Transcript: Finland's president on Europe in a Trumpian world

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Finland’s president on Europe in a Trumpian world’

Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about Europe’s place in the world as Donald Trump returns to the White House and Russia presses forward in Ukraine. My guest is President Alexander Stubb of Finland. So how can Europe cope in the emerging new world order?

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy audio clip
And Europe must have a seat at the table and deals about war and peace are made. And I’m not just talking about Ukraine here. This should be the standard. Europe deserves to be more than just a bystander. Europe must be able to guarantee peace. Peace and security for everybody.

Gideon Rachman
That was President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week and warning Europeans that they risk sinking into irrelevance if Europe doesn’t spend more on defence. I’m in Davos and saw Zelenskyy after that speech, and President Stubb of Finland also had a long meeting with the Ukrainian leader. The morning after that, I sat down with President Alexander Stubb in the Congress centre in Davos. We began our conversation with Zelenskyy’s warning. Does Europe risk strategic irrelevance? 

Alexander Stubb
I hope he’s wrong. I think he’s trying to push the Europeans to be even more engaged and more active, both financially in terms of military aid and perhaps also strategically in trying to suss out what the endgame of all of this is going to be. 

Gideon Rachman
And Finland, I guess, is in a way best in class in Europe that you have really done a lot about military preparedness. Just give us a sense of what Finland has done in response to the Russian threat. 

Alexander Stubb
Well, I mean, given the fact that after the cold war, we didn’t join Nato, there was a decision taken by the leaders at the time that we need to integrate our military system as close to the American one as possible. So as a consequence, we kept our military standards up. We still have obligatory military service. We at the time bought 64 F-18s. We now bought 64 F-35s. We have the largest artillery in Europe, together with Poland. We have 900,000 men and women in reserves, 280,000 that we can mobilise at wartime. And to top it off, we have long-range missiles, air, land and sea. So when you have a border of 1340km with Russia, you need to prepare on two accounts. One is military and the other is civilian. And I feel that as a society we are quite well-prepared. 

Gideon Rachman
Do you think the rest of Europe needs to be a bit more like Finland? 

Alexander Stubb
Well, I mean, it wouldn’t hurt, but you know, if you don’t live next to Russia, you don’t need to do exactly the same things that we do. We do have also a software strength, and that is that the willingness to fight for your country in Finland is above 80 per cent and that’s by far the highest. So there is this sort of sense of, you know, we grinded it out in the winter war and the war of continuation against the Soviet Union. We are able to retain our independence, though we lost some sovereignty because we couldn’t join the organisations we wanted to be in and we lost territory. And our mindset is never again and we’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen. 

Gideon Rachman
You mentioned that Finland lost territory and lost sovereignty. Of course, that makes one think of possible endgames in Ukraine. Do you think that — I know it’s a tricky one for you as a head of state to talk about and we’re not getting into the peace talks just yet — but is a potential Finnish model for Ukraine something one could think about? 

Alexander Stubb
Well, I mean, history rarely repeats itself, but it does rhyme. And my big thesis on Ukraine is that there’s three key elements that have to do with statehood, by and large, in international law. One is independence. No one should ever question the independence of Ukraine. Second is sovereignty. And in my mind, no one should ever question the right, the sovereign right of Ukraine to choose where it wants to be. And it wants to be Nato and it wants to be in the European Union. And the third element is, of course, territorial integrity. And that is a decision that has to be taken by the Ukrainians themselves. I take as a starting point that international law still stands, which basically means that there’s no right for a country like Russia to invade and therefore acquire territory. 

Gideon Rachman
I mean, you say that nobody has the right to tell Ukraine that they can’t join Nato, they can’t join the EU. But the situation you described for Finland during the cold war was more or less that, wasn’t it?

Alexander Stubb
It was. And it was an unfortunate predicament because to a certain extent, our values were western. We always wanted to sort of tap into the western institutions. I mean, look, we weren’t even able to join Efta, so we had a special arrangement called Finefta. We didn’t join the Council of Europe until 1997. So we’re always sort of scrapping to belong with a team where we wanted to be but never got there. And I think right now, the highest cost of this war, apart from obviously the civilian cost and the loss of life, is the potential loss of sovereignty for Ukraine. And that should not happen. Ukraine should have the right to choose EU and Nato. 

Gideon Rachman
And Zelenskyy himself, you saw him last night. I saw him in quite close quarters in a press conference. He struck me as pretty I wouldn’t say relaxed, but less under pressure than one might imagine. What did you take out of your meetings with him?

Alexander Stubb
Well, I’ve met Zelenskyy in the past year over a dozen times. And of course, like with all of us, it goes a little bit in waves. And I would argue that right now, both Zelenskyy and the people around him are actually quite upbeat, optimistic. Why? Because they do believe that Trump is going to be a strong supporter of Ukraine. I know there is a lot of, you know, discussion, public discourse about whether America is going to continue to support Ukraine. But the bottom line is that they will. And why? Because America cannot lose this match. This cannot be a second Afghanistan. And when he has American support and, of course, Trump trying to find a deal and he has European support. He knows that he’s going to maintain independence. He knows that he’s going to maintain sovereignty. And he hopefully also gets to maintain territorial integrity. 

Gideon Rachman
But Ukraine does have a land power problem. This war has been a terrible war of attrition. I think a million casualties were on all sides. And Ukraine does seem to be losing territory. So can you really be that confident? 

Alexander Stubb
Yeah, I mean, I look at it from a military perspective. And you and I were in a panel yesterday with General Cavoli of SACEUR, the commander of Nato and the US forces here in Europe. And his military assessment was that things are actually quite stable. And, of course, if you look at the incremental step-by-step metre, metre advancement of Russia, if someone had told you three years ago that by this stage they have only advanced this far, you would have said, nah, they would have walked into Kyiv in a few days. So to a certain extent, the situation is stable. It’s a war of attrition. But at the end of the day also, we forget that technology has advanced so much during this war that every movement that either side makes will be detected within seconds. And therefore, I think we’re very much in the stalemate. So we’re not going to see a Russian breakthrough. 

Gideon Rachman
Ukraine is under pressure from its allies, from the US — I think the UK’s position is the same — to lower their conscription age to 18. You said Finland has conscription. What do you think? 

Alexander Stubb
Well, you know, I am in no position as president of Finland to give advice to the president of Ukraine. All I can say is that our war, the winter war and the war of continuation, 1939, 1944, was fought with young men and women from the age of 18 onwards. You need society for long. But remember that wars are usually fought on the battlefield. But at the end of the day, they are won at home. So you need to have the civilian resilience. You need to have the cognitive resilience. Manpower is, of course, an important part of it. But they’re holding up right now. 

Gideon Rachman
Tell me about the Baltic Sea, because there’s been all these stories about basically Russian sabotage and efforts to cut cables and so on. What’s going on? 

Alexander Stubb
So basically in the past year, we’ve had three cases of cables being cut, either gas cables, electric cables or data cables. First was a Chinese ship, which was able to sail out because we didn’t react fast enough. And we, I mean, the Baltic Sea states. The second one was a ship in Swedish and German economic/territorial waters. They were able to board that and investigations are ongoing. That happened in November. And then, of course, the third one happened on the 25th of December. So I have to say it was rather hectic Christmas Day or afternoon for the Finnish political leadership and our authorities.

So what our authorities did has now become called the Finnish model. So the private sector, a provider of the data cable, informed the authorities within one hour. The authorities located two possible ships, then came to the conclusion it has to be one of them, threw in the ship from the border guard, some helicopters, and said, your anchor is dragging, please stop, which was very important because 12 minutes from there, there would have been even worse carnage with Baltic connectors and others. Then they were able to ask the ship to move into Finnish territorial waters, board it and then move it to shore for investigation. These types of things happen. Of course, you know, some of them can be because of accidents, some can be because of sabotage, but most of it is because there’s a shadow fleet out there basically providing, say, Russian crude oil under different types of arrangements. And these boats are old. So we’re trying to prevent this. 

Gideon Rachman
So are you concerned about an environmental disaster?

Alexander Stubb
Yes. Yeah, I mean, there are two elements there. Of course, one is the data cables and the electric cables. The other one is the potential of an environmental disaster. You know, when you have a ship flying under the flag of the Cook Islands, which is full of crude oil and it’s 20, 30 years old and it’s in bad shape and seamanship is questionable, then you know, you are on the border of catastrophe. And that would be in the interests of absolutely no one. 

Gideon Rachman
And do you think that Russia is trying to sabotage the case? 

Alexander Stubb
Well, the problem you see with sabotage is attribution. So you have to be 100 per cent sure. And in hybrid warfare, the aim is always to be a little bit unclear on who actually did it. Was it a mistake? Was it not? But as I’ve always said, if it’s 100 per cent sure, we will attribute it to say this happened because of X, Y and Z. In this case, the investigation is still going on. But I think we acted also very well and we had a Baltic Sea Nato allies summit meeting. Sounds highfalutin and big, but it was the 14th of December, so eight Baltic Sea countries as secretary-general Mark Rutte. And we came up with three measures that we’re going to do. One is a Baltic Sentry-Nato maritime operation. So to make sure that we have things under control, they have really good surveillance mechanisms about the ships that are in the Baltic Sea. Secondly, we have a strong focus on technology and undersea infrastructure. And then thirdly, we’re going to start looking at various options, what we can do with the shadow fleet. So I think the message is loud and clear and hopefully, these types of incidents won’t happen again. 

Gideon Rachman
And there was a Chinese ship involved as well, wasn’t there? 

Alexander Stubb
Yeah, that was a year ago. That was a year ago. And that investigation is still ongoing. The Chinese have actually been co-operative, but it’s very, very slow. 

Gideon Rachman
OK. Turning to the other side of Europe’s strategic relevance — or irrelevance if Zelenskyy’s fears are realised — one of the big problems is relatively slow economic growth in Europe, which makes, I think, Europeans feel like they’re falling behind the rest of the world. I know you know your background as you were fonctionnaire initially, a European civil servant. I think that’s when we first met 20-plus years ago. How confident are you that the European Union can finally get its act together and do what it needs to do and what does it need to do? 

Alexander Stubb
Well, obviously, the issue of competitiveness has been looming over our heads for the past 25 years. I remember when I was a fonctionnaire and you were the Brussels correspondent, the big talk in town was to make Europe into the most competitive economy in the world. But of course, reality is different. You know, you need better demography. We don’t have that. You need better innovation. We can work on that. You need more investment. We can work on that. So a lot of the ideas that have come out from a couple of reports from former prime minister Draghi and former prime minister Letta are actually quite useful in getting things going. So what we’re probably going to see in the in the global economy is obviously the US continuing to race ahead and then we’ll see other players, mainly in Asia and in Africa, growing much faster than we are. Of course, we can always look to the other side of the fence, but we should not take, how would I say, credit or happiness in the fact that the Russian economy is in dire straits as well.

Gideon Rachman
Actually, just pivoting back to that, do you think that there is still hope that Ukraine’s position can dramatically improve because the Russian economy really takes a dive? Or are we clinging to a kind of false hope there? 

Alexander Stubb
Well, if you look at the figures on interest rates, inflation in Russia right now, obviously the country’s in chaos, but it can sustain this for a longer time. And the reason is that it is in a war economy mode. But what I’m trying to say is that when the war ends and it will end, hopefully it’ll end somewhere between three to six months from now, we will see a Russian economy which is as far behind the rest of Europe and the United States as it was in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. 

Gideon Rachman
And you referred earlier to that panel that we did yesterday with General Cavoli, the commander of Nato forces in Europe. And I asked him, does he believe that Russia’s threat extends beyond Ukraine? And he said very bluntly, yes. Is that your view? 

Alexander Stubb
I think Russia is an imperialist state. So in that sense, its whole DNA is based on expansion. You know, we saw that obviously with the Soviet Union. We’ve seen that throughout history. I think Finland has something like 30 skirmishes of wars with Russia throughout history, including, of course, territorial acquisition. We saw it in Georgia in 2008. We forget that there are two frozen conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. So the idea of expansion is (inaudible), a great Russia. You know, Putin talks about one language, one religion and one leader, and he still sort of interprets history in that way. So the possibility is always there. And I think that’s what we’re preparing for. But, you know, my bottom line is that the more prepared you are, the less likely there is going to be a test of, say, Article 5 or expansion. 

Gideon Rachman
You mentioned Article 5 of Nato and Finland, you know, has finally joined Nato. Does it ever worry you that you might have joined Nato just as the organisation is kind of falling apart because Donald Trump is president and at times he’s talked very disdainfully of Nato? 

Alexander Stubb
No, I actually look at it with the glass half full. First of all, were we to apply for Nato membership right now together with Sweden, I am not sure we would have gotten it. So we’re not in a great . . .

Gideon Rachman
Why?

Alexander Stubb
Well, because the times are such. Some might have seen this or would have seen it as a provocation, but this sort of went so fast and people understood that we were a security provider, not a security consumer, that we wanted to strengthen the northeastern flank of the alliance, and that why it was good to get into big defence powers. But am I worried about Nato’s future? No, actually I’m seeing Nato 3.0. It’s gone back to its original task. We’re seeing the exponential increase in defence expenditure. We’re seeing the first real operative plans coming out of Nato. We know what we are doing now.

And I think Donald Trump is actually pushing that. And, you know, we probably live in a world where the United States will not lean on traditional big global multilateral institutions such as the UN, such as the WHO, which they have just gone from, such as the WTO, IMF or the World Bank. But they will look into regional security structures. And therefore, I think that it is in the vested interests of the United States to stay in Nato. And if that’s not enough, I say the alternative cost of being outside — much too expensive. Nato is a cheap way to deal with defence for the United States as well. 

Gideon Rachman
So we were . . . when I was in Davos, I think you probably were . . . during the Trump inaugural speech, which is kind of . . . got everybody talking, to put it mildly. What did you make of it? 

Alexander Stubb
Well, I mean, it was very focused on domestic policy. It was also very much a campaign trail policy. And that’s, I mean, in many ways the good thing with Trump that you can predict what’s coming out of there. Then on the foreign policy side, obviously there were mentions of Panama. There were mentions of Mexico. But my big thinking is that this speech indicates that the world order is changing. So the sort of leaning and relying on international institutions, norms and rules is going to the backburner. We’ve seen that with Russia. We’ve seen it with China. We will probably see it more strongly now with the United States as well. So the question for us in Europe and for me coming from a small country is: how do we convince the United States that it’s still useful to have common rules in this world of transaction? So things are definitely shifting. But in Finnish foreign policy, we usually take it quite easy. We analyse the situation, we accommodate and we adapt. The United States is still a values-based and an interest-based ally for us.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. Because a purely transactional world is a world without rules and therefore without any certainty. It must be a kind of rather paranoid world. 

Alexander Stubb
Exactly. Then we would probably enter into, well, what has been called an age of unpeace, an age of uncertainty, an age of disorder, an age of transaction. That’s why I always believe in multilateral institutions and rules. And I don’t say this only as a small state, but that did serve us quite well after World War 2.

Now, I think the choice is actually between Yalta and Helsinki. Yalta, of course, was, you know, a congress of big powers, the victors of World War 2 in the form of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. And they sort of carved up big-power politics on this is what the world should look like. We are the ones to run it. And Helsinki, or the Helsinki Accords from 1975, was a new European security structure where the Americans and the Soviets, who at the time were then enemies, came together and decided on some rules. They talked about independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty. They had three different baskets. And I think we need to sort of revive Helsinki rather than revert back to Yalta. But I do admit that right now the world looks a bit more Yalta-esque than Helsinki-esque. 

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, and a world of spheres of influence then invites the question well, which we were just discussing, where does Russia see its sphere of influence stopping? 

Alexander Stubb
It does. And I think you’re right. If I may pin some hope on the global south — so the global majority — because when a world order changes, as it did after World War 1, World War 2 and after the cold war, there are always going to be power vacuums that emerge. Now is the place for the global south to come into the game and take what I believe has been theirs for a long time. So middle powers or emerging or big powers or swing states such as, say, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, if they lean on to multilateral institutions, then we are OK, because they also have to make an analysis that if it’s only a world of transaction, then it’s really going to be a world between the US, China and then kind of their allies or proxies or friends. So a lot of big things going. I think the world is going to be in a flux for six, perhaps seven years. So by the end of, say, around 2030, we will probably start seeing what the world will look like. 

Gideon Rachman
So you painted a relatively benign picture of Donald Trump. Yet if you look at the European leaders who were invited to the inauguration, OK, there was Giorgia Meloni, who was prime minister of Italy, came from the far right, but perhaps has gotten more centre right. But also the AfD, the alternative for Deutschland, the leaders of the far right in France. I mean, isn’t Trump essentially trying to promote the far right in Europe and what can we do about that and what should we say? 

Alexander Stubb
Well, there is an ideological undercurrent, of course, in what President Donald Trump does. I mean, he came to power with Maga, Make America Great Again. And there is, of course, a sort of rightwing approach to it. And of course, you can invite whoever you want to to your inauguration. So I think this is more of a sort of a megatrend of what we’re seeing in the world right now, a shift to the right. And I’ve always talked about a pendulum of power. Sometimes it’s to the left, sometimes it’s to the right. And also in international relations, sometimes it’s about the liberal international order and sometimes it goes more towards multipolar than transaction. So we just have to live with this pendulum and try to convince, of course, the United States, our closest ally, that it pays off to work with allies. And also what gives me hope is that the United States wants to retain its position of a superpower. And in order for it to do that, it needs allies. And a quarter of those allies in this world come from Europe. So kind of what I want to say is I understand America first, but I hope it’s also Europe second. 

Gideon Rachman
OK. But one of the things that Trump is doing, well the people he’s reaching out to in Europe are people who often have a very different attitude to Russia to the one that you’ve just expounded. And are you worried that partly because of Trump’s encouragement, but partly just because of indigenous developments in Europe, that the European unity in their analysis and their response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is going to break over the next year? We’re already breaking. You’ve seen it. Obviously, Hungary was an outlier, but now you’ve got Slovakia. You’ve got the far right now coming to power in Austria, the AfD on the rise in Germany. So are you going to get more Putin-friendly governments in Europe? Is that already happening? 

Alexander Stubb
Yes, but probably not to the extent that a lot of people expect it to happen. I mean, I put a lot of hope into Giorgia Meloni just because she has been spot on with Russia and with Ukraine. And, of course, she has a good connection with President Trump as well. I also want to remind everyone that Russia, for the United States, and Putin is still a nemesis. And what Trump wants is peace. And I think he’s going to work on this peace. I think he’s going to negotiate towards peace. And in order for that to happen, it has to be with Europe and, of course, with Ukraine. 

Gideon Rachman
Final question then. I mean, Trump did say in his inaugural that he wants to be a peacemaker. He’s said a few times that he will bring peace to Ukraine very quickly. Do you think we can see a peace settlement in Ukraine in the next year? 

Alexander Stubb
I think the window of opportunity is three to six months, and I expect there to be something. 

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Gideon Rachman
That was President Alexander Stubb of Finland ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Thanks for listening. And please join me again next week.