‘Global South will decide new world order’: Finland President Stubb at Raisina Dialogue

Finnish President Alexander Stubb has said that the new world order will be decided by the likes of India.

At a discussion on his book ‘The Triangle of Power – Rebalancing the New World Order’ at the Raisina Dialogue 2026, Stubb outlined the three broad trends that the book analysed: the evolution of the bipolarity of the Cold War into the post‑Cold War American unipolarity, which then developed into today’s multipolar chaos.

But the future, Stubb said, would be decided outside the West.

Stubb said, “For me, the Global West, at least when I wrote the book, was led by the United States, and the basic idea was that this group wanted to preserve the existing liberal world order as it was created some 80 years ago. And the opposite to this was the Global East led by China and Russia, with the idea that they wanted to create a more multipolar world order. And, for me, the thesis of the whole book is that it’s actually the Global South, led by the likes of India, that is going to decide the direction in which the world order is going to tilt.”

Stubb is in India on a four‑day state visit. In addition to his official engagements, he has joined the Raisina Dialogue as the Chief Guest.

To adapt to the changing world, Stubb said the West needs to mend its ways.

“I suggest to my Western partners that if the world is going to change, if the Global South is going to decide, play ball, stop taking the moral high ground, stop being the teacher and the preacher, and be a partner that’s cooperative,” said Stubb, adding that the India‑EU trade deal is a result of such an approach.

Stubb sees middle‑way approach as the way forward

Stubb said that the future would likely lie somewhere between multilateralism and multipolarity.

Multipolarity refers to a world order in which more than two countries hold power roughly equally. Multilateralism refers to an approach to international relations where at least three nations work together to solve common issues or address a specific issue, such as the Quad responding to China’s hegemonic ambitions in the Indo‑Pacific, or Nato managing trans‑Atlantic security.

As for his approach, Stubb said that “we need to change the power structure of those institutions to reflect the demography, economy, and power of 2026 rather than 1945”.

On the question of how he sees the world evolving, Stubb said, “As a former civil servant, I remember writing memos for politicians where you had you first presented one extreme. Let’s say multipolarity. Then you presented another experiment, let’s say multilateralism, and you knew that at the end of the day you were going to land somewhere in between. So I’m quite realistic that the world is probably going to be some kind of a combo of multipolarity and multilateralism.”

As for his preference for multilateral approach to foreign policy compared to the multipolar nature of the world, Stubb said that he prefers multilateralism because it gives small nations like his country, Finland, more agency. Moreover, he cited the success of the European Union (EU) as the reason for his preference for multilateralism.