Finnish President Alexander Stubb Talks Greenland

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Are things going to settle down?

The President threatening to impose additional tariffs on some European allies supporting Denmark while he pursues Greenland. The Finland President Alexander Stoop joins us. Now for more, Mi's the president.

Good to see you, Nice to see you.

Thanks for always making some time for us.

Look, I would never traditionally start a conversation like this with a head of state, but given the news flow and the headlines and the pictures of text we've seen over the past few days, I have to get a better understanding from you directly. I understand you were on an exchange with the President of the United States where the President almost explicitly linked his failure to win the Nobel Priest Prize with a more assertive.

Stance on Greenland. Did that actually happen?

Well, yeah, I mean we do message a lot with the President and sometimes I message together with the Prime Minister of Norway, you and US Guard Sturt. So yes, the response was as has been report, and this is what frank diplomacy is all about. This is quite normal in our engagements behind the scenes, and it's good that we have these conversations.

You'd have to forgive me. But for many people, they don't feel that it's normal to connect the failure to win a prize with a more assertive stance over someone else's territory.

It is normal to have direct talks.

Of course, on the Greenland issue, I disagree with the President. I think now what we need to do is to bring down the temperature. We need to find an off ramp and probably create some kind of a process which will.

Strengthen Arctic security.

And sort of at the end of the tunnel, I wish we could have a NATO summit in Ankara where we all agree on a new Arctic security structure.

I come from an Arctic country.

I come from a country which has one of the biggest militaries in Europe.

I come from a.

Country which has the best know how in Arctic defense. So these are the types of world things that we need to work with with the Alliance, including the United States Prision.

Trump has been talking about Greenland since twenty nineteen. What makes it different this time? What does an off ramp actually look like?

I think there's a short term scenario here in this is a long term, short term is to basically de escalate the language, and I hope we'll see some of that here in Dubos here today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

And then the second one.

Is a long term strategic thinking on Okay, is this an issue of sovereignty or is it an issue of security? I hope that it is an issue of security, and then we start looking at how we can beef up security in the Arctic region. Now, the latest conversations that I've had about this subject in the past two to three hours, this is how fast things are changing in the new foreign policy world. Gives me a little bit of hope that we'll find a way.

It feels like a live negotiation.

The president a lot of the time does come out with something very aggressive to get to an endpoint, which really is just a better deal. I liken this to NATO. At one point there was reports you want to pull out NATO, but really at the end of the day, you wanted Europe to spend more.

Is that how you view this through that lens? Well, first of all.

The president of the United States has a capacity to deal with the multiplicity of issues at the same time. I mean, you only look at what's happened this year Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Gaza, the Peace Board and many other things at the same time. And of course add on to that domestic issues on

Hour, please go and see a.

Doctor or consult the Foreign Affairs magazine, because this is not going to happen now.

If at the end of.

The day, after this what could be called rhetorical escalation, we come up with a stronger Arctic security, then that is good. And obviously we're seeing foreign policy done in a slightly different way from what we're used to. But you know, I'm a Finn. I thought you'd ask the first question that you know, what do you do? I said, in these kinds of situations, you take a deep breath, you go in the sauna and you take an ice bath. And that's what you're a missing. That's what we're missing.

Your embassy sauna where they have had diplomatic dealings done quite a scene.

You can have the ice bath right there. Look, then there is this.

Question, mister President, about why European nations were sending more troops to Greenland over the past couple of days in the past week. At first it was to beef up and show that they were serious about the security, not what.

It was about at all.

Okay, okay, So whether it was taken by President Trump was I.

Think there was probably a misunderstanding or not. Probably there was. So basically, let me explain. There is something called Arctic Endurance, which is basically a n to a training exercise. That exercise has eight different components, all of which the United States is present.

We were asked by our allies.

To go and do a reconnaissance mission to check out the territory, the landscape, and how it's going to work out. This is completely normal procedure and obviously I can't talk about the specifics of that exercise, but trust me, it is not trying to protect anything westbound.

It's more eastbound.

At what point do you feel like you're just fielding calls because you thought of as a Trump whisperer. I mean, what are you telling your colleagues and other European nations how to deal with mystery.

Well, I think you know, diplomacy.

A lot of times when people analyze diplomacy, they look at it on a state to state relations. You know, what's the values, interest, power, culture, history, geography, But they forget that a lot of it is actually about person to person engagement, and the fact that I'm able to communicate directly with the president puts me, as President of Filing into good position. But I have no illusions about being a Trump whisperer. You know, it's he's the President

That's what diplomas is about.

When did you last week?

Oh, we spoke.

It was a collective phone call I think in Paris on the fifth of December or Berlin. I forget when it was, but we're the president. Yeah, yeah, but that was sort of a collective.

And the last message with each other was in the last time.

I think it's been made public.

That was the last time you spoke.

That's the last time. That's the time we messaged.

The reason I asked this is I'm trying to engage whether there was a misunderstanding. It certainly seems like you perceived there was a misunderstanding.

My perception is that it was a misunderstanding. So now we need to, you know, sit down, discuss, get an off ramp and at the end of the day, we need more Arctic security and with European and American presence.

This is clearly played out very publicly, and you've been transparent about how frank things are often behind the scenes. But given how publicly this has played out, what kind of a message you think this is sending to the Russians at the moment where this is playing out.

Well, any time there is a diplomatic issue, to put it diplomatically between US the Transatlantic partners, I'm sure that the Kremlin is enjoying it, I mean, and they will use it as they best can, as we saw, you know, I mean, for a minister of Russia, love Rov puts out a tweet and saying that for the US, Greenland is what Crimea is for Russia, and obviously you know that's an insult and we all understand that.

So we always have to be.

Careful with the Russians because they will use any moment and any possibility for good old information warfare and propaganda.

The unintended consequences is just creates more of a positive attitude towards Russia and China and divides the Transatlantic relationship.

How big a concern is.

That, especially if we just saw Mark Karney go over to Beijing and say they have this new strategic partnership.

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, I'm very pro European, I'm very pro American, and I'm a Transatlanticist. So it is in my interests and also based on my values that we have a closer relationship with the United States. That's why I'm also very pragmatic. I understand that the United States is the number one superpower and what we need to avoid, of course, is a certain disengagement. At the same time, I have to say that Europe needs to.

Use this moment as well.

You know, it needs to beef up its defense, it needs to get stronger economically, and I think, you know, my big cisis is that it's going to be the global South that decides the new world order. So that means that we need to engage more with the likes of India. I really like the free trade agreement that the EU Fortuo Mercosur, and I think people will start looking a little bit elsewhere, but I really still want to contain and bring back the US as best we can on.

Top of Russia.

On that conversation, I've been told those discussions are going very well between the United States and Ukrainians, the United States and the Russians. Krull Dimitriev reportedly is here having a conversation with Steve Wikoff today. How much longer do you think it will take to get that deal done? Do you think Putin even wants a deal?

Okay, So two observations on this. The first one is that I'm afraid that the Greenland issue will take all the oxygen here in Davos from the Ukraine Dossea, which I still think is fundamentally important and acute.

But the second point is good news.

I think ever since Jared Kushnair came into the game, actually in Geneva right after the g twenty summit, and we had another meeting in Berlin and then in Paris, we have a lot of more practicality. So we basically have depends on how you count six documents or two or two plus five documents. The good news is that Ukraine, the United States, and the Collision of the Willing or Europe we're on the same page. The big question is

Continues to drag the United States along, do you have a sense of what Trump's red line is with Putin?

I'm not going to start interpreting the red lines or the President of the United States, but I have to say that I really like what he did on Luke Oil and Rosneft, on the sanctions, and to be honest, I mean putin light to President Trump about the drones hitting his datcha. They fired ballistic missiles. So this is something that certainly will shorten the fuse of the President of the United States. And it of course depends on how much carrot do you put before.

You hit with the big stick.

To find a question, we often ask our guests for forecasts at the World Economic Forum. I'm not going to ask for a long term one. Where do you think will be at the end of this week.

I think we will have defused the Greenland issue, I think we will have made progress on Ukraine, and I am one hundred percent sure that the world will not be finished by then.

Mister President, thanks for your time.

Thanks