Finland’s president: Europe needs to calm down about Trump (with Alexander Stubb)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Alexander Stubb** (0:15)
Now we're going back to the root of NATO, but with an ask from the United States, which is, take more responsibility for your own security. We are paying too much for it. I think Europe has heard the message loud and clear. And again, be a Finn, take a sauna, take a cold bath, calm down, we'll sort this out.

**Dasha Burns** (0:39)
Hello, hello, and welcome to The Conversation. I'm Dasha Burns. And every week on this show, I talk to the most compelling and sometimes unexpected power players in Washington and beyond. And this week, I sat down with Finnish President Alexander Stubb here in Helsinki. If you're watching, you see I've got a different backdrop this week. Stubb is widely regarded as a European leader with the closest personal relationship to President Trump. That connection has made him one of the figures seen as best positioned to have Trump's ear on issues ranging from the war in Ukraine to the future of NATO.

**Alexander Stubb** (1:13)
The fact that I'm able to communicate directly with the president puts me as president of Finland into good position, but I have no illusions about being a Trump whisperer.

**Dasha Burns** (1:23)
So I wanted to speak with him specifically about America's evolving relationship with Europe and what that shift could mean for the future of the Transatlantic Alliance. And with the G7 meeting just behind us and the NATO summit fast approaching, Stubb and I had plenty to talk about. We spoke ahead of the Northern Lights Summit, which is an annual gathering of Europe's top business leaders hosted by the European Business Leaders Convention. POLITICO holds a minority share in the EBLC. But before we get to the interview, just a quick reminder to please subscribe wherever you're listening or watching this episode. And now, President Stubb joins The Conversation.
All right, President Stubb, thank you so much for joining The Conversation.

**Alexander Stubb** (2:03)
My pleasure.

**Dasha Burns** (2:04)
I want to start with the transatlantic relationship because as I've been watching from Washington, you've been experiencing from Helsinki and much of the world, the relationship between the US and NATO, the US and really all of its allies around the world is really constantly getting renegotiated in real time since President Trump came back to the Oval Office.
You have a pretty unique vantage point here. You've developed one of the more visible personal relationships with President Trump, texting him, calling him, spending some time with him on the golf course. I'm curious, what have you learned about how to communicate and work with him effectively that perhaps some of your European colleagues may not fully understand?

**Alexander Stubb** (2:49)
Well, obviously, I don't want to inflate my relationship because the President of the United States is obviously the most powerful man on earth, and he has many different types of relationships. I come from a small country, an inoffensive country in many ways.
I've learned in relationships, in politics, that you should be quite pragmatic, and you usually in diplomacy have two strands that you can take. One is the state-to-state, which is about the interests and values and geography and history and culture. And the other one is the personal relationship. So I've learned that engagement in the personal relationship is important no matter who it is, whether it's President Trump or, say, the Prime Minister of Sweden.

**Dasha Burns** (3:34)
The president himself, though, he's a unique figure. I think that is something no one can disagree with. The way that he speaks about European alliances in public, does it differ when you're speaking with him privately, whether on the phone or in person?

**Alexander Stubb** (3:52)
We all have a public persona versus a private persona, and I think that pertains to diplomacy as well. It probably depends on who he's speaking to. I mean, Finland is a country with one of the largest militaries in Europe and in the alliance. We have a 1,340 kilometer border with Russia. We have obligatory military service. We have over 60 F-18s. We just bought 64 F-35s. We have long-range missiles, air, land and sea. We have over 1 million reservists.
And we have the biggest artillery in Europe together with Poland. So the language that we have in our bilateral relationship will probably be different from some of the European countries because our defense cooperation is so close. On top of that, of course, we just did a deal of 11 icebreakers with President Trump. So our rhetoric, both in public and in private, is the same.