Finish President Alexander Stub speaks as he arrives at the 2024 NATO summit on July 10, 2024, in Washington, D.C. gettyimagesbank-TNS

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued that a statesman should be a visionary and educator while serving as a bridge between the past and future. Exceptional leaders, he wrote, “help people reach from where they are to where they have never been, and sometimes, can scarcely imagine going.”

This formulation captures the role that Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, aspires to play in global affairs. Stubb’s biography, personality and vision have earned him a sizable and influential global audience. He’s been successful in academia as well as in politics and has been described as a public intellectual, a scholar statesman and the architect of an “ingenious” framework for the future.

A native of Helsinki, Stubb attended Furman University in South Carolina on a partial golf scholarship and studied political science and international relations as the Cold War was ending. He later earned a graduate degree in political science from the College of Europe and a doctorate from the London School of Economics. He speaks impeccable English in addition to Finnish, Swedish, French and German. He’s been a hockey player, a triathlete and has taken up ice swimming to manage stress.

Active in Finnish and European politics for two decades, Stubb has served in the European Parliament and as Finland’s finance minister, foreign........

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