Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued that a statesman should be a visionary and educator while serving as a bridge between the past and future. Exceptional leaders, he wrote, “help people reach from where they are to where they have never been, and sometimes, can scarcely imagine going.”
This formulation captures the role that Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, aspires to play in global affairs. Stubb’s biography, personality and vision have earned him a sizable and influential global audience. He’s been successful in academia as well as in politics and has been described as a public intellectual, a scholar statesman and the architect of an “ingenious” framework for the future.
A native of Helsinki, Stubb attended Furman University in South Carolina on a partial golf scholarship and studied political science and international relations as the Cold War was ending. He later earned a graduate degree in political science from the College of Europe and a doctorate from the London School of Economics. He speaks impeccable English in addition to Finnish, Swedish, French and German. He’s been a hockey player, a triathlete and has taken up ice swimming to manage stress.
Active in Finnish and European politics for two decades, Stubb has served in the European Parliament and as Finland’s finance minister, foreign minister, prime minister and now its president. He’s also been a vice president of the European Investment Bank and a professor at the European Institute in Florence.
Stubb was elected president of Finland in 2024 for a six-year term and oversees his country’s foreign and security policy. He’s been an ardent supporter of Ukraine in its defense against Russia. His pro-Ukraine convictions have been cemented by personal encounters with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Finland’s fraught history with its neighbor Russia and the two countries’ 832-mile shared border.
He believes that Ukraine is now taking control of the battlefield, skillfully using support from the European Union and NATO. “I think the peace process will begin again,” he said recently. “This is going to be a strategic failure for Russia.”
He has pointed out that about a million Russian soldiers already have been killed or wounded in the conflict. Additionally, Ukraine has grown closer to the E.U. and is likely to emerge from the war with security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe.
Stubb is pressing European and NATO leaders to continue robust support for Ukraine. He has discussed the matter with President Donald Trump, with whom he has what The New York Times characterized as “an odd but important relationship” that began on a golf course. His breezy and informal connection to the American president gives him currency in international politics. Stubb has been described as Europe’s ambassador to Trump and Trump’s translator to Europe.
Stubb’s reputation as a statesman emanates from his vision for the world. His book, “Triangle of Power: Rebalancing the New World Order,” was released in the U.S. this year and was much discussed at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Stubb began writing it in 2020 while teaching at the European Institute and completed it in 2025 as Finland’s president. It combines the perspectives of the ivory tower and what the author calls “the engine room” of real-world politics.
He argues that the rules-based order that the U.S. and its allies established after World War is “in tatters,” the global trading system is unraveling and trust in the sanctity of borders — which had been the linchpin of the international system for the last 80 years — has been shattered, most dramatically by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The next few years will decide the dynamics of the new international order for the rest of the century, or at least for decades to come. The outcome will fundamentally shift the way we live our lives,” he writes. “The order that emerges will depend on how we meet this moment.”
Stubb sees the world as composed of three blocs: The Global West, led by the U.S., Europe and Japan; the Global East, led by China, Russia and Iran; and the Global South, consisting of more than 100 nations from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, including India, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Indonesia and Brazil.
He believes the multilateral system created after World War II must be rebuilt and rebalanced by the Global West so that the Global South receives more tangible benefits and better representation.
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Stubb argues that a reformed United Nations must be the foundation of this rebalanced world order. In 2024, he outlined his proposal to the U.N. General Assembly, calling for expanding Security Council with five additional permanent members from the Global South, eliminating the controversial veto and suspending voting rights of any Security Council nation that violates the U.N. charter.
Stubb made a renewed pitch for his plan to the U.N. Security Council recently in New York. “The world needs a functioning U.N. Security Council,” he said. “To move forward, we need to break the impasse and be open for creative solutions.”
Harking back to the creation of the U.N. in San Francisco in 1945, Stubb said there is an urgent need for “a new San Francisco moment” to overhaul the U.N. and rebalance the global system.
Stubb, no doubt, intends to offer creative ideas to shape that moment. And we would do well to heed his suggestions.
John T. Shaw is a professor at Marquette University’s Les Aspin Center for Government in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is “The Education of a Statesman: How Global Leaders Can Repair a Fractured World.”
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