HELSINKI, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Europe and Finland need to acknowledge that the United States is changing and that the U.S. administration’s ideology behind its foreign policy “conflicts with our own values”, Finland’s president Alexander Stubb said on Wednesday.
European NATO members including Finland have been rethinking their foreign policy strategies in recent weeks, after U.S. President Donald Trump in January inflamed tensions with his European allies over Greenland, an overseas territory belonging to Denmark.
Finland will update its foreign and security policy doctrine to reflect the changes in the international situation, Stubb told members of Parliament in a speech.
“We must honestly acknowledge that the United States is undergoing change. Its approach to its allies, as well as its way of conducting foreign policy, is also changing,” he said, calling the U.S. nevertheless “an important ally”.
Stubb has sought to maintain close relations with Trump to seek his support for Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion and to boost Finland’s own security as a neighbour to Russia.
“The foreign policy of the current U.S. administration is underpinned by an ideology that conflicts with our own values,” Stubb said, giving as examples of such conflicts of values the U.S. undermining the existing international order, operating outside international institutions and downplaying the importance of Europe.
Stubb gave no timeline for the foreign and security policy review, but said the work with the government was only beginning.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki)
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