The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 179. President Stubb: Trump’s Unlikely Best Friend

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

How did President Stubb’s golfing talent lead him to fostering a close relationship with President Trump? Why was ‘Prime Minister’ the worst job ever? Why will the Global South define the new world order?  Rory and Alastair are joined by Finland’s President, Alexander Stubb, to answer all this and more.  Search IG.com to find out more and/or Look for IG in your app store. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus: Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, an exclusive members’ newsletter, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith  Producer: Alice Horrell Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen Head of Politics: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolics.com. Listen, it's great to have you here. Thank you so much for giving it to your time. Let's just start with your childhood. Growing up in Finland, what your parents did, what your life was like, and whether you ever imagined that you'd have the life that you've had. The short answer is no, but life was good when I was young. So I grew up very much in a bilingual family. So I spoke Finnish with my mother, Swedish with my dad, and Finnish for my younger brother. The two languages have nothing in common. I started in a Finnish school and switched over in fourth grade to Swedish school

because my left wing in my ice hockey team was in the Swedish speaking school. So of course I had to make the academic decision. I wasn't an academic kid. I dreamt about becoming a professional ice hockey player and later on a professional. The stamp was big in ice hockey. Yeah, he basically managed a team, and he was the head of the Finnish Ice Hockey Federation. And then in 1983, he became the head of the National Hockey League Central Scouting in Europe. So all the European players that play in the NHL in the US and in Canada kind of go through him.

So we were very much a sports family, if you will. And I didn't get my academic awakening until I started studying in the US. And I did my military service like all Finnish men at the time. but, you know, very much a regular Finnish type of background when I was a kid, quite international still. And your first visit to America then was when you were in your early teens? Yeah, I was actually 13. Our ice hockey team sold matchboxes from door to door to, you know, scramble some money. And we flew to New York and went to St. Louis to play a little bit of ice hockey.

And the subsequent summer I spent both in Missouri and in Canada, so basically picking up the language. And then I did an exchange student year, a really tough place called Daytona Beach, Florida. Was it tough? No. No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. And it was the idea was that, you know, I tried my bearings in golf. And then eventually I ended up studying in the US, started there at the end of the Cold War in 1989.

And the idea was to study economics and then basically become a golf professional. But I very quickly noticed that economics is not my thing. and I played in a tournament with Phil Mickelson and noticed that I don't have his hands, not even from the right side, and then got myself immersed in studies and didn't look back. So hold on, if you're getting to play with Phil Mickelson, I mean, are you like a scratch golf? Well, I used to be when I was a kid, yeah, yeah. But now I'm a little bit back in golf again for a rather obvious reasons. I didn't play pretty much for 35 years, but these modern clubs, they hit by themselves.

Yeah, yeah. And so when did the kind of political impulses start and where did they come from? Quite late. I mean, I kind of, I sort of say that I've had three careers because the sport stuff didn't pan out. The first one was academic. I really, I just sat in the library. I went to lectures. I wrote and I just immersed myself in things international, international relations. 89, you know, Finland was nowhere near the European Union membership yet. We only decided on that after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. So I felt that I want to do academia and Europe. European integration theory. And I pretty early on decided I want to do a PhD. And the reason was kind of strange. I had studied really hard for four years in the US. Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

I loved the place. And I was proud of what I have, you know, Dean's List and straight A's and the rest of it, Phi Beta Kappa. And then I called the educational authorities in Finland and said, you know, hi, this is Alex. I have this BA. I said, well, it really doesn't mean much here in the Finnish system that you may get a couple of courses at Helsinki University and say, screw this, and

decide, okay, I'll do an MA and then a PhD and didn't look back. So that was kind of my first career. But then in the academic world, I somehow felt that, okay, the theoretical stuff is super interesting in conceptualizing things, but I wanted to do practical things. So I was involved in the Finnish negotiating team for the Amsterdam Treaty and then for the Nice Treaty and then later on for the Constitution Convention, Lisbon Treaty. So I took very much a civil servant path. I was never a real diplomat, but I always had contracts with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. And then only really, when I was 36 in 2004, I got my first political thoughts. And it was very much a Europeanist. And you became an MEP.

Became an MEP out of the blue because, I mean, you know, we had its personal votes. And I ended up getting second most votes in the nation because I'd been very much the EU expert, you know, commentating stuff and was supposed to stay in Brussels until. So then you get into government, Yeah, and that was almost by mistake in the sense that my predecessors' foreign minister was involved in a scandal and had to resign. And I was asked to move over to Helsinki. Our kids had been born in Belgium. My wife was working in a law firm in Belgium. So I asked my then party chairman that how much time do we have to decide?

It's at 24 hours. So we hummed and hobbed overnight, actually in Lapland, we were there skiing or something. And then decide, okay, let's do it. And that was in 2008, became foreign minister. That was very much my dream job. I get the feeling that when you became prime minister, that was less of a dream job. Oh, God, yes. So my first six years in government was foreign minister and then a combination of trade and Europe.

And then I kind of became prime minister by accident. I was supposed to become commissioner. My predecessor as PM decided that he'd had enough after three years of being PM. I fully understood now why. This episode is brought to you by IG. If you're listening to Leading, the chances are that you're someone who thinks seriously about politics and economics and your own financial future. So here's something genuinely worth knowing. IG's flexible stocks and shares, ISA, lets you withdraw and top up your money within the same tax year without losing your tax-free allowance.

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Why was it so? Why did you find it so hard? This is the thing I always say is that when you're a prime minister of a country, whether you're Kier-Starrmer or Friedrich Madits or whoever, a majority of the population want you to fail for ideological reasons. Whereas when you're president, because my sort of powers are, about foreign policy and commander and chief, everyone wants you to succeed. So the starting point is different. So is your current prime minister? And will he be feeling the same sort of pressure that you felt? He certainly is. And I think I'm a good psychotherapist for him. We're a very good friends. So I keep on giving him encouragement. And every subsequent prime minister, after my own

experience, I've always, you know, wanted them to succeed because it's kind of mission impossible. Do you think democracy is becoming impossible? Do you think democracy is becoming impossible? Do you think Democracy is becoming ungovernable? Well, no, because I do think that we have corrective measures in the system that still work. But I think democracy hasn't upgraded itself to the technological age. I mean, democracy was crafted by John Locke and Hobbes and Montesquieu and Rousseau at a time when there were no technological devices. You could take three months to answer something. Democracy was supposed to be muddling through and compromise and all of these things.

And then now everything is so quick, an instant. If you don't react to something on X or something within seconds, you get scolded. And now the pressure comes from so many different sources before it just came from your regular media. Now it comes from social media. It comes from podcasts like these. So, yeah, it's difficult. I think that too many of today's politicians haven't got to a place where they can somehow navigate that almost by ignoring it. or by understanding that the changes give you the opportunity to create your own messaging,

your own channels. Is that kind of what Trump does? Yeah, I mean, I guess. But I think, you know, you guys with Tony Blair in 1997, and I remember I was living in London on the 1st of May then, you know, you guys took a completely new angle. And for me, it felt that this was one of the last opportunities to go for radical change in a system and then communicate it. And because you worked with communication, you know exactly what I mean. Now it's uncontrollable. I'm sitting here with my spokeswoman and, you know, we make no mends. We can't control the media. So you can only control what you say and what you do. Exactly. And then you have to shape the messaging around that. You do. It's what Trump does.

Yeah, he does. And he's, of course, quite good at it. The difference there is that I think Trump's DNA is to be number one in the news cycle 24-7. I've tried to suggest to my team on a Can't we have these sort of extemporary to our press conferences from my office? But for some reason, they've been rejected. They don't trust my communication skills. Oh, I see. I think you're quite a good communicator. So you go through your prime minister.

When you stop being prime minister in 2015? 2015, I became finance minister. Right. Now, did you feel then that that was a pathway out of politics and into a different life? Not yet. But, I mean, the years from 2014 to 2016 were the most difficult years in my life. because I wasn't in my comfort zone. I was never into national politics,

and I probably didn't cope with it as well as I should have. Having said that, we finished second in the elections. I became finance minister, but then I was challenged from the party inside, actually from the guy who is now the prime minister, my good friend. And a lot of people said, you know, why is he challenging back and why is he not unhappy that he lost the leadership challenge?

Well, for me, it was kind of liberation day. You genuinely feel that. Yeah, I felt, you know, Like I remember when I lost the election, my wife and I went for a run and opened a bottle of champagne and started immediately thinking about our future. I mean, I was really glad that I had served, but eight years in government was too much. I was asked to continue, but I said now. It's really interesting now because you've been a foreign minister and felt okay. Really good. You've been a finance minister and felt okay.

No, I felt good with trade and Europe. So I was six years. Because I sometimes think that people who are in politics and do. doing really big senior jobs in government, I think sometimes they underestimate the gap between, say, being a foreign minister and finance minister and being the prime minister. For those who think they could be prime minister, and some of them can and could, just give your assessment of what's the difference between being a senior cabinet minister and actually being the prime minister. It's a difference between a good job and a bad job.

Being a prime minister is probably the worst job that you can have in the country. The pressure is constant. It doesn't hold up. In Finland, it's even more complicated because you're always in coalition governments. So you get basically pressure from your own party. You get pressure from your own government ministers. You get pressure from the other parties. And then you get pressure from the opposition and it get pressure from the media.

So you really have to be cool, calm and collected. And I admire a lot of the people that do it, you know, including our current prime minister. I have a lot of admiration for, you know, Kier Starrmer, for Friedrich Merz, actually also for Emmanuel Macron and many others. See, my job is essentially half of the job of a prime minister because I only deal with foreign policy. And in that sense, as I said, all Finns want the president to succeed because you don't want to fail in foreign policy.

And it's a different predicament. So you do all those government jobs and you go out of government, you're going to academia, business and all that stuff, and then you come back to go for the presidency. Was it specifically the Ukraine war? Yeah, the only main reason. So basically I left day-to-day politics. I had been in it for about 12 years, eight of those years in government in 2016, 2017. And my off-ramp was the European investment bank, which was super interesting.

And I felt that, oh, why didn't I do this before I was finance minister? Because suddenly I felt that, oh, I understand a little bit about the financial markets, which I guess a bit superficial, but nevertheless. And then I had a chance to go into academia, and I thought I'd be in there. And that's when I wrote the book and felt that, you know, there's a good time to read and analyze and build a new school or a new institution. And I would not be here, was it not, for Putin's and Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine. Mr. President, your book, could you provide a little overview? Let's begin with the global west, the east and the south.

Yeah, so the name of the book is the triangle of power, rebalancing the new world order. And the starting point is to say what everyone is now saying, that the world order is changing. And I think this is the 1918, 1945 or 1989 moment of our generation. And we can get it wrong, as they did after World War I, the League of Nations wasn't strong enough, and after two decades, World War II broke out. We can get it more or less right as our leaders did in 1945 with the creation of the United Nations and four decades of virtual peace during the Cold War tight situations, but nevertheless, so institutional control. Or then we can be intellectually lazy as we were after the Cold War when we made an assumption that history ended and it would all be about green. fields and rainbows and peace signs and liberal democracy and social market economy and globalization.

And my argument is that the moment that it all changed was the 24th of February, 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine. And then of course this has all been accelerated by the new US administration and the rebalancing of a new order will take, I'd say, another five years before we're there. One of the jokes you can imagine was to say this is a wonderful book which put fight years then, but the global south and the global east are doing fine. It's the global west that's the problem now. And just to explain to read it, the global west is a construct that includes Europe, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, but also unfortunately includes the United

States, which is a big challenge. Yeah. So the framework of the triangle is to say that the global west, formerly led by the United States, supported the old liberal international order. So basically multilateralism, the UN, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank. When you just said formally? I think the jury is out. And if you look at the national security strategy, which I'm happy to talk about, it obviously rejects that order. And if we just listened to Marco Rubio's speech, he says the order is still there, but we're

going to transform, which is, I think, good news. Then you have the global east, which is led by China, followed by Russia, which is more into multipolarity. So it doesn't necessarily want to pool the sovereignty that we've done during the 80 years of the liberal world order. And essentially the global South, which I know is unfair to lump 125 countries, most many of the middle powers into one, they will be the ones who decide the direction of the order. And my argument then is for the global West, if you want to maintain the remnants of the order, you need to reach out to the global South. You need to use values-based realism

and dignified foreign policy. I think that's what China is doing quite well right now. And essentially, you say, 1980, 1945, 1989. And you say, you say, the turning point now was 2022. You think it was that rather than Trump term? Oh, yeah, certainly that, because you have a permanent member of the UN Security Council violating everything that the UN stands for and basically trying to destroy the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of a neighboring country. Now, I'm not saying that American foreign policy in Iraq has been spotless or that the international order has always been pitch perfect, but this is one of the largest violations that we've seen.

And Mr. President, why that not 2014? I mean, looking back the Russian invasion of Crimea and indeed invasions of Georgia and other things seem to be very, very similar to what's going on Ukraine. And maybe we were actually, you know, 10 years too late to notice what was going on. Well, I was intimately involved in mediating peace in Georgia because I was foreign minister and chairman of the OSC Organization for Security and cooperation in Europe. And we were able to get a ceasefire in five days and then of course, you know, President Sarkozy was in Boulder. After that, I gave a speech which was called 080808 because the war started on the 8th of August 2008. And I made a claim that this could be the end of the old order because Russia is, you know,

showing its imperial DNA again. It's using aggression. Got quite a lot of pushback saying, hey, young man, don't push it. You know, this is going too far. 2014, I think there's an argument there that we should have woken up, smelt the coffee, but we didn't. We still felt that the end of history is upon us. If we just continue to cooperate with Russia, they're going to fall into place and become a normal state. And the idea was that after 2014, that that would be the end of it. Putin wouldn't want anything more. And of course,

it wasn't, because he believes in Ruskimi, great Russia, which is one Russia, one language, one religion and one leader himself. But the difference from 2014 and 2022 is a scale of invasion because I think in 2014 he only went for Crimea and then Donetsken-Luhansk. Now in 2022 he tried to go for Kiev and thought that he'd do it in 72 days and here we are four years later it has been a strategic and military disaster for Putin. The coverage of the book was essentially about the triangle, good marketing, get the title and then that's the big argument of the book. Global West, global east global south but I was really struck by this line. Power today is scattered kaleidoscope style into a dizzying

array of ever-changing shapes and combinations. In 1990, the US appeared to command the globe. Now, small command centres appear everywhere, which makes it hard to contain countries' diverging interests or connect them to the common good. Is that right? Isn't it, isn't the change, actually, that the really big powers are in charge of all of these connections? And that's the world that Jijing-Ping wants. That's the world that Trump wants. And that's the world that Putin thinks he can create. And you think actually he's already failing in doing so, but I just wanted what you meant by that. Is that sort of small and, is that a Mark Carney vision of the world? No, I think Mark Carney and I, we of course speak a lot and, you know, we talk about the

changing world order. The difference that Mark and I have is that he talks about a rupture or destruction of the old order. And I talk about transition, because I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. I sometimes wonder, should I have called it the rectangle of power? Because if the US wants to take the Western Hemisphere, let's call it the global West and then call the traditional global West, Europe, Japan, Korea, we call it the global north. But, you know, triangle of power is what it is. I think there are two pillars that are in this sort of fight, which are linked to your

question. One is the multipolar one with Shishiping, probably with President Trump, with Putin. They talk in terms of transactions and deals and spheres of interest. So it's a little bit of concert of powers of the 19th century. And then another group which talks the language of multilateralism, so international institutions, rules and norms and cooperation. And yes, the big ones will always do what they want, and we small ones do what we can. But what we can do is to try to convince the middle powers, here's where Carney comes in,

to support multilateralism. When I was at the G20, not because Finland, it isn't the G20 with G30, but I was there in Johannesburg, you know, I detected that 18 out of the 20 G. all supported multilateralism. Why? Because they feel that if that's not the case, the big ones we rule. President Stewart, Rory, quick breaking them about for more. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers, The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

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The first stage of the trial starts this year, focusing on people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancer researchukukuk.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Samark here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoy. I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through

the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say, governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of

1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bail. out. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. Mr. President, China, tell us about it because the US, China and Russia seem to have very

different relationships to this rectangle power. We have different dependencies on these different countries, they have different views about expansion. Some of them may want to reincorporate one bit of territory, some of them may want to actually topple other people's governments to invasions. How would you describe China's perspective on the world and what you think they would want to achieve over the next 2030 years, in the worst case, in the best case? Yeah, I think China is a very patient and a very strategic power. I've had the opportunity to have long conversations with President Xi Jinping three times. including one of your best jokes all time as you stood on the thing and you said,

here we are. Together, we represent, what is it, 1.4 billion people. I think I've stole it from the Luxemburgers. So the bottom line there is that it's a very strategic power and it of course, looks at a century of history just as a page in the history book. And it is trying to become the superpower of the world and is the second superpower of the world right now. And it does it through different types of. programs like the Belt and Road Initiative or Great China, 2025, whatever there is. And they're actually quite good at reaching their targets.

Their approach is much more patient, for instance, in comparison to Russia, which is an expansive imperialist power, declining power. I mean, we forget that the size of the Russian economy in 1990 was the same with China, and now China is 10 times bigger. And they're also declining power in the sense that they live on the acquisition of land which is a little bit old-fashioned, whereas China is doing more the economic and trade and manufacturing and artificial intelligence side. Then, of course, we have the United States, which is still a very strong superpower, will continue to be so. I never want to compare these three, and especially when

it comes to sovereignty and territorial integrity, but there have been claims on Greenland, which breaks the old order. There might be claims of Taiwan, which will break the order. and of course there have been claims on Ukraine. So we are kind of in a transition period right now, and the question is how we get it back. We've just recorded a mini-series on the podcast about war in the Arctic. I listened to the 18 minutes, but I didn't sign up yet. Oh, you're not a member.

I'm not a member yet. Come on, Alex. Come on. But I bought the book, and I'll have to become a member. Okay. And obviously, and I talked to the thing about the map, and there, of course, you're there. We're there. We're huge. And the author of that book,

And thank you for listening to the 19 minutes, actually, that we gave free to the moment. I recommend every listener to listen to it. Just give us your perspective on that, because I get the feeling that it's one of those debates that we just haven't been having. And yet now, here we are talking about, is this the sort of place that the next big global confrontation could be sparked? What's your answer to that? Okay. So in 2009, when I was foreign minister, we actually did the first Finnish Arctic strategy. And the take is very similar, actually, to the discussion that you had in the podcast, that it's really about three things.

Security, economy, and climate. And they're all sort of intermixed in many different ways. Now there's a strong focus on that. Now, there used to be something called the Arctic Council. It still exists, but that one had eight countries in it, including Russia. And of course, now the Arctic Council is not working. So we're talking more about the Arctic Seven, which would then include the five Nordics, the U.S. and Canada. For us as an Arctic country, we're happy that the focus is on the Arctic because we have

Arctic know-how. We live in Arctic conditions. And actually, if you look at life in the Arctic Circle, the most sort of focus part of it is Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Now, of course, the Arctic has been up there because of Greenland. And we want to stress that Greenland is very important, but when it comes to Arctic security, it happens somewhere else. And that is basically in the north of Finland.

of Finland, Sweden and Norway, because of course Russia has strong nuclear presence up there in that region. There are a couple of things that I've been a bit dismayed about, you know, when someone says that we don't project power in the Arctic. I say, okay, Finland has obligatory military service, so we have trained one million men and women to fight in Arctic conditions. We have 62 F-18s, we just bought 64 F-35s. We have long-range missiles, air, land and sea.

We have the largest artillery in Europe together with Poland. And our whole defense composure is based on an Arctic defense. So if someone wants to come and learn about how to defend yourself in the Arctic, then you're welcome. And you're now in NATO? We are now in NATO. Was that part of your return to politics? It was very much a part of my return to politics,

because as you might know, I was always an advocate of Finnish NATO membership when it wasn't popular, took quite a few hits on it. 20% of the population was in favor of NATO, 50 against and 30, undecided. So when we had these conversations at home with my wife, who is now dual national, born in the UK and now British and Finnish, and we sort of had this conversation that, you know, should we do it again? She was kind of the one pushing and saying, listen, we're now in NATO. So this is really good for the alliance.

Why don't you go ahead? Tell me about how we're going to build your order. We're here in Munich. And what strikes me is that the attempts to try to do the sort of things that you and in a different way, Mark Carney, are talking about, are continually being torpedoed. So the European Union and Britain have been unable to actually come together to do their defense agreement. It all collapsed. I don't know, political will or civil servants, whatever. France is unable to sign up to the EU's deal with Mercosur.

So every time there is a real test on how are we going to create new trading relationships, new defence relationships to balance, it goes wrong because of national politics. Well, yes and no. I mean, first of all, we have to understand that the European Union or Europe is not a utopia. It's not a single entity. And I always sort of jerk around and say that Europe advances in three stages. First, there is a crisis, then there's chaos, and finally there is a suboptimal solution. And that's pretty much, you know, what we're all about.

That's not a great rally in Korea. I know. What are you? What are we want? Suboptimal solution. I want a suboptimal solution. Yeah, big on political speeches. But, I mean, you know, I look at the silver lining.

So after 2016, of course, when the UK unfortunately left the European Union are actually only in 23, we have been trying to work out, okay, how can we bring the UK closer to Europe? And I think COVID, I think Russia's attack on. Ukraine, I think energy, now the transatlantic partnership, I don't even make a distinction anymore between, you know, meeting the UK Prime Minister or the French president. For me, they are the same. They're part of the big security umbrella. Then, you know, sometimes we get things right. Mercosur will go through, but there has been strong rejection to it, which I fundamentally disagree with. And then on the defense thing, I mean, we have to understand that, you know, European defense

without UK presence is much weaker. So we just have to work through these differences and bring the UK closer again. What's going wrong, though? I mean, the defense thing is such a litmus test. It's so difficult to understand. It feels as that. That's money, right?

And here, I think there's a little bit of, you know, some member states have EU envy about defense industries, et cetera. I will not name France. So there's a little bit of that and it's understandable. but I think for me, as coming from one of the largest militaries with a very vibrant defense industry, I would like to see the UK closer. And let's work on this within the NATO framework. And Kirstama's speech today is very much trying to point in that direction.

One of the other proposals you make in the book is one that Roy and I have talked about this and we completely agree, but it's how do you get to it? I know what. And that is? The U.S. Security Council. Yeah. How do you reform the United Nations Security Council when it's built with this inbuilt veto of the five big powers? Yeah.

I knew you Brits would ask that. So you probably want to give your seat to Finland. Was that not? I would move towards possibly making it the European Union. I've got to say. Yeah. I'm going to say. So, okay, the proposal in the book, you know, it's one which I made in my UN speech in September as well and the previous September, is to double.

So to say that the UN Security Council is dysfunctional. because its basic function is to maintain peace and do peace mediation, but it's not succeeded in doing that, and maintaining the international order and the rules and the norms. So what do we need to do? We need to double the membership from five to ten because it symbolizes the world which existed post-war two and in the early 70s. And get rid of the veto. And if you double the membership, you should take one from Latin America, two from Africa,

and two from Asia, and then Europe should rethink, you know, France, the UK, Germany, EU, how we do that. I'm a little bit agnostic to how Europe organizes it, but I would assume that the rest of the world is looking and saying, why does Europe with Russia have four seats in the UN Security Council? So, you know, it's a complicated mix. How do we get there? We get there by starting the conversation. Then you have different ways of doing it. You know, can we be in a situation where the General Assembly votes in a different way with the UN Security Council, who rules over whom? So we just have to look at this more openly. And my argument is that the global South needs to have agency because that reflects the world that we live in. This person, part of the reason I guess why these powers were given

vetoes is just to reflect the raw facts. I mean, these, particularly if you look at the big ones, let's talk US, China at that. It's very, very difficult to imagine a world in which US and China are against something, even they don't have a formal veto. And the rest of the world is able to provide real protection, particularly if it's another one of the, big powers that's doing the attack. So the system of the nations UN I guess is about protecting small countries against big and trying to create that action to do this. But if US and China and Russia for whatever reasons want to flex their muscles, nobody can really stand up to them even together or it feels as though they can't. That is true. But then you

know you might as well be speaking of a Hobbesian dog eats dog type of a world where you know the big do what they want and we small you know kind of what we can. And I I think the whole idea of global governance is that you end up pooling sovereignty in issues where you really need to cooperate. Trying to solve conflicts is one example. I mean, that is the core of the business of the United Nations. Fighting climate change is another example. And you try to find compromises when you're dealing with this global governance.

But of course, I fully understand that, you know, when you have nuclear powers like Russia, like China, like the United States, if they want to go the full mile, they can go the full mile. And in a sense, no amount of architecture, no amounts of new design of multilateralism can compensate if the three big powers don't want to play ball. If they don't want to be multilateral, it's not going to work. Yes, but if we go to a microcosm or a smaller example, which is the European Union, what happened after World War II? Three big states and three small states decided to pool sovereignty and create the European

coal and steel community and then the European economic community after that, which now has 27, and soon 30, perhaps 35 members. And they're pooling sovereignty on issues that are very close to, you know, national control, like trade or competition and have a currency, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think the UN is still there. Given you very kindly plugged our mini-series and the book on which it was based. Final plug to your book.

So we taught not long ago to Moses Naim, Venezuela and former minister. and big thinker, and he talks about Trump, populism being driven on three seas, crime, corruption, and cruelty. Okay. You have three very different seas at the heart of your conclusion, and that is competition, conflict, and cooperation. How do they fit within this new world order that you want us to try to navigate? Okay, so the starting point is that the world is essentially competitive, whether it's about geopolitics, geopolitics, geoeconomics, technology, whatnot. But that competition without rules can easily spill over into conflict.

And we're seeing now an increase in conflicts, both local and regional, and we're trying to prevent a global one. And what is the solution for this world of competition, conflict? It is cooperation. And that's where we need to find the common rules in international institutions. And I think that's what we need to work at. We just need to revamp them and reform them and get the world back on track. You're an extraordinary example of how the president of a small, medium-sized country is having outsized influence.

What lessons can countries like Britain take from this when they might feel they no longer have the raw, economic, and military power in terms of playing a useful role in shaping the world? Because we can often feel powerless. Sorry, Roel, can I just say as your political guide, if you were still a politician, you're basically saying UK is the new Finland. is always... The happiest country in the world. Yeah, that's great for the UK. That's true. That's true. No, I mean, I actually think that empires, some empires in this world have been able to transition to become middle powers.

And then the United Kingdom is the greatest example thereof. With your colonial past, with your Commonwealth past, to be able to find the position that you have in the world right now, I think is extraordinary. There are other countries that have not been able to deal with their past. And I think Russia is a good example thereof. They have not been able to cope with the past of the Soviet Union or Stalinism. Germany has been able to cope with their past. So in that sense, I would give kudos to the United Kingdom and continue to do what you do. And please come back to the European Union at one stage.

And if I may finish off with this to the British audience to say that I hope we're seeing a sequence whereby it took you seven years to negotiate yourselves out of the European Union. It'll take you seven years to regret it. and then seven years to negotiate yourself back in there. We need you back. And maybe that's the point at which the UK can lead the debate about reform of the United Nations Security Council. Why not?

Exactly. Thank you very much. Thanks for your time. My pleasure. Thank you. Okay, Rory, so Alexander Stubb, my God, he's in good shape. He's in great shape, isn't he? I mean, you know, as we go down the path of athlete leaders,

we didn't explore completely this extraordinary fact that Stubb's angle, which is... has brought him to incredible prominence is that he's a really, really good golf player, as well as being really good at ice hockey. Well, he wants to be professional at some point. And he can spend nine hours on the golf course with Donald Trump, and you get a lot of conversation done, nine hours with President Trump. He's not quite as open, perhaps, as our interview with the government in California on how exactly Trump's talking to him as they're driving around in the golf buggy. But again, you can sort of see this strange world, which people don't

maybe think about enough in British politics, which is all these kind of film-style looks, sporting achievements, etc., being part anyway of what's modern politics, and certainly part of what Trump likes in politics. You notice that Trump absolutely adores, even with his adversaries, these sort of strange putting his arm around Zora andamandani, spraying the president of Syria with scent, hanging out with Alexander Stubb. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, he's a very, very smart guy, and you made the point. It's a bit like my friend Eddie Rama, sometimes the smaller, medium-sized countries need a leader who, it's a cliche, punches above his way, but he does. I mean, he's a big thinker. People, I was with Tony Blair,

and he was, you know, saying, what does Stubb think about this? You know, he's part of people's thinking. That's a huge opportunity for him and for Mark Carney, that if people are saying, what is Stubb thinking? If they're saying the Kani doctrine, stubborn Kani's speeches and books, are going to be there in every foreign policy article, every foreign affairs article, every conversation on the Security Council. So the question for them, and I'd be interested to see is, what do they do next? Does Carney make another big speech? Does Stubb write another book?

How do they operationalize this? Let's say they've got a vision. Britain back into the EU, new form of United Nations. I think he actually does actually now think he should have done a rectangle. I think he now thinks that Europe and the US are not the same thing anymore. Where does he drive? How do we make that happen over the next two years? And how is Starp and Kani part of that story?

He's also still young. And the other thing I found really interesting was how much he hated being Prime Minister, how much he enjoyed being Foreign Minister, but Prime Minister he hated it. And he was so relieved to get out of it. And now because it's all foreign policy, he's president, and that's his job. And I thought it was interesting in Keir Stahmer's speech here where he talks about, almost sort of defensively saying why he has to take so much time on foreign policy. It is the driver of so much of the, how are we going to meet the challenges that all politicians are thinking about.

And I think he's one of those guys. I mean, how does he take it forward? I mean, he's president. Does he end up as the European Commission? I don't know. That's his background. That's where he comes from. I mean, just to finish, because I was with the Canadians yesterday, I think it's also partly about ideas, speeches, rhetoric, leadership, vision.

It's not just about the details, the implementations. they can provide the dream. Well, anyway, I'm very lucky to have some time with it. Thank you very much.