InDepth:Finland’sStubbWarnsWorldOrderataCrossroads

(Davos, Switzerland) — At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Finland’s Alexander Stubb was asked by Caixin during an event: since U.S. President Donald Trump reignited the Greenland debate, if a “transfer of sovereignty” over Greenland were somehow realized, would it unravel the idea of a unified West — and turn what some are calling “NATO 3.0” into something closer to the Warsaw Pact than the alliance’s original design?

Stubb, widely viewed in Europe as one of the leaders most capable of communicating with Trump — and sometimes described as a “Trump whisperer”— said the premise reflected a deeper shift underway in global politics. The world order, he argued, is changing in ways comparable to the aftermaths of 1918, 1945 or 1989.

“We have two choices,” Stubb told Caixin. One is a move toward a “multipolar world” organized around transactions — how to “do deals,” divide spheres of influence and carve up leverage. “That means we go back to the 19th century,” he said.

The alternative, he said, is a multilateral world anchored by strong international institutions, rules and norms. Stubb said he supports that model and believes “most countries in the world support it, too.”

Yet he also acknowledged a fundamental problem for the post-World War II multilateral order: It was built, in his words, “in the image of the West.” If Western countries want that system to endure, he said, they need to adjust power structures and give larger actors in the “Global South” genuine agency. Otherwise, he warned, the world could slide back into a “dog-eat-dog” environment—precisely what multilateralism was meant to prevent.

Stubb, who previously served as foreign minister, prime minister and finance minister before becoming president in 2024, has long had a personal connection to the U.S. He attended college in South Carolina in the 1990s on a golf scholarship and has joked that while he is Finnish by blood, he is a “Southern American” by gratitude.

That golf background has taken on new diplomatic relevance. Since Trump returned to office, Stubb has cultivated a direct personal relationship with him, in part through the sport. The two men played golf for seven hours at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, an encounter that has become the foundation of what officials describe as unusually frequent contact.

Media reports have said Stubb has offered Trump advice on how to deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia, and that Trump has at times called Stubb for counsel. At Davos, Stubb also offered a candid assessment: Trump is not someone who is easily changed.

In one of the forum’s most closely watched speeches, Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, argued that as the U.S. steps back from leading the Western-backed international order, Canada and other like-minded “middle powers” should step up to help sustain multilateralism. Carney urged what he called “value-based realism”— pursuing flexible coalitions across issues, including with countries that don’t share the same political systems.

Carney credited Stubb with originating the concept, noting the Finnish president’s academic background, including doctoral work on “flexible integration.”

In a Jan. 22 press conference in Davos, Stubb laid out what he meant by “value-based realism.” The core, he said, is holding firm to one’s values — “in my eyes, that includes democracy, freedom, human rights, fundamental rights, protecting of minorities, rule of law and supporting the international order.”

But realism, he added, requires admitting that countries sharing those values can’t solve every global problem on their own — whether conflict, climate change or artificial intelligence. “At some level you need to come together somewhere in the place” to address them, he said.

When he first developed the framework, Stubb said, he didn’t expect it would one day be needed to manage relations with the U.S. “But now it seems that dimension exists,” he said.

He described the idea less as a rigid doctrine than as a tool for navigating a period of upheaval — what Carney called a “rupture” in the international order. Asked by a moderator whether Carney had been “converted” to his thinking, Stubb demurred. “That might be the greatest honor of my life,” he said.

Shifting geopolitics

Stubb said the world is approaching a generational turning point, akin to the end of World War I, the end of World War II or the end of the Cold War — a moment when the balance of power and the operating logic of global order are being rewritten.

Sometimes such shifts follow wars, he said, as after 1918 or 1945. Sometimes they follow the close of an era, as after 1989. “Now we’re somewhere in between those two,” he said.

Over the past century, he argued, international orders have tended to endure for a time: roughly 20 years after World War I, about 40 years after World War II and around 30 years after the Cold War. “Now a new change has begun,” he said.

For Stubb, the trigger for the current upheaval was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He acknowledged that this way of defining the turning point is a distinctly Western lens — one he addresses in his newly published book, “The Triangle of Power.”

Stubb wrote that he views global politics as a triangle: one corner is the “Global West,” historically led by the U.S. and oriented toward preserving a liberal order; a second is the “Global East,” with China as the leading example, more inclined toward multipolarity and a new system; and a third is the “Global South.” He conceded the label lumps roughly 125 countries into a single category and can be unfair. But, he argued, it is the non-Western actors who will ultimately determine the shape of the next order.

In practice, he said, countries face a choice between a deal-driven multipolarity and rule-based multilateralism — though the eventual outcome will likely fall somewhere between the two. If Western countries want to preserve liberal multilateralism, he said, they must share power more broadly because much of the existing order was designed 80 years ago “in the image of the West, especially the United States.”

“I still believe there are more multilateralists in this world than transactionalists,” he said. That argument, he added, is the central thesis of his book — defending both the liberal international order and open societies.

Greenland and the state of the alliance

Mark Leonard, a moderator at the event, asked how Stubb reconciles the world he wants with the world he has to operate in. In foreign policy, Stubb said, the key is to “deal with the world that exists, not the one you wanted to exist.”

He cited the turbulence sparked by Trump’s push for U.S. “control” of Greenland, saying unpredictability has become a daily feature of diplomacy. In his 11 Davos visits, Stubb said, he couldn’t recall another year when, within just the first 21 days, so many crises had been thrust onto the agenda — Venezuela, Ukraine, Greenland, Iran and Gaza, among others.

Stubb said Europe initially split into two camps over how to respond to Washington’s Greenland demands: one favored lowering the temperature and managing the issue quietly; the other favored “escalating in order to de-escalate.” Most governments, he said, ended up operating somewhere between the two — seeking tools to deter escalation, including potential European Union measures, while trying to tamp down the rhetoric.

He sketched three scenarios for how the Greenland dispute could play out. The best case would be a face-saving path for both sides and a new process to strengthen Arctic security cooperation. A worse scenario would involve escalating tariffs and retaliatory measures between the U.S. and Europe. The “ugliest” scenario, he said, would be a U.S. declaration of military intervention in Greenland.

In a Jan. 21 Davos speech, Trump ruled out taking Greenland by force but insisted on pursuing negotiations to achieve U.S. “control.” Stubb said that over the preceding three to four days, European leaders coordinated intensively with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre and U.S. senators — efforts he said succeeded in “escalating in order to de-escalate” and steering events back toward the best-case path.

Still, Stubb said the episode will have consequences. A core principle of international order and alliance management is respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, he said. “In the short term, we managed this crisis,” he said. “Now we need to think about the long term.”

Europe’s approach to Trump essentially requires a mix of military seriousness and intense diplomacy which has to be done “behind the scenes,” he said.

He said Europeans must recognize that the traditional trans-Atlantic partnership is changing sharply and that there will be areas where the U.S. and Europe can’t align. Differences could involve international institutions, U.S. withdrawals from multilateral frameworks, unilateral actions, climate policy, or how democracies are defended domestically and internationally.

Greenland is a particularly clear example, he said: one doesn’t need to be an international-relations expert to understand why Finland would firmly support Denmark and Greenland. The relationship, he said, must remain open.

Operationally, Stubb described three layers of engagement with Washington. First is direct contact with Trump. “But I have no illusions,” he said. “I pass the message, but most of the time he doesn’t listen. So be realistic about it.”

The second layer is communication with Trump’s circle. The third is work with the U.S. Congress, especially the Senate. Progress, he said, requires pragmatic persistence across all three. “I believe the trans-Atlantic partnership will survive,” he said.

After Trump delivered a speech lasting more than an hour at Davos, Stubb remained near an exit of the hall, speaking with Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator and a key congressional ally of Trump traveling with the U.S. delegation.

For other European leaders, Stubb offered a caution: Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. He noted that the trans-Atlantic relationship has weathered crises before, including Anglo-American disputes during the Suez crisis, France’s withdrawal from NATO and domestic political upheavals in Germany over U.S. deployments.

The approach now, he said, should be pragmatic — act within the space of one’s values, remain faithful to them, and look for areas where cooperation with the U.S. and its current administration is possible, without being naive.

“Russia hasn’t won”

As U.S.-Russia-Ukraine talks in the United Arab Emirates began during the Davos meetings, Stubb said he was cautiously optimistic about the prospects for a peace process. He said negotiations became more concrete after Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner became involved in cease-fire discussions.

Stubb outlined what he described as three stages. In November 2025, U.S., Ukrainian and European national security advisers met in Geneva to refine proposals and compress Trump’s original 28-point plan into 20 points. Then, in Berlin, some European leaders met with Kushner and Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to find common ground. On Dec. 5, 2025, Berlin hosted a meeting of a “coalition of the willing” to provide Ukraine security guarantees after a deal.

“We’re very close,” Stubb said, describing what he called “five plus two” documents covering a 20-point plan, security guarantees, a prosperity plan for Ukraine’s reconstruction and sequencing.He said Europe, Ukraine and the U.S. are on the same page about the plan.

Stubb pushed back against narratives that Ukraine is losing the war, calling them essentially Russian talking points that have spread widely in the U.S.

To assess who is winning, he argued, start with Putin’s strategic objectives. Stubb said those objectives included taking over Ukraine and making it “part of Russia,” yet Ukraine is moving toward European Union membership. Another objective was stopping NATO expansion; instead, Russia’s invasion spurred Finland and Sweden to join NATO, roughly doubling NATO’s border with Russia — another failure, he said. A third objective was preventing Europe’s remilitarization; instead, Europe’s defense spending has risen as high as 5% of gross domestic product, he said.

Beyond Europe, Stubb said, Russia has lost influence in Iran, Syria and Venezuela. He cited what he described as a U.S. military operation in Venezuela completed in 12 hours, contrasting it with Russia’s failed ambitions in Ukraine. He urged audiences not to be misled by claims that Russia is winning.

Stubb echoed comments by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, saying that in December 2025 alone, around 34,000 Russian soldiers were killed. Zelensky cited the same figure in a Davos speech and said Russia’s ability to mobilize roughly 45,000 new troops per month is offset by battlefield losses and an estimated 10% to 15% rate of desertion or injury, meaning Russia’s force size has stopped growing.

From a military standpoint, Stubb said, the situation is striking: Ukraine has held, and over the past two years Russia’s advances amount to less than 1% of Ukraine’s territory. Most of the land Russia controls, he said, was seized between 2014 and early 2024, before the full-scale war. The result, he said, is an extremely slow war of attrition at enormous cost.

He said Russia’s deeper problem is that the war has become too large for Putin to absorb the consequences of failure. Combined with economic strain — difficulty paying soldiers’ wages, zero growth, depleted reserves and double-digit interest rates and inflation — Putin can’t afford the costs of ending the war. He claimed “Ukraine is going to win the war.”

For Western countries, he said, continued support for Ukraine and continued pressure on Russia are “the only way” to produce a negotiated settlement.

Under draft terms discussed previously, Stubb said, Ukraine would forgo NATO membership but would be allowed to integrate into the EU.

Stubb argued that the EU should rethink its slow, chapter-by-chapter accession model for Ukraine, given the strategic stakes. He suggested granting EU membership first and then phasing in full rights as accession chapters are completed — an approach he said could offer Ukraine a viable path, even if persuading all EU members would be difficult.

Ukraine has more than 40 million people, an agricultural market larger than all of Europe’s combined, and 800,000 active-duty service members, he said. If Ukraine joins, the EU’s military strength could double or even triple overnight.

Europe under pressure

Stubb said pressure from both the east and the west is likely to drive Europe toward deeper integration and a stronger form of strategic autonomy, as well as a larger Europe through expansion.

The same pressures, he said, are also pushing Europe to diversify partnerships. Echoing Carney, he said European countries are engaging in hedging and de-risking. Unlike Canada, which Stubb said depends on the U.S. for about 70% of its trade, Europe has more room to shift.

He noted that Europe once frequently discussed “de-risking from China,” but that phrase is heard less now, replaced by talk of “de-risking from elsewhere” — a shift he called telling.

Stubb said Europe is doing the right things geopolitically, pointing to a free-trade agreement with Mercosur and efforts to advance a trade deal with India. Europe, he said, is building cooperation with a wider set of partners. “I’m quite optimistic about Europe’s future,” he said.

He also argued that as global stability becomes scarcer, Europe’s reputation for predictability may become an asset. Investment, he said, could flow toward Europe as investors search for stability.

Overall, Stubb said he is relatively optimistic about Europe’s future — precisely because of the shocks of the pandemic, the Ukraine war, the energy crisis and the changing relationship with the U.S.

Contact editor Lu Zhenhua (zhenhualu@caixin.com)