Finnish President and occasional golf partner of United States’ President Donald Trump, Alexander Stubb, has told Cairo university students that “middle powers like Egypt” will shape the next world order. The Finnish President was speaking at the new Cairo campus of The American University in Cairo on 22 April.
Noting that about 60% of Egypt’s population was under 30, Stubb said he did not agree that world power would be divided between the United States and China “middle powers like Egypt, India and Brazil” would shape the next world order.
“Now is the moment when middle powers take the agency and power that I think belongs to them.”
Stubb described a shifting global landscape from the “triangle of power,” comprising three main blocs: the Global West, led by the United States and about 50 countries seeking to preserve the current international order; the Global East, driven by China and Russia and about 25 countries aiming to challenge that order; and the Global South, a diverse group of about 125 nations, including Egypt, India, and Brazil.
He said we were living through an historic turning point—1918, 1945, and 1989 and a new phase which probably began around 2022. “We are witnessing a realignment… on a global, regional, and local level,”
