Dependencies between the allies are growing despite political differences, Stubb said after receiving a Global Impact Award from the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Setting out a view of geopolitics shaped by dependencies, Stubb referenced the deal he signed with President Donald Trump in October 2025 for Finland to provide ice-breakers to help the US challenge Russia and China in the high north.
“When you look at strategic dependencies around the world, you have three things you need to keep in mind,” he said. “The defensive stuff are things where you understand that you have a reliance on someone else, say, for instance, critical minerals or software and computers.”
He then discussed “offensive dependencies,” which include “things that others are dependent on you for, for instance in the Finnish case icebreakers, or data, or critical minerals or quantum.”
The agreement signed by Trump and Stubb dovetailed with the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact, an agreement between the US, Finland, and Canada to improve access to the Arctic. There has been growing concern in Washington about Moscow, and increasingly Beijing, having the upper hand in the high north, and Finland is an acknowledged world leader in icebreakers.
The third item on Stubb’s list for understanding dependencies was the importance of not becoming over-reliant on any one partner.
“You must have the defensive ones understood, you must have the offensive ones understood, therefore you also need to diversify,” he said. “What I see now is that we’re not dependent on Russia, we understand our dependencies on China, and dependencies between Europe and the United States are increasing.”
Acknowledging that his award was for the whole of Finland and its vital role defending northeast Europe, Stubb said that as a pro-European and a pro-American, it was inevitable that he would be an Atlanticist.
“We live in a strange world. Those things that were supposed to bring us together like energy, or information, or technology, or trade, or currency, they’re now used as instruments of conflict, even instruments of war,” Stubb said in a video message to the CEPA Honors Gala in Washington.
“But the key is that we have a steadfast and tight transatlantic partnership,” he told the audience. “Sometimes our policies might be a little bit different, but what really binds us together is values.”
Thomas Penny is an editor and writer based in London. He has worked for local, national, and international news organizations, including the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg News, and CEPA, and is now a freelance specializing in international relations, politics, and conflict.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
