The making of a Foreign Minister

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By Anu Nousiainen
     
      It's half past nine on Thursday morning, and Alexander Stubb is not yet officially a minister. Consequently, the location is the Katajanokka Casino restaurant, and not the nearby Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
      It is a tradition at the Foreign Ministry that the new minister will not step into the building before he has been officially appointed by the President.
      For that reason Stubb is now sitting in a small meeting room in the cellar of the restaurant, going through briefs prepared for him by ministry civil servants.
      The briefs are summaries - short assessments on one subject or another. They can be written, or oral.
      From Tuesday onward, Alexander Stubb's life has been one brief after another. On Tuesday he turned 40, and also on Tuesday, National Coalition Party leader, Minister of Finance Jyrki Katainen said that he would replace Ilkka Kanerva as Foreign Minister.
     
The aroma of thermos coffee pervades the meeting room. There are croissants in the basket. The coffee cups and baked goods are quickly buried beneath papers, communicators, and black wax-covered folders, as the members of the cabinet of the Foreign Minister spread their goods on the table.
      "Could I have a black folder?" asks a cheerful Stubb.
     
The new minister is full of enthusiasm and is hissing with energy, like a charged battery that is finally being taken into use. He has slept well and gone swimming at the Mäkelärinne pool.
      "Prodi called, but I didn't answer because I didn't recognise the number."
      Prodi - Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, is Stubb's former boss from the European Union. "A magnificent OSCE brief", Stubb says.
      It is not quite easy to start work as Foreign Minister in the middle of an electoral term, especially at a time when the country happens to hold the chairmanship of an amoebic creature such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, as is the case now.
      Even a minister needs to start with the basics. "Is the organisation chart of the Foreign Ministry somewhere? Who are in Väyrynen's cabinet?"
     
Stubb is not pretending to be an expert. Instead he is humbly taking on the role of an apprentice. The goal of the day is to lean as much as possible about the OSCE and Russia, which are not his strongest points. Next week there is an OSCE meeting in Vienna.
      He is also being coached for Friday's press conference, when the new Foreign Minister will be on his own for the first time. For that reason, Stubb is making sure that he gets a good brief about the NATO summit in Bucharest, and that it corresponds with the views of the President.
      But journalists can be unpredictable. One has to be prepared for everything:
      "Hey, what's our stand on Tibet?"
     
Sitting around Stubb are the closes aides to the Foreign Minister: secretaries Tanja Jääskeläinen and Mikko Hautala, special aide Jori Arvonen, and press aide Juha Kirstilä. The new foreign Minister is in safe hands.
      The schedule for the following day is gone through. Phone calls to Javier Solana, the foreign ministers of Slovenia and Russia, to European commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner ... One wonders if Stubb really knows how little pieces he is being sliced into.
      "Turn on the speaker phone", Jori Arvonen says, as notes are taken of every important phone call.
      This time there is no need for the aides to worry about the language skills of the minister. In addition to Finnish and Swedish Stubb speaks magnificent English, French, and even German.
     
Will food be needed for the meeting with Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt? Stubb asks for something healthy: "rye sandwich and water and fruit".
      Fruit at all meetings, no coffee bread, is the policy of the new boss.
      It seems that there will be other changes as well. Kanerva was praised for bringing with him an atmosphere of more verbal interchange. With Stubb, the old, dignified, and hierarchical ministry might end up discussing itself to exhaustion.
      A generational change is taking place, and now is the turn of the Foreign Ministry. Or when was the last time that the Foreign Minister of Finland has described anyone as being "a little bit rock'n'roll"?
      Paavo Väyrynen was just 30 years old when he became the Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1977, but at that time age did not matter because Väyrynen was the minister of President Urho Kekkonen and the last work always came form the President.
      "I was always nervous when I waited to be admitted to the Foreign Minister's office", Stubb recalls his time at the ministry in the 1990s. "All of that terrible formality!"
      This foreign minister would prefer his subordinates to call him Alex.
     
What about South Ossetia?" Alexander Stubb asks Ambassador Aleksi Härkönen with a furrowed brow.
      "I need good briefs about this. Even the so-called geographical map would not be a bad idea. I'll spend the coming days in really tough training for the OSCE."
      Härkönen is the head of the secretariat of the Finnish OSCE chairmanship. He goes through the situation in South Ossetia, Transdnistria and Ngorno Karabakh with familiar expertise.
      Stubb listens with a serious look on his face and promises to visit the OSCE member states that Kanerva did not get to.
     
One matter clearly seems to be a cause for concern:
      "Could we dispense with all of this pompous stuff? These things work much better when the feeling is relaxed."
      However, the civil servants maintain that in those countries it is the custom to meet the entire state leadership. Already a minimum programme takes an entire day to carry out. This means at least two trips to far end of Central Asia this spring.
      Stubb appears to accept the realities. But he feels that all excessive snootiness is "truly from a bygone time".
      Ambassador Härkönen moves on to the recent events in Kosovo.
      "Very good, very good", Stubb says, appreciatively.
     
Stubb's communicator has 325 text messages on it. He is worried that at this rate, he will not be able to thank nearly all of his well-wishers. Even his own website crashed on Tuesday under the weight of thousands of hits.
      Stubb does not have the time to answer the messages, because Finland's next Ambassador to Moscow, Matti Anttonen, is explaining to him that there are no areas in Finland's state administration, that would not have some interaction with Russia.
      Stubb tirelessly asks new questions. "Is Russia really only our second-largest trading partner? Who is first? Germany?"
      "How many people do we have in St. Petersburg? Is it bigger than the Finnish representation to the EU?
      Stubb is told that the number of visa applications by Russians is growing by 20 per cent a year. Three out of four visas are multiple entry visas, and only one per cent of the applications are rejected.
      Stubb listens and makes notes.
     
The natural gas pipeline through the Baltic, the forest sector, wood tariffs, Finnish working permits in Russia, legal aide, a Pendolino train to St. Petersburg, fighting forest fires, the wreck of the Vrouw Maria on the bottom of the sea...
      Civil servants of the Foreign Ministry bombard Stubb with information about Russia. And he still needs to get a command of the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America ... It is not enough for the Minister for Foreign Affairs to be an expert on the EU, even though he has written several books on the subject. Fortunately, Stubb, who wrote his doctoral dissertation at the renowned London School of Economics is sharp and learns fast.
     
Now it is time to go to Parliament, where Stubb has a meeting with the Parliamentary group of the National Coalition Party. Stubb wants to go on foot, and walks along Aleksnaterinkatu with a big black bag on his shoulder.
      The tall, slender, and tan Stubb turns people's heads. Familiar and partly familiar faces go by. After all, Stubb is a Helsinki boy from Lethisaari. There are congratulations and hugs.
      The foreign Ministry's photographer needs official photographs of the new minister for official purposes. At Senate Square Stubb absolutely forbids allowing the statue of Tsar Alexander in the same picture.
      A week earlier he was skiing, as party leader Jyrki Katainen called and asked him to come to Finland on Monday. He did not say what the reason was, but Stubb certainly understood what might be coming.
      A rapid negotiation ensued with his wife, lawyer Suzanne Innes-Stubb, but it seems that it was not very tense. When your country calls, you go, Stubb said on Tuesday at a press conference of the National Coalition Party.
      Stubb does not try to conceal his enthusiasm. It is wonderful to return to the Foreign Ministry. What is the best is to return there as Minister for Foreign Affairs.
      "I love the place", he wrote in his blog in the evening. "It feels great to read background memos drawn up by the Foreign Ministry."
      It seems sincere.
     
On the steps of the Parliament a group of schoolchildren stand in line: "It's the new foreign minister", one of the older ones realises.
      As he is being congratulated, Stubb slips from Parliament to Ruusulankatu a few blocks away.
      He is eager to use a brand-new triathlon bicycle, which is waiting for him at a bike shop. At least for now, he is scheduled to race in a half triathlon in Joroinen in July.
      "Lift your toe a bit", says the salesman Kari Huhtala as Stubb tries on the new pedal clips.
     
The following morning, Friday, Stubb becomes Finland's Minister for Foreign Affairs. Immediately after that he is to hold his first press conference as a minister.
      The press room of the Foreign Ministry is full of people. Watching out for Stubb is Section Chief Petri Tuomi-Nikula who has prepped him for this event together with Secretary of State Pertti Torstila.
      Afghanistan, Kosovo, NATO, Chechnya, Abkhasia, Cyprus, Russia, Iraq ... Political journalists who have seen many foreign ministers during their careers look for Stubb's weak spot. And Stubb answers in four languages.
      Nobody asks about Finland's views on Tibet.
      The aides look on to see how Stubb is doing. His expression reveals that he is doing very well.
      Finland's 56th Minister for Foreign Affairs is ready to go out into the world.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.4.2008


Previously in HS International Edition:
  New Foreign Minister sees Russia as opportunity, not a threat (7.4.2008)
  MEP Alexander Stubb to replace Ilkka Kanerva as Foreign Minister (1.4.2008)

ANU NOUSIAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anu.nousiainen@hs.fi