President Alexander Stubb of Finland has become central both to navigating and to understanding this time of rupture. He has emerged as a leader who is particularly adept at managing the rift in the U.S.-European relationship, and at talking to Donald Trump, whether about Greenland or about golf. Yet even as he’s scrambled seemingly every week to avert a transatlantic crisis, Stubb has also gone out of his way to stress the long-term stakes of this moment—as he did in a recent Foreign Affairs essay. He warns that without significant changes, “the multilateral system as it exists will crumble,” and that “the alternatives are much worse: spheres of influence, chaos, and disorder.”

 

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Stubb on Tuesday, February 3 about geopolitical challenges from China and Russia to Ukraine and, of course, Greenland; about Trump and the future of alliances; and about what a true breakdown in global order would mean in the years ahead.