Alexander Stubb Audiobooks

The Triangle of Power: a sitting president maps the new world order

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.6/5 average

80 listener ratings

Who is Alexander Stubb?

It is not every day that a serving head of state writes a book worth arguing with. Alexander Stubb, born in 1968 and President of Finland since March 2024, has spent his career at the join between the academy and government: an EU researcher first, then a member of the European Parliament, foreign minister, prime minister in 2014, and finance minister after that.

The years away from office were not idle ones. He served as a vice-president of the European Investment Bank, then ran the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence, which is where much of the thinking behind his writing was sharpened. He returned to Finnish politics in 2023 and won the presidency the following February, becoming only the second Finland-Swedish head of state in his country’s history and the first elected to the office.

He writes as he speaks in public: plainly, in fluent English, with an analyst’s habit of building a framework and then testing it against the news.

Alexander Stubb in audiobooks

The Triangle of Power is Stubb’s argument about what follows the order built in 1945, and it is a tidy one. He divides the globe into a Global West, a Global East and a Global South, then asks which logic the next settlement will follow, that of Yalta or that of Helsinki. His answer, which he calls values-based realism, is the spine of the book.

Nicholas Guy Smith reads it, and the casting is a good one. He gives the geopolitics a steady, unhurried authority that keeps seven hours of diplomacy from turning into a seminar, and the chaptering makes it easy to listen in sittings.

Warmly rated by listeners so far, and a sensible choice for anyone who follows European politics rather than merely reads the headlines. The listing is below.