Former Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb was on Sunday elected the president of the newest member of NATO, committing to bring his nation to the core of the defense alliance as it seeks to keep neighboring Russia at bay.
Stubb is to become the Nordic country’s 13th president on March 1, following in the footsteps of Sauli Niinisto as head of state — a role where the central focus has traditionally been to safeguard independence and peace in a nation that is flanked by a belligerent giant to its east.
“I want to see Finland in the core of NATO,” Stubb told reporters after his victory. “We are a security provider, not a security consumer. We have no limits to our NATO membership. We have one of the strongest defenses in Europe, and we are a security asset in NATO.”
Photo: AP
The 55-year-old represents continuity in foreign and security policy, with a focus on supporting Ukraine and integrating Finland into NATO, which it joined in April last year.
He won 51.6 percent of the vote in a runoff against rival Pekka Haavisto. The election was the tightest since 2000, when Tarja Halonen became Finland’s first female president.
The president will, over his six-year term, act as the country’s top diplomat and supreme commander for its defense forces, working in cooperation with the government to manage foreign relations. Domestically, the president’s powers are limited.
“The president’s main job is upholding peace in Finland, and to make sure we never end up at war,” Stubb said.
Finland applied to join NATO just months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, putting its bid in together with neighboring Sweden, which is still waiting for accession.
Niinisto, the architect behind those applications, was no longer eligible to run.
While the aim was to deter any aggression with collective defenses, Finland has increased spending on its military and exceeds NATO’s 2 percent of GDP guideline — a threshold that other Nordic members of the alliance have yet to meet.
The Swedish-speaking Finn communicates fluently in a number of languages and has published 16 books. He has held all the top ministerial posts in Finland, including the finance and foreign affairs portfolios.
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