This is an excerpt from my latest Washington Post Opinions column. Free link to the full report at the bottom.
As the unraveling of the post-Cold War international order led by the United States and Europe accelerates, the unanswered question in Europe is: What comes next? The continent is rearming as Russia’s hybrid war mounts while President Donald Trump courts Moscow and Beijing. The transatlantic alliance has never been more precarious.
But at least one European leader is betting that the alliance will adapt and survive. It helps that Finnish President Alexander Stubb may have the best relationship with Trump of any of his European counterparts — a tie forged, naturally, while playing golf. It also helps that in these uncertain times, Stubb takes the long view, rooted in his four decades of traversing the Atlantic Ocean, first as a student and now as his country’s leader.
“I don’t know when the world is going to settle. Give it another five years or so. By 2030, we’ll probably get some kind of a new order,” Stubb told me in an interview on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. “But right now, we’re kind of in between, and that’s what makes it quite complicated.”
Read the entire column here: https://wapo.st/4i0SAL4
If anything, Europe should learn by now to grow a spine and develop an organic continental defense strategy.