Finland's Stubb dismisses NATO crisis talk as US shifts burden to Europe

Alexander Stubb does not do panic. When Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk warned this month that NATO faces catastrophic disintegration, the Finnish president reached for a different metaphor: a sauna and a cold bath. "The Finnish way is to keep a cool head and stay calm," he said in an interview in Prague. "I recommend everyone to take a sauna and a nice bath and then calmly reflect on what is happening around them and why."

The view from Helsinki: NATO is stronger, not weaker

Stubb's calm is not complacency. It rests on a concrete assessment of what has changed since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Finland and Sweden joined the alliance, adding one of Europe's largest armies and doubling NATO's border with Russia. At the 2025 summit in The Hague, allies committed to a 5% of GDP defence spending target, a level not seen since the Cold War. "We should be able to look beyond all the noise and realise that, at this moment, the North Atlantic Alliance is actually quite strong," Stubb said.

The noise he refers to includes Trump's announcement that 5,000 US troops will leave Germany within six to twelve months. The US president linked the move to Berlin's refusal to support American operations in Iran and the wider Middle East. Stubb is unmoved. "Five thousand soldiers change nothing fundamental. So please: let us be calmer." He points out that the United States cannot conduct operations in Iran, Africa or elsewhere without European bases, above all Ramstein in Germany, and that only Spain has denied the US basing rights.

The US troop withdrawal that changes little

The numbers support Stubb's scepticism. The 5,000 soldiers represent a fraction of the roughly 35,000 US personnel permanently stationed in Germany. Ramstein remains the hub for US air operations across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center there is the largest American military hospital outside the continental United States. Trump's own National Security Strategy from November 2025 and National Defense Strategy from January 2026 both signal a pivot to the Indo-Pacific and, more recently, the Middle East. Stubb has not spoken to Trump about the withdrawal. "If I spoke to president Trump after every one of his posts on Truth Social, I would be speaking to him quite often," he said.

The Finnish president sees the troop move as part of a "controlled shift of the security burden from America to Europe" that he actively welcomes. The Hague summit's 5% target formalises a trajectory that was already visible: the transatlantic defence burden moving from a 60/40 US-Europe split toward parity. Stubb argues the Americans are right to demand European focus on European security. "Given that I come from the north-eastern flank of the Alliance and that with our entry into Nato the Alliance's border with Russia has doubled, I see it as important that everyone plays their part."

Europe's unasked role in the Iran war

The Iran war, which began after the interview's reference point, illustrates the asymmetry Stubb resents. "I think this war was not necessary; it was a war willed by the United States and Israel, and nobody consulted Europe about it in advance," he said. Europe's response has been reactive: Finland joined a declaration of more than twenty countries emphasising free navigation and the Strait of Hormuz, then a coalition of roughly fifty nations, a quarter of UN member states, led by France and the United Kingdom to secure the waterway. Once the war ends, Stubr expects Europe to help keep the strait open.

This pattern, Washington acts, Europe manages the consequences, is precisely why Stubb believes the burden shift is overdue. The question is whether European capitals can translate the 5% pledge into deployable capability. Finland, which maintained conscription and a 280,000-strong wartime force throughout the post-Cold War drawdown, is a net contributor. Others have further to travel.

The shifting arithmetic of European defence

Czechia, where the interview took place, spends 1.8% of GDP on defence, one of the lowest figures in the alliance. Stubb's lesson is blunt: "If you prepare for the worst, you can avoid it." Finland is steadily increasing its own spending. The biggest European powers, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, will carry the heaviest load. Finland, with its 5.5 million people and 1,340 km border with Russia, positions itself as a "provider of security, not a consumer of it."

The arithmetic is unforgiving. NATO's European members collectively field roughly 1.5 million active personnel, but readiness, interoperability and enablers, air defence, strategic lift, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, remain patchy. The 5% target, if met, would add hundreds of billions of euros annually. Whether national parliaments sustain that effort once the immediate war fear recedes is the test.

Why Russia won't test Article 5

Stubb's most striking claim concerns Russian intentions. He does not believe Moscow will test Article 5, the collective defence clause. The evidence, he argues, is on the battlefield in Ukraine. In four and a half years, Russian forces have advanced roughly 60 km in Donbas. In the Second World War, the Red Army covered 1,600 km to Berlin in under four years. Current Russian losses run at 250 dead per square kilometre. At the present pace, taking the rest of Donbas would take another two years and cost 800,000 soldiers. Russia cannot recruit fast enough to replace 30,000 to 35,000 monthly casualties. The Ukrainian-to-Russian death ratio is approximately one to five.

"I simply do not believe that, in such a condition, they would have the nerve to test the strongest military Alliance in the history of humankind," Stubb said. Hybrid attacks, sabotage, cyber operations, disinformation, will continue. A direct military test of NATO's eastern flank will not. This assessment aligns with Finnish intelligence, which Stubb declined to detail but summarised with the same logic: preparation prevents the worst.

What Finland expects from its allies

The interview reveals a Finnish strategic culture shaped by geography and history. Finland fought two wars against the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1944, lost territory but preserved sovereignty, then spent the Cold War navigating a delicate neutrality. NATO membership in 2023 ended that era. Stubb's message to allies is consistent: meet the 5% target, build indigenous capabilities, stop treating European defence as a talking shop. Ukraine's ambassador to NATO, Alyona Hetmanchuk, has argued any European defence structure should be built on Ukrainian combat experience. Stubb did not address that directly, but his emphasis on burden-sharing and the "biggest defence powers in Europe" bearing the "biggest burden" suggests a framework centred on existing NATO structures, not a parallel "European NATO."