WESTERN DOMINANCE IS FINISHED, Finland President Alexander Stubb told the NATO Summit in the Netherlands yesterday. A “change in the world order” is under way. 芬蘭總統亞歷山大·斯塔布昨天在荷蘭舉行的北約峰會上表示，西方主導地位已經終結。 「世界秩序的改變」正在進行中.

“We need to sort things out and understand the time of Western dominance is over,” he said.

Like other European heads, except Spain, the Finnish leader signalled his vassalage to Donald Trump by endorsing the EU’s massive increase in weapons spending—but could not hide his long-held position that the world was in transition, becoming more “transactional, multipolar and disorderly”.

XI MORE TRUSTWORTHY
During Trump’s first presidency, the Finnish thinker caused a stir with an essay titled “Goodbye USA, welcome China?” in which he said he found Xi Jinping more believable than Donald Trump in terms of achieving his goals of governance.

Printed in 2017, it said the US was moving away from open international competition—while China was moving towards free trade.

While greeted negatively at the time in the west, Alexander Stubb’s words now look remarkably prophetic, with the US becoming isolationist and protectionist—while China has become the world leader in e-commerce and exports.

CHINA MISSING
President Stubb officially visited China himself in 2024, where Xi Jinping reminded him that Finland was “the first Western country to sign an intergovernmental trade agreement with China”.

Stubb said that the two countries were in line on key matters including the One China Principle.

So the speech President Stubb gave at the NATO summit yesterday was no surprise.

In his talk, he said that the military alliance was returning to its original mission, which was to act as a barrier against Russia.

The unspoken message was the absence of “China” in that definition. So NATO should leave China alone?