'Current power structure is unfair, change it': Finland President urges West to distribute power

Finland's President Alexander Stubb used his debut appearance at the G20 to deliver a direct call for reforming global power structures, telling Western nations that multilateral institutions created after World War II no longer reflect today's world. "Finns are famous for two things. One, they speak very shortly; and two, they love rules," he said at the beginning of his short address. During the speech, he said the current system was "unfair" and needed to be updated to match present-day geopolitical and economic realities.

Stubb said it was a "great privilege" for Finland to attend its first G20 meeting and framed the forum as a crucial platform for "multilateralism," which he described as “about cooperation, it's about rules, it's about norms and it's about institutions." He added, "I like these rules, because they are the ones that bring exactly the thing that you have up there on the board — solidarity, equality, and sustainability."

But he warned that the "nexus of power is moving eastbound and southbound" and said the world is increasingly drifting toward "multipolarity," which he argued is "more transactional, more about deals and therefore more prone to conflict."

In a pointed caution, Stubb said, "My biggest worry right now is that we are not seeing enough multilateralism in three key conflicts that have been raging around the world. One, Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine. Two, the situation in Gaza. And three, the situation in Sudan."

He said the West must acknowledge that post-1945 institutions no longer match global power realities. "The West should understand that the multilateral institutions that were created after World War II and that were upheld after the cold war, the power structure of them is, right now, unfair. It needs to be changed. We need to distribute power in a world that exists today, not the world that existed in 1945."

Earlier this year, former Singapore diplomat Kishore Mahbubani argued that the United Kingdom should relinquish its permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC) to India, saying the UK "no longer represented the great powers of the day." He noted that India’s economy has already surpassed the UK's, and by 2050 is expected to be four times larger, underscoring that global power had shifted significantly from the post-war era in which the UNSC structure was designed.

India has long said the UNSC is "still shaped by the power equations of 1945" and has repeatedly sought permanent membership alongside Japan, Germany, and Brazil. New Delhi has argued that the Council cannot remain credible unless it becomes more representative of current geopolitical and economic realities.