have allies and have NATO.

Because the biggest security threat that we have in Europe,

unfortunately, is Russia.

And that's what we're trying to contain inside the alliance.

German Chancellor Merz has said that this is not a matter for NATO.

It's not Article 3, Article 4, or Article 5 of NATO,

because that for us is about protecting ourselves in a situation.

So, what I've always said that NATO is a defense alliance.

It's a military alliance.

It's not an alliance that attacks.

That's the basic idea.

When NATO 2.0 was sort of founded after the end of the Cold War,

we went a lot into crisis management or peacekeeping, right?

We did that in Kosovo.

We did it in Afghanistan.

And then there was always a UN mandate to do that.

So, that's fine.

But this is not NATO per definition.

This is very much the U.S. and Israel.

It's actually, it's a point that was made by the General Senate

Carter, a former chief of the defense staff here in the UK.

Talk to the BBC, he said that NATO is a defensive alliance.

He said it wasn't designed for one of the allies to go on a war of choice

and then a bli-jaw and else to follow.

Is it Donald Trump doesn't understand what NATO is?

No, I think what the president of the United States wants right now

is support in a complicated situation.

I don't think many expected Iran to counter attack the Gulf states,

which are of course close allies of the United States.

But right now, I feel that Iran is obviously fighting for its existence.

That's why it's trying to a-maximize the destruction in the region

and be maximized the destruction for the global economy and the oil price.

And this puts, I think, everyone involved in a difficult situation.

That's why I think the best thing to do right now,

instead of escalating, is to de-escalate.

And then that would perhaps open the Hornwood Straits,

which are what President Trump is looking for.

You're often described as a Trump whisperer.

You seem to be closer to him than lots of leaders.

How often do you speak to him?

Is he on the phone?

Is he texting, WhatsApping, voice notes thing?

No, I think my job as president of Finland

is to have good relations with leaders around the world.

And of course, to have a relationship with the most powerful leader in the world is useful.

Having said that, I don't want to inflate my role at all as any kind of a whisperer.

If I can throw out one idea on the war of Ukraine out of ten,

that he might took on to, I'll be very happy.

But he makes very much his own decisions.

You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

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Alexander Stube as president of Finland.

He's one of those world leaders who is interesting

because he's managed to secure the thing

that so many other world leaders have tried and failed.

And that's a rapport with President Donald Trump.

Kirstama, the UK Prime Minister, of course, is another one.

Alexander Stube bonded with Donald Trump on the golf course.

But I was interested to know how far that relationship went,

how they communicate, and his ability to have

difficult conversations without cutting off

that relationship altogether.

So, okay, let's return to my conversation

with Alexander Stube.

You played golf together, though, don't you?

We did, yes.

And how did you beat him?

We were allowed to beat him.

We played on the same team.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

One of the few players that shoots under his own age,

quite impressive.

So you think he's a good player?

I do.

I do.

I wanted to see any evidence of this idea

that people have to let him win.

Will you want the winning team when you play to them?

We are on the winning team.

But we had a lot of fun.

I remember that, I mean, those for those you play golf.

I mean, I used to play seriously,

but I kind of quit cold turkey after college golf 35 years ago.

You see the personality of a human being kind of on the first hole.

You see how they react to bad shots and good shots.

We had a very pleasant round.

And how does Donald Trump react to a bad shot?

Very calm.

Much calmer than I am, you know.

A few months ago, I went to the Finnish embassy here in London

to experience sound and diplomacy,

the sound that you have in the embassy.

Is that something that you've tried out with Donald Trump?

No, Donald Trump.

But, you know, I've had like a foreign policy sound.

We have this feature called Aranta Talks at my summer residence

and I invite people to have a chat.

But yeah, sound is, I mean, it's the only international word

that comes out of the Finnish language.

So, very, very proud of it.

You know, we have 2.2 million sounders in Finland

for 5.6 million people.

That's quite a lot.

But you invite Donald Trump to join you

and let us have him invite anyone to a sounder

because it's a very soothing place.

I believe in taking a sounder and then an ice bath.

It kind of clears the mind.

Maybe that's why he needs to, you know, cool heads all around.

You never know.

Do you have difficult conversations with President Trump?

I would say I do.

Yeah, I think in any relationship, obviously,

we're very different in public than we are in private

as human beings, right?

I mean, you as a journalist behave at home differently

than you do in front of the camera, right?

So, and then also, you build a relationship of trust.

And once you reach a certain point of trust,

then you can be a little bit tougher

on things that you disagree.

But you kind of have to pick your battles.

I think that's the key.

But I feel that I've been able to be quite frank

with the President, among others.

Earlier this year, Trump said that NATO sent some troops

but stayed a little back, a little off the front lines

in Afghanistan.

Of course, two finished soldiers were among those

who were killed in Afghanistan.

Was that one of the difficult conversations you had to have?

I think that conversation has been more difficult

with the Danes who had over 40 soldiers dying.

Denmark has been a very close ally

of the United States over the years.

And of course, many of us, we weren't even NATO members.

But we had troops in Afghanistan for many years

in rotation.

Of course, it's good training.

But they were certainly in Meryl Sharif.

I visited the place myself very much in the front lines.

I would not have had the courage myself to be there

for too long, but our soldiers did.

And is that something you spoke to President Trump about?

We speak about alliance.

But I think my value added is to tell the strengths

of the Finnish military for the alliance.

And, you know, I know that even the viewers of BBC

don't always look at the intricacies of the Finnish military.

But we still have conscription.

So obligatory military service for men and then voluntary

for women.

We have over one million men and women

who have been trained in the military service.

We have over 60 F-18s.

We just bought 64 F-35s.

We have long-range missiles, air land and sea.

We have the biggest artillery together in Europe

together with Poland.

And as I always say, we don't have them

because we're worried about Sweden.

It's because you're worried about Russia,

and the scale of the border you're talking about.

Is that as President of Finland

what keeps you up at night?

No, I think we're quite actually cool,

common-collected when it comes to it

because our whole defence posture has been created

in a post-World War II world.

And then in the post-Cold War period,

we kept our military up.

So we have the capabilities.

And, you know, I look at our overall

comprehensive security.

As President, I'm the one who probably has most information

about our security of supply, our capacity in cyber,

our capacity in space, land, air and sea,

our border capacity.

And I sleep my nights, actually, quite calmly.

We've always had a good relationship with Russia as well.

You know, we are trustworthy.

So, and that says, even if we join NATO,

I don't think Russia sees us as a target.

It's not something, I mean, clearly,

other countries who share borders with Russia

aren't concerned about Russian invasion bluntly.

Is that something that concerns here in Finland?

No, I think, no, no, we don't.

I mean, we don't see any minute security threat from Russia,

but we do see a long-term threat,

depending, of course, on how the war in Ukraine ends.

But I think, having spoken to many colleagues over the years,

I think the bigger worries are not so much of NATO states

because Article V is solid.

But there are countries who are bordering Russia,

say, in Central Asia, who are worried about, you know,

Russian expansion and imperialism.

But what I keep on stressing is that once we're able to settle

the war of aggression in Ukraine,

we need to bring down the temperature

and see how we kind of get to discuss again.

Because right now, we basically don't have diplomatic

or political relations with Russia.

You talk about the ongoing investment in the Finnish military

and both in terms of equipment,

but also people in conscription, so on.

Not every country has done that, including the UK, but others too.

You know, cashed in the peace dividend after the end of the Cold War,

dialed down on defence spending, moved away from having conscription.

Do you think that was a mistake?

The UK military, obviously, has its own strength,

its capability and intelligence, its nuclear weapons,

its defence posture is different because you're an island,

whereas our defence posture is basically the landline with Russia.

But what I've seen now is that a lot of countries

are increasing their defence expenditure and capabilities.

And part of it is, obviously, President Trump putting pressure

on NATO allies.

But part of his reality and understanding that the world

is a much colder place than what it was after the Cold War.

One of the things we've seen in recent days,

America lifting some oil sanctions on Russia,

which will ultimately put money into Moscow's coffers,

which will end up on the battlefields in Ukraine.

That's, again, one of the spillover effects of the war in Iran

is that the oil price goes up, and that, of course,

means an oil price going up in the U.S. as well.

Therefore, a lifting of sanctions with which I disagree,

we actually should put more pressure on the Russian economy.

And now, of course, a focus more on Iran than on Ukraine.

So that's why we keep on working with our American friends.

And, of course, with our Ukrainians to try to bring things back on track,

because, as a matter of fact, when it comes to the battlefield,

Ukraine is doing much better than it has been in these past four years.

It's actually acquiring back more territory

than Russia is able to gain.

And if you look at the damage on the battlefield in the past three months,

it's over 90,000 Russian soldiers dead.

They're not even able to recruit.

But now they're able to feed their war machine

because of the increase in oil price, and I am worried about that.

But that's as a direct result of a decision taken by the American president,

who, if we're picking sides, it's supposed to be on the side of Ukraine and not Russia.

I think the United States has set out publicly as well as they see themselves

very much as mediators between Russia and Ukraine.

And, of course, for me, as a fin and as a European,

it was gone through the same predicament that Ukraine is going through right now.

We, as a nation in the winter war and the war of

continuation with the Soviet Union attacked us.

We have very much picked our side, and that is to try to help Ukraine to defend itself.

And, of course, it is a little bit of a miracle that we are where we are in the sense that,

you know, President Putin and Russia has failed in all of its strategic aims.

It tried to make Ukraine Russian.

It's going to become European.

It tried to bring NATO from enlarging.

It doubled its border with Finland coming in and Sweden.

And it tried to keep European defence expenditure and capabilities down

and we are up to 5% soon.

So, in that sense, I think, you know, Ukraine's fight is our fight.

And, yeah, against that backdrop, the US President has given a shot in the arm

to the Russian economy, which will end up being used to fund it's war in Ukraine.

I mean, what's your message being to Donald Trump on that specifically?

Well, you know, I haven't had a message on that specifically.

But what I kept on saying is that, as a matter of fact,

the Russian economy, before the oil price started to go up, wasn't doing well.

They had zero growth.

They had zero reserves.

They had, uh,

interest rates at 16% inflation at double digits.

They had a budget deficit, which went from 83 billion euros

to potentially 130 billion this year.

Now, that's going to come down.

And why do I stress this so much?

Because Russia needs money for the war machinery to work.

They need to pay the soldiers.

They need to pay the families of the dead soldiers.

And if we had been in a situation where they can't do that,

perhaps that would have been an incentive for Russia to end the war.

But the opposite is happening.

The Donald Trump is giving them the...

It is crucial moment as you paint it.

The opposite is happening in these past two weeks.

We've seen a shift, you know, the idea that the Russian economy is down this year

is not looking likely right now, unfortunately.

And that has, you know, changed the game.

But on the battlefield, again,

the Ukrainians are doing extremely well.

But what does that tell us, I suppose, about President Trump's attitude towards Ukraine

and to Russia?

Many people will look at that and think,

well, Donald Trump is signing with the leader of Russia over Ukraine.

I think the foreign policy of the current administration is basically based on two pillars.

We're seeing the national security strategy from November 2025.

One is MAGA, and that's very ideological.

So there's this resentment of global institutions, of international rules,

and also of the European Union, as a matter of fact.

And in general, this international cooperation.

The idea is that let's park that aside.

And then the other strand on this national security strategy,

which is obviously the strategy of the administration, is America first.

And that has a pecking order in the strategy.

Number one is the Western hemisphere.

Number two is the Indo-Pacific.

And only number three is Europe.

Number four is the Middle East, which is now changing, I guess.

And then number five is African.

That's the reality that we have to live with with the current administration.

So I always say that, and again, as a pro-American, pro-transatlanticist,

you know, live in a world or do your foreign policy in a world that exists,

not a world that you wish would exist.

You're here in London, clearly a lot of folks on key standards relationship with Donald Trump.

It had been, despite their political and personality differences,

they had been getting on very well.

Now in a situation where we've got the U.S. president describing

key standards, no Winston Churchill, criticizing the UK for not becoming more involved early on.

What's your advice to key standards on how to deal with that relationship?

Well, you have to understand the relationship that many of us have with President Trump,

does oscillate. You know, you have good days, you have bad days.

So don't take everything so personally, I think it's my message.

I don't give any advice.

There's clearly a lot of concern in the UK, as was in Finland, and across the world, really,

about the impact on the cost of living, the immediate impact rising oil prices,

and the longer term cost of investing in defences you're talking about.

People often ask, you know, when is the cost of living crisis going to end?

When are we going to get through all these?

Those days over where we didn't have to worry about those things.

Because actually life is going to be harder.

Foreign policy of the economy is never an end state.

It keeps on oscillating all the time.

And right now, you know, we are in a worse place than we were, say, 10 years ago.

There's no denying that.

And we're seeing in this world of disorder and increasing conflicts.

And these conflicts then have an impact on oil prices.

They might have an inflation on interest rates and the rest of it.

So we need to figure out when we have security pressure coming from the East and Russia,

and a transition from the West with the U.S. administration.

How do we best work together so that we can get over this cost of living crisis?

So to return to where we began and the idea of rebalancing the new world order,

is it possible to get to that while you still have Donald Trump in the White House?

I think it's possible to work towards that.

And the example that I give...

That's a good no.

No, it is, no, it's, I'm still, I'm a realistic optimist, right?

So I try not to over rationalize the past or history,

but there was something called the San Francisco moment, right after World War II,

where they created the United Nations.

And nations came together and agreed on a certain set of rules and norms and charters.

Why can't we do that again?

In a world where AI is predominant, technological revolution in general,

where they're conflicts and where we're not even talking about the climate crisis.

So let's get back to the drawing board and try to solve these things together

rather than going our separate ways.

Thank you for listening to the interview.

You'll find more in-depth conversations on the interview,

wherever you get your BBC podcasts,

including episodes with Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky,

and Antonio Katayevs, the Secretary-General of the UN,

plus many others.

Until the next time, bye for now.

You

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