Alexander Stubb is the current President of Finland, a NATO member nation (since 2023) that has been a key part of the NATO 75th anniversary summit taking place this week in Washington, D.C. — during an especially fraught period for the longstanding alliance triggered by the Ukraine-Russia war.
Support for Ukraine, in the third year of the war, is the topline issue at the summit and Finland, sharing an 830 mile border with Russia, is a prominent actor in NATO’s future plans.
With the United States being the most important and powerful of the NATO member nations, President Stubb, who was elected in 2024, has had cause to interact frequently he says with President Joe Biden during the summit.
Biden gets more support from the Finnish president than some in his own party:
“I’ve had the opportunity to speak to President Biden on many occasions during the past 48 hours … I have absolutely no concerns about the capacity of the current President,” Alexander Stubb says
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) July 11, 2024
Stubb delivered an assessment of his Biden interactions — specifically during the previous 48 hours — that contradicts the burgeoning narrative that Biden is no longer fit to carry out his duties as the free world’s leader, a narrative that was thrust into hyper-speed after Biden’s feeble performance in his first 2024 debate with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Stubb, who holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics, is accustomed to high-level conversations. The former Finnish Prime Minister who was out of power for seven years before his comeback election victory, Stubb also holds B.A. in political science from Furman University in South Carolina, so is no stranger to America and its politics.
[NOTE: Unlike Biden, Stubb leans politically to the right as a member of the center-right National Coalition Party (NCP) — he beat Pekka Haavisto of the center-left Green Party in the runoff election.]
Finland’s and Stubb’s support are a given for a Democratic president: it is notable, perhaps, that even the conservative Heritage Foundation — primary author of the controversial federal transition plan called Project 2025 — has praised Finland and its inclusion, along with Sweden, in NATO, saying “the two new NATO members, Sweden and Finland, are key players in enhancing NATO’s defense fabric and confronting security threats, especially those posed by Russia.”
Praising Finland’s NATO participation under Stubb, the Heritage Foundation asserts that “both stand as model NATO members, and the Alliance would be markedly improved if every member state were to emulate them.”