Lessons for middle powers like Britain

Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. Sign up to The Rest is 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 the rest ispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics. com. Listen, it's great to have you here. Thank you so much for giving us your time. Let's just start with your 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. So I grew up very much in a bilingual family. So I spoke Finnish with my mother and Swedish with my dad and Finnish from 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 I dreamt about becoming a professional ice hockey player and later on a year. Your dad was making ice hockey. Yeah, he he basically managed a team and he was the head of the Finnish Ice Hockey Federation and then in nineteen eighty three 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, uh, if you will, and you know, I didn't get my academic awakening until I started studying in the US, and I did my military service like uh all Finnish men uh at the time, but you know, very much uh regular Finnish type of uh background when I 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 thirteen. Our ice hockey team sold matchboxes from door to door to you know scramble some money. And then we flew to New York and went to St. Louis to play a little bit of ice hockey. And the subsequent summer, I spent uh both in Missouri uh and in Canada. Uh so basically picking up the language. And then I did an exchange student year in a really tough place called Daytona Beach, Florida. Was it tough? No. Yeah, no, it wasn't. No, it was it wasn't. And the idea was that you know I tried my bearings in golf. And then uh eventually I I I ended up studying in the US. Uh started there at the end of the Cold War in nineteen eighty-nine and the idea was to study m economics and then basically become a golf professional. But I I very quickly noticed that economics is not my thing and I played in a tournament with Phil Mickels and noticed that I don't have his hands, not even from the right side and uh then got myself immersed in studies and didn't know. So hold on if you're getting to play with Phil Mickelson, you I mean are you like scratch golf uh well I used to be when I was a kid, yeah. Yeah. But now now I'm a little bit back in golf again for uh rather obvious reasons. I didn't for thirty-five 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 I kind of I I sort of say that I've had three careers because the sport stuff didn't pan out. The the first one was academic. I I I I really I just sat in the library, I went to lectures, I wrote and I just emerged 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 nineteen ninety one. So I I felt that want to do academia and European integration theory. And I pretty early on decided I want to do a PhD. And the the reason was kind of strange. I I had studied really hard for four years in the US at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. I loved the place. And uh I was proud of what I have G 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 uh 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. I said, 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, this 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 Constitutional 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 thirty-six in two thousand and four I I I got my first political thoughts and and it was very much a Europeanist. So you became an MEP. Became an MEP out of the blue because I mean, you know, we had it's personal votes. Yeah. 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 uh 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 predecessor as foreign minister was involved in a scandal and had to resign. And I was asked to to you know move, over to Helsinki. O kurids had been born in Belgium. Uh my wife uh was working in a law firm in in in Belgium. So I asked my then party chairman that how much time do we have to decide? I said twenty four hours. So we hummed and hobbed overnight, actually in Lapland, we were there uh uh skiing or something, and then decided okay, let's do it. And that was in two thousand and eight. Um 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. Uh so my first six years in government was uh 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, but 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. 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And of course it's not just politics, the lots of roles that rely on information on data, which is why Acrobat Studio is a must. Because if you think about it, I mean it doesn't matter whether you're a civil servant trying to to get stuffgether on special educational needs or whether you're trying to make a new decision on a business. You're endlessly trying to generate reports, presentations, summaries, insights, and what this does, the Adobe Acrobat Studio is it's a PDF space and it's AI powered. And it turns those documents into summaries and insights, doing the stuff which is actually the kind of backbone of what a consultant does or a civil servant does with a lot of their time. It helps you manage documents and transform insights into standout content so you can go from idea to creation in record time or within an AI-powered workflow. So whatever you want to do, you can do that with Acrobat. Learn more and try it out on Adobe.com. Now are all the traitors present? Let's get started, shall we? From rags to riches. I'm so sick of this. Working like a dog and being treated worse. Yorkshire to New York. Reclaimers, you and me. A life dedicated to revenge. Let's make this an occasion to remember. A woman of substance on Channel 4. Stream now Why was it so why did you find it so hard? A majority of the population want you to fail for ideological reasons. Uh whereas when you're president, uh because I my my sort of powers are about foreign policy and commander-in-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 he certainly is. And I I think I'm a good psychotherapist for him. We're very good friends, so I 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 be goingcom toing ungovernable? Uh well no, because I 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 Hobbs 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 and 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 you know, 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. That kind of what Trump does. Yeah, I mean I I guess but I I think you know, you guys with with Tony Blair in nineteen ninety seven and I I remember I was living in London on the first 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 spokesw woman and and you know we we make no amends. 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. Yeah, he does. And he's of course qu quite good at that. 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 occasion. Can't we have these sort of extemporate two-hour press conferences from my office but for some reason they've been rejected. They don't trust my communication skills clear. I think you're quite a good communicator. So you w you go through your Prime Minister when you stopped being Prime Minister in twenty fifteen. twenty fifteen 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 twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen 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. Did you genuinely feel that? Yeah, I felt, you know, like I I remember when when I lost the the election, my wife and I, we went for a run and opened a bottle of champagne and started, you know, immediately thinking 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 no. But it's really interesting that because you've been a foreign minister and felt okay. You've been a finance minister and felt okay. No, I I felt good with with trade and Europe and for So I was six years. Because I sometimes think that people who are in politics and doing really big senior jobs in government I think sometimes they underestimate the gap between say being a foreign minister and a 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? What's the 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. Um, 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 you 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 administration admiration for, you know, Keir Starmer, 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 want to fail in foreign policy and and it's a different different predicament. So you do all those government jobs, then you go out of government, you go into academia, business and all that stuff, and then you come back to become to go for the presidency. Was it specifically the Ukraine? 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 is a bit superficial, but nevertheless. And then I had a chance to go into academia and I thought I'd been there. And that's when I wrote the book, and felt that you know this is 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 aggr Mr. President, uh your book. Could you provide a little overview? Let's begin with the global west, the east, and the south. Balancing 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 One, the League of Nations wasn't strong enough, and after two decades World War Two broke out. We can get it more or less right, as our leaders did in nineteen forty five with the creation of the United Nations and four decades of uh 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 you know another five years before we are there. One of the jokes you can imagine was to say this is a wonderful book which put five years in. But the global south and the global east are doing fine. It's the global west that's the problem now. And and and just to explain to readers, the global west is a construct that includes Europe, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, but also unfortunately includes the United States, which is a a big challenge. Yeah. So the 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. Uh 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 listen to Marco Rubio's speech, he says the order is still there, but we're gonna transform it, 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 it's interesting. You say you say nineteen eighteen, nineteen forty-five, nineteen eighty-nine, and you said the turning point now was twenty twenty-two. You think it was that rather than Trump term too? Oh yeah, certainly that, because you have a uh member of the 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 in Ukraine. And and maybe we were actually you know, ten years too late to notice what was going on. Well Well I was intimately involved in mediating peace in Georgia because I was foreign minister and chairman of the OSC Organization for Security and Corporation in in Europe and we were able to get a ceasefire in five days and then of course you know President Sarkozy was involved in it. After that I gave a speech which was called Zero Eight Zero Eight Zero Eight because the war started on the eighth 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 uh aggression. Got quite a lot of pushback saying, hey, young man, don't push it. You know, this is going too far. Two thousand14 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 gonna fall into place and become a normal state. And the idea was that after twenty fourteen that that would be the end of it. Putin wouldn't want anything more. And of course it wasn't, because he believes in Ruskimir Great Russia, which is one Russia, one language, one religion, and one leader himself. But the difference from 2014 and 2022 is the scale of the invasion. Because I think in 2014 he only went for Crimea and then Donetsk and Luhansk. Now in 2022 he tried to go for Kyiv and thought that he'd do it in seventy two 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 nineteen ninety 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 the change actually that the really big powers are in charge of all of these connections. And that's the world that Xi Jinping 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 wondered what you meant by that. Is that a 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 uh 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 uh Xi Xi Ping. Probably with President Trump, uh with Putin. They talk in terms of transactions and deals and spheres of interest. So it's a little bit a 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 G twenty, not because Finland isn't the G twenty with G thirty, but I was there in Johannesburg, you know, I detected that eighteen out of the twenty G's all supported multilateralism. Why? Because they feel that if that's not the case, the big ones were rule President Stuart Rory quick break and then back for more hey this is Michael and Hannah from Goalhangers the rest is science this episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK Cancer Drugs aren't developed overnight. The styart as ideas in the lab, then move into testing to check they're safe and work effectively. In the late 1990s, cancer research UK scientists began exploring a bold idea. Could the antibodies that normally trigger allergic reactions be used to treat cancer. The lab results were promising, but allergic reactions carry real risks. After years of work, an early stage trial showed these antibodies could be used safely. And for one person on the trial, their tumour shrank. Research is ongoing, but this careful process is how treatments move from the lab into hospitals. Cancer Research UK backs innovative ideas. 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Hot or iced, there are so many ways to love this stunning serve. Uber vanilla. Pouring now at Starbucks. Subject to availability while stocks last. Mr. President, China, tell us about it because the US, China, and Russia seem to have very different relationships to this rectangle of 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 twenty, thirty years in the worst case and the best c Yeah, I think China is a very patient and a very strategic power. I've had the opportunity to have long conversations with uh President Xi Xi Ping three times. Including one of your best jokes of all time was you stood on the thing and you said I think I stole it from the Luxembourgers. So the bottom line there is that it's a very strategic power and it of course, you know, looks at a century of history just as a page in the history of a 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 nineteen ninety 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 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 on Taiwan, which will break the order. And of course, there have been claims on Ukraine. So we are kind of in a in a tradition period right now and the question is how we get it back. We've just recorded a a mini series on the podcast about war in the Arctic. I listened to the eighteen minutes, but I didn't sign up yet. Oh you're not a member? I'm not a member yet. But I I I bought I bought the book and I'll have to become a member. Okay. And obviously and I talked in the thing about the map and there of course you were there. We're big. You're you're right there. Huge. And the author of that book, and thank you for listening to the nineteen minutes actually that we gave forward to really good. I I recommend every listener to listen to it. 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 in 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 US 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 focused 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, Sweden,, uh and Norway, because of course Russia has strong nuclear presence up there uh 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 uh sixty two F-18s. We just bought sixty four F thirty fives, 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, uh then you're welcome. And you're now in NATO. We are now in NATO. Was that part of your return to the 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 and took quite a few hits on it. Twenty percent of the population was in favor of NATO, uh you know, fifty against and 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? Uh she was kind of the one pushing and saying, listen, we're now in NATO. Uh this is really good for the alliance. Why don't you go ahead? Tell me about how we're going to build your order. Um we're 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 defence agreement. It all collapsed, I don't know, political will or civil servants, whatever. France is unable to to sign up the EU's deal with Mercosur. So every time there is a real test on how we're 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's a suboptimal solution. And that's pretty much, you know, what we're all about. That's not a great rallying crazy. I know, I I know. Suboptimal solution. Yeah, big on political speeches. But I mean, you know, I look at the silver lining. So um after 2016, of course, when the UK unfortunately left the European Union, or actually only in 2023, we have been trying to work out, okay, how we can bring the UK closer to Europe. And I think COVID, uh, I think Russia's uh 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 d fundamentally disagree with. And then on the defence thing, I mean we have to understand that you know European defence without UK presence is much weaker. So we just have to work through these differences and and bring the UK closer again. What's going wrong though? I mean what why why uh the defence thing is such a litmus test. I don't I it's it's so difficult to understand. It feels like uh and here I think there's a little bit of you know some member states have EU envy about defense industries, etcetera. I will not name France. So so there's a little bit little bit of that and it's understandable, but I think for me, uh as coming from uh one of the largest militaries with a very vibrant defence industry, I I I would like to see the UK closer and let's work on this within the NATO framework. And Keirstamer's speech today is very much trying to point in in in that direction. One of the other proposals you make in the book is one that Rory and I have talked about this and we completely agree, but it's how do you get to it? Yeah, I know what and that is uh the US 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. Post war powers. I knew you Brits would ask that. So you probably want to give your seat to Finland. Was that not? So okay, the proposal in the book, uh you know it's it's one which I made in my uh UN speech in September as 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 uh order and the rules and 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-World War II and in the early 70s when trying to do the veto 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. Part of the reason I guess why these powers were given visas is just to reflect the raw facts. I mean these particularly if you look at the big ones, let's talk US China at the moment. It's very, very difficult to imagine a world in which US and China are against something even though 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 the the system, League of Nations, UN, I guess, is about protecting small countries against big and trying to create an architect 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, y 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 in in issues where you really need to cooperate. Uh, 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. they If want to go the full mile, they can go the full mile. And and in a sense, no amount of architecture, no amount 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 Two? You know, 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, soon 30, perhaps 35 members. And they're pooling sovereignty on uh issues that are very close to you know national control, like trade or competition and uh have a currency, etc. etc. So you know, let's not throw the baby out with a bath for 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 talked not long ago to Moses Moises Naeem, Venezuelan former minister and big thinker, and he talks about Trump drive uh populism being driven on three Cs, mm-crime, corruption and cruelty. Okay. You have three very different Cs at the heart of your kind of 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, geoeconomics, technology, whatnot. But that competition without rules can easily 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 the international institutions. And I think that's what we need to work at. We just need to revamp them and reform them and 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 a useful role in shaping the world. Because we can often feel powerless. guide. If you're still a politician, you're basically saying UK is the new Finland. Is always the happiest country in the world. That's true, that's true. No, I mean certainly not. 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 uh 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 uh the past of the Soviet Union or Stalinism. Germany has been able to cope with their past. So in in that sense, I you know 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 for your time. My pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you . Okay, Rory, so Alexander Stubb, my God he's in good shape. He's in great shape, is he? I mean, you know, indeed as as we as we go down the path of athlete leaders. Um we didn't explore completely this extraordinary fact that Stubb's angle, which 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 and such a lot. 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 he's not quite as open perhaps as our our interview with the government of 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 star looks, sporting achievements, etc.