What Trump's return means for Europe, with Finnish President Alexander Stubb

Transcript

Listen: On the GZERO World Podcast, Finnish President Alexander Stubb joins Ian Bremmer in Davos, Switzerland, where world leaders, business executives, and diplomats gathered for the annual World Economic Forum. Just days after President Trump was sworn in for a second term, the mood in Davos was that of cold pragmatism. As Trump made clear in his speech to the Forum, Europe can no longer rely on the kind of copacetic relationship with the United States it had enjoyed since World War II or even during his first term.

So, what does that mean for Europe—and the war in Ukraine? Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Ian Bremmer discuss.

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Transcript: What Trump's return means for Europe, with Finnish President Alexander Stubb

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you can find extended conversations from my show on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and I'm coming to you from Davos, Switzerland where world leaders, business executives, and diplomats, and sometimes they're all the same thing, gathered for the annual World Economic Forum just days after President Trump was sworn in for a second term. The mood here, by turns, ebullient and despondent. It's pragmatism. As Trump made clear in his virtual speech to the Forum, Europe can no longer rely on the kind of trusted relationship with the United States it has enjoyed since World War II, or even during Trump's first term. So what does that mean for Europe and for the war in Ukraine? I'll discuss all that and more with my guest today, Finland's President Alexander Stubb. Let's get to it.

Alex Stubb, my friend, good to see you back on GZERO.

Alexander Stubb:

Nice to be here.

Ian Bremmer:

I get the sense, tell me if I'm wrong, that over the last couple months, the Europeans have had some success in nudging now President Trump in a more comfortable direction for them, for you, on the Russia-Ukraine issue. Is that true?

Alexander Stubb:

Yeah, I think I'm carefully optimistic about the direction which we're going through the conversations I've had here in Davos and of course that we've had with the Trump administration. I think his messaging to Putin is the correct one. He wants to win this piece, and I think that's a very important message. Trump is going to be solid on this one. He's looking for a deal, and we of course hope that the deal, and I'm sure the deal will be good for Ukraine.

Ian Bremmer:

Lots of different pieces of this. One is the fact that the Ukrainians need more leverage than they have presently to enter negotiations well. What do you think that leverage looks like practically?

Alexander Stubb:

I look at it as a linear strategy where you have short term, medium term, and long term. Short term, we need to continue military support, financial support, and political support, and I'm optimistic that that continues both from the US and from Europe. Then in the sort of short to medium term, say three to six months, that's where we need to get Ukraine into a position of strength where Putin understands that he has to negotiate because his economy is weak, because he's not advancing on the military front. And here, the messaging that we're getting from President Trump I think is really, really good.

Having said all of that, I still think there are three key principles that we have to stick to at all times: independence; sovereignty, so the right for Ukraine to decide NATO or EU and/or both; and then thirdly, territorial integrity.

Ian Bremmer:

Territorial integrity.

Alexander Stubb:

These are the three key principles of statehood, I think. And then we go to the long term. So once things have settled, a deal has been found, we need to make sure that we get reconstruction of Ukraine, Ukraine becomes an EU member. And I personally think and hope that in the long term the best security guarantee is for Ukraine to become a NATO member. But here's the arch that I'm looking at.

Ian Bremmer:

When you say that we have to get Ukraine, we, the allies, NATO, Europe, the US, in a better position on the ground, how important is it that Ukraine maintains a piece of Kursk in Russia before negotiations actually started?

Alexander Stubb:

Probably part and parcel of the whole package, because I still think, though I think territory is important. I mean, listen, I come from a country that lost 10% of our territory in the Winter War War Continuation to the Soviet Union, including the areas where my grandparents and my dad were born. So I don't undermine that. But in the Finnish case, we maintained independence, lost sovereignty, and lost territory. And we have to make sure that the two latter don't happen with Ukraine. Kursk is one piece of the whole package, and certainly a negotiating piece as well. So I do think that strategically, it was a really astute move for the Ukrainians to take that.

Ian Bremmer:

A risky move.

Alexander Stubb:

Yeah, to a certain extent risky. But then again, this war has been a little bit all over the place, and it was good to have a counter offensive. I feel quite a lot more comfortable of where we are right now and the capacity of Ukraine to sustain the military impasse in this sort of war of attrition.

Ian Bremmer:

Independent sovereignty, very, very clear. Territorial integrity, of course, appears to be undermined by a lot of things, that the Americans, but not only the Americans are saying, in the sense that first of all, any ceasefire, it's very hard to imagine the Russians are going to give up the territory that they are presently occupying, certainly not all of it. How do you square that with the principle of full territorial integrity?

Alexander Stubb:

Well, I think in any kind of negotiation, you have to understand that there's a clear separation between a ceasefire and a peace deal.

Ian Bremmer:

Correct.

Alexander Stubb:

A ceasefire means that you basically stop fighting. And in that phase, the most important thing is to maintain and have a security guarantee for Ukraine to make sure that Russia doesn't sort of rearm and attack again. And then when the peace negotiations begin, that is the time when you probably then talk about territory. And that's, I think, where it should stand. This is a long game.

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think that Trump's strong, "I'm going to beat you up if you don't do what I want" orientation is making life easier for Zelensky in some ways? In the sense that it's easier for Zelensky to blame, "I have no choice. I have to bring down the draft age from where it is right now. I have no choice. I have to start a negotiation. I have no choice. I have to accept a ceasefire with where it's right." How much do you think that actually plays for Zelensky right now?

Alexander Stubb:

Well, obviously I can't speak for Zelensky. I did have half an hour with him bilaterally, and we discussed the situation. My sort of diplomatic sense of where he was was that he was in a comfortable position. That doesn't mean that he's happy, but it does mean that I think he sees the incoming Trump administration as a game changer. And they clearly have good communication channels. And of course, if you're looking at the early language coming from Trump and his administration, it's good stuff for Ukraine. Because basically Trump was putting the blame on Putin and the pressure on Putin, not on Zelensky. He has a lot of leverage. We could see that in the Middle East. I mean, he basically brokered the deal just with his presence and existence, and the Israelis had to take that. And I think we'll see the same happening, hopefully, with Putin.

Ian Bremmer:

Recently we've seen President Trump talking about the fact that, well, Russia knows that they need an out for this war. They can't keep fighting. Do you think that that is an overestimation of how much strength the Americans have in this negotiation?

Alexander Stubb:

No, not at all. I think President Trump knows his metrics, and he's seen data on the Russian economy. I think the narrative is very clear already coming from his inner circle and elsewhere, we hear, and that is that inflation is rampant, interest rates are high, productivity is only on the military front. So it's not a sustainable situation. The ruble is in a deep dive, so you can only hold up a war economy to a certain point. I don't know if I should take comfort in this or not, but our estimate is that when the war ends, say three to six months, the discrepancy between the Russian economy and the West is pretty much the same it was in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. So we're talking a lost 35 years. This is Putin's legacy for Russia.

Ian Bremmer:

The United States has just decided to create some of the most important new architecture in the world, in my view, which is on AI, on technology, on data centers. Some members of NATO and the EU are in tier one, some are not. Obviously there's a big question about how to react. Do you need to cut individual deals with the Trump administration to make sure that you're in? Do you need to approach it as a region in the Nordics? Do you need to approach it in the Baltics? Do you need to approach it as the EU together? I mean, clearly the Americans have a big advantage in technology right now. You're allies with the United States. What's the best approach?

Alexander Stubb:

I have to be a little bit selfish here, so this is very much my Finland first thinking. We have a climactic competitive advantage on this. In other words, we already have many data centers from Google, Microsoft, and many others. And the reason is very simple. We know how to deal with data, we have the capacity to build, and we have the climate to sustain. So in that sense, when we talk with the Americans about different ways in which we work together, technology is a big part. So for us when we work with the US, technology is important. It can be networks like Nokia, it can be data, it can be quantum. Icebreakers are important. And then defense industry, we just bought 64 F35s. So I feel that Finland as such, bilaterally is in a comfortable position.

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think Europe bilaterally is in a comfortable position?

Alexander Stubb:

Well, it's a little bit more difficult to build data centers down south. I have to admit that. But then again, we are part of an internal market. We have the same rules on data and data protection and privacy. So in that sense, I think we should look at this as a team effort.

Ian Bremmer:

Team effort in terms of democracy in Europe? When you see someone like Elon Musk who doesn't have a formal position in the Trump administration supporting what he has with AFD coming after the Brits, how do you relate to that?

Alexander Stubb:

I don't feel very comfortable with that, to be honest. In a sense, I've been an avid user of Twitter and now come X.

Ian Bremmer:

With me, absolutely.

Alexander Stubb:

Exactly, since 2009. I'm not extremely excited about the direction in which the platform is going under the auspices of free speech. I'm more for free speech, but free speech needs to come with responsibility. The truth is that Elon Musk is a very powerful man. He has a voice, and a voice can be a weapon. And clearly he's now giving his voice not so much to, say, science and space and electric vehicles or neural laces; he's giving it to right-wing European parties. And no matter what the ideological approach is, that has to be addressed at some point, and I don't know how the European authorities are going to deal with it. I feel very uncomfortable with some of the elements of the extreme right in Europe. That's for sure.

Ian Bremmer:

More broadly than just Elon, regulatory approach on things like social media? I mean, clearly very different from the United States. Do the Europeans need a lot more?

Alexander Stubb:

I was in a big conversation with European tech leaders and political leaders, and the sort of approach there was much more optimistic than I had actually originally expected. But I do think that we need to start talking about the impact of social media. There are two elements here. One is artificial intelligence, which of course is changing the way in which we communicate and is impeding on our individual autonomy because of the way in which algorithms have been set up. So we need to understand that as a technology, AI is not an instrument; it's actually an agent. And with that, given that traditional media is not functioning as a filter anymore in the public discourse, we need to sort of adapt our brains and our politics to a new technological era, and I think social media platforms are a big part of that.

Ian Bremmer:

Final question; this week we've seen a lot of animal spirits and even exuberance from the Americans. We've seen a lot of self-criticism and a lot of deep concern about where Europe is going to be economically, technologically, more broadly, the staying power of the most important experiment in supernational governance that's ever happened in the world. Talk about why you think that is either wrong, temporary deserves pushback, because I know you don't agree with it.

Alexander Stubb:

Well, I have a counter question. How is that different from the past 25 years here at Davos?

Ian Bremmer:

That depends. It moves. It's stronger in that direction than I've ever seen in the last 15 years.

Alexander Stubb:

I think the human mind is such that we have a tendency to forget. I remember when President Xi Jinping was here in 2017 talking about multilateralism trade and cooperation. I remember in the 1990s when Europe was racing ahead with mobile communication and the 2000s when Europe was supposed to become the most competitive economy in the world. I think Europe is not a utopia. We're still here in Davos. It's still one of the most important forums, I think, for intellectual engagement of where the world is going. This is not a cynical statement, but just out of experience, usually what happens is there's a crisis, then there's chaos, and then there's a suboptimal solution. So perhaps we just have to get used to the fact that Europe is more than an international organization less than a state. My hope is always that democracies are resilient. We have a tendency to forget in this sort of authoritarian jargon that authoritarianism in Germany didn't last. Authoritarianism in the Soviet Union didn't last. So at the end of the day, democracy is messy, but it wins.

Ian Bremmer:

So we go from chaos to crisis to suboptimal-

Alexander Stubb:

Solution.

Ian Bremmer:

... solution. We're in chaos right now. What do you think the crisis is?

Alexander Stubb:

I think the crisis is of international order. The international institutions, norms, and rules that were created post-World War II and then revamped a little bit after the Cold War are under attack. So we are now living for approximately five to six years in multilateral transactional disorder. And at the end of this period, I hope that we come up with a multilateral cooperative order and a rebalancing of the new world order before it's too late.

Ian Bremmer:

So you're like a wonky international affairs strategist, right?

Alexander Stubb:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

We never have people like that elected in the United States. How come it's okay in Finland?

Alexander Stubb:

I don't know. You have to ask my compatriots. They're very nice to me. I really appreciate it.

Ian Bremmer:

President of Finland, Alex Stubb. Great seeing you.

Alexander Stubb:

Thanks. Nice seeing you, too.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars, only five stars, otherwise don't do it, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends.