The disagreement over NATO membership broke the relationship between Niinistö and Stubb

In the spring of 2014, the military alliance NATO and the European Union decided to sever bilateral relations with Russia after it annexed the Crimean peninsula to its control. At the same time, under the leadership of the United States, the so-called the west imposed large-scale sanctions on Russia's leadership and the country's economy, the implementation of which also included Finland as an EU member state.

On the pretext of the events in Crimea, the coalition started a large-scale campaign to get Finland into NATO, but the attempt to quickly get Finland a member of NATO was still mostly met with resistance from the center and the Social Democratic Party. Also the president Sauli Niinistö was still opposed to applying for NATO membership at that time.

Disagreements about applying for NATO membership led President Niinistö and the coalition by Alexander Stubb to the interval. 

Prime Minister Jyrki katainen (collective) and other EU prime ministers made a decision in the European Council in March 2014 to cancel the EU-Russia summit. The EU stated that the member states will not hold bilateral summits with Russia for the time being. 

After the decision, the Finnish government interpreted that it is also about all ministerial level meetings and not just the EU and Russia summits. Katainen's government also considered meetings between the presidents of Finland and Russia to be prohibited.

Finnish ministers immediately started canceling already arranged meetings with Russian ministers. Also the Speaker of the Parliament Eero Heinäluoma (sd.) canceled a visit to Russia.

Among the ministers, Stubb, who was then Minister of Europe and Foreign Trade, was the first to speak, who announced that he would postpone the meeting of the economic commission between the governments of Russia and Finland. In the meeting between the government and the president, Niinistö announced his opposition to canceling the meeting. However, the president's position was not made public.

Minister of Transport Merja Kyllönen (left) decided to stay away from a meeting that would have included the Russian Minister of Transport. And the defense minister Carl Haglund (rkp.), on the other hand, canceled the meeting with the Russian defense minister.

The Minister of Defense had changed in the middle of the election period in July 2012, when Haglund, who passionately supports NATO membership, became the new chairman of the Swedish People's Party as well as a minister. Like Stubb, he was saddened by the fact that the government program had closed the door to NATO. 

The EU's decision to cut ties with Russia had been made at a dinner without any advance preparations, and it had not been discussed in advance by Finland's foreign policy leadership either. 

Niinistö did not accept the EU's contact ban

President Niinistö did not accept the EU's decision to ban contact and meetings with the Russian president Vladimir Putin with.

However, the resulting dispute was not discussed between the president and the government until the beginning of April. The result was a compromise, which nominally emphasized the importance of EU unity and mentioned that Finland would continue to implement the decisions made within the framework of the EU. 

However, the most important decision of the meeting was the statement that "if necessary situations require, Finland can communicate with the highest leadership of Russia in an appropriate manner".

Katainen and Niinistö were also in contact with the German Chancellor before the meeting to Angela Merkel seeking an interpretation of the EU's contact ban that allowed President Niinistö to continue contact with Putin.

According to Merkel's interpretation, summit meetings with Russia would not be organized, but she saw no obstacles to lower-level working visits, nor to President Niinistö's contact with the Russian president.

From Finland's point of view, this meant that Niinistö would continue discussions and also meetings with Putin if necessary.

Stubb and Haglund were dissatisfied with the solution and criticized President Niinistö behind his back.

In the two's opinion, Finland should also have opened the discussion on joining NATO immediately after the events in Crimea. Stubb had already proposed the same in 2008, when the president of Georgia Mikheil Saaksvili had provoked a war with Russia. 

In 2014, Stubb and Haglund also gained Prime Minister Katainen as an ally in the NATO matter, whose positive position and actions in favor of NATO membership were clearly at odds with the government's program.

Katainen, who had become prime minister in 2011, had already that year held discussions with several party leaders about Finland's NATO membership, but had received no response to his attempts to start the NATO membership process.

The power of the coalition in the government negotiations at that time was not enough for the kind of NATO registration that would have enabled membership negotiations to begin.

Stubbia, who led the foreign and security policy working group in the government negotiations, was upset by the leak that caused a lot of commotion in the middle of the negotiations. At the meeting of the working group, Stubb blamed the person who participated in the government negotiations Jaakko Laaksoa from the leak. 

The news published by Yle had said that the coalition demanded the closest possible cooperation with NATO. During the negotiations, Stubb applied for a record that would not have prevented the opening of membership negotiations.

However, the approved government program stated that Finland will not prepare to apply for NATO membership "during this government". 

"The decision had far-reaching consequences, because the record closing the NATO door was in force when Russia occupied Crimea," the journalist estimated. Lauri Nurmi in his book "Finland's secret road to NATO".

Katainen, Stubb and Haglund against Niinistö

In the spring of 2014, Katainen and Stubb started seriously pushing for Finland's NATO membership, regardless of the government program. They were accompanied in the government by Defense Minister Haglund, who had become Stubb's loyal ally.

Right after the events in Crimea, the coalition held a highly publicized NATO gallup, in which the Finns were guided to respond positively to applying for NATO membership with a set of questions.

"If Finland's government ended up in the position of NATO membership, would you be ready to support the solution", citizens were asked in an opinion poll advertised as "independent". As many as 53 percent of Finns could now answer the question in the affirmative. 

"The people are ready for NATO, if the government wants it," was the headline of the result of an opinion survey by the coalition Verkkouutiset in March 2014. 

Prime Minister Katainen announced on Ylen Ykkösaamu that "Finland should join NATO". The prime minister was not bothered at all, even though the government program specifically stated that the government is not preparing to apply for NATO membership.

Niinistö was considerably indignant at the maneuvering of the coalition, with which he was actually pressured to change his then NATO position and lead Finland's accession to NATO.

Most obviously, Niinistö was also aware of Stubb's speeches, in which the coalition minister claimed as well as the president Tarja Halonen that President Niinistö "clung" to Russia and Putin because they could no longer influence EU relations. Stubb also accused Niinistö of lust for power.

"If the president is power-hungry, he grabs hold of that handle," explained Stubb Halonen and Niinistö's close contact with Putin, says Nurmi in his NATO book.

Nurmi himself criticizes the center in harsh words in his NATO book Seppo Kääriää ja Paula Lehtomäki, Minister of Justice from Johannes Koski and the left group Markus Mustajärvi as well as the convention Ilkka Kanervaa, who dared to question Katainen's and Stubb's NATO membership speeches.

Niinistö will meet Putin in Sochi

Niinistö met the Russian president in August 2014 at his vacation home in Sochi. It was known that the presidents discussed e.g. the countries' economic cooperation, the EU's sanctions policy against Russia and the situation in Ukraine. 

Many supporters of NATO membership were very angry that Niinistö was even ready to travel to Russia and meet Putin.

Rumors were actively spread in Finland that there was talk of loosening counter-sanctions on Finland. In the same context, a rumor was also spread that Putin had threatened Finland if it intends to apply for NATO membership. There were also rumors about Niinistö as a possible peace mediator.

According to Niinistö, Finland's NATO membership was not on display in Sochi in any way. On the other hand, there had been a discussion about the situation in Ukraine.

It was interesting that false rumors about the talks between Niinistö and Putin were spread within the coalition and even in its leadership. Niinistö was increasingly criticized in the assembly. He was quite bluntly criticized for his complicity with Russia and Putin, and it was claimed that he was against NATO membership in general, contrary to the truth.

According to Kanerva, it was Stubb and the members of the coalition who sympathize with him, who actually compete with malice towards Niinistö.

Stubb starts a direct attack against Niinistö

After Katainen's departure to Brussels as EU commissioner, Stubb, who became the chairman of the coalition and at the same time prime minister, started a fierce attack against the foreign policy led by Niinistö. He laid accusations of Finnishness on the table, the tip of which was nominally aimed at certain central politicians, although the real target was Niinistö.

"The old foreign policy is Finnishization, pushing Finland into the gray zone and breaking away from the EU line. The new foreign policy means a Finland that is more open, international and committed to the European Union", threatened Stubb at the meeting of the coalition's party board on the eve of Independence Day 2014.

More than a week later, Stubb violently attacked the centre, which was the number one favorite of the citizens in opinion polls, naming the "Finnished" center politicians Paula Lehtomäki, Seppo Kääriäinen and Paavo Väyrynen.

According to the prime minister leading the coalition, central politicians questioned the EU's sanctions policy against Russia and wanted to push Finland into a gray area, believing in "Cold War-era settings".

In his NATO book, Nurmi rightly states that Niinistö and the foreign minister supported the centre Erkki Tuomiojan (sd.) formed by the "power duo". 

According to Nurmi, the two were challenged both in the government and in public by Prime Minister Stubb and Defense Minister Haglund, who supported NATO membership and received support from the chairman of the Greens, who switched to the opposition in autumn and summer From Ville Niinistö –  "at least when it comes to Finnish warnings and reminders about the return of the 1970s".

The meeting with Niinistö didn't fit into Stubb's calendar at first

President Niinistö tried to curb the "discussion", which suddenly turned into fierce accusations, with which Stubb wanted to take the initiative in foreign and security policy as the 2015 parliamentary elections approached.

The president invited the party leaders to Mäntyniemi with a week's notice. Prime Minister Stubb tried to avoid the meeting, which he interpreted as a "bridle discussion", citing scheduling problems. Niinistö was not satisfied with this, but announced that the meeting would be organized anyway, even without the Prime Minister, and that the media would also be invited to the press conference after the meeting.

"There would have been a terrible halo if the meeting had been organized without the Prime Minister. I thought it wisest to go there," said Stubb later.

The atmosphere of the meeting held in December 2014 has been described by some of those present as chilling, above all what happened between President Niinistö and Prime Minister Stubbs. 

Nurmi quotes the then chairman of Sdp in his book Antti Rinnettä, in which the president and prime minister sat across from each other but looked past each other as they spoke. 

"The prime minister said that he is afraid of Russia and that he supports applying for NATO membership. The president replied that it is about Finland's foreign and security policy and that NATO membership should not be applied for". According to Rinne, the president did not try to curb the discussion.

"The NATO discussion at that level was boring, because it became apparent that at that point there were only two people at the table who were ready to promote the issue: Alex and me," said then Defense Minister Haglund.

At the press conference following the meeting, Niinistö stated that the state leadership and political decision-makers should have "the most far-reaching common understanding" of foreign policy. "A clear line is already a thing that creates security in itself," emphasized the president.

Following the press conference, those who followed politics became aware of the reality that the president and the prime minister disagreed on the central question of foreign and security policy, i.e. applying for NATO membership. The president was not ready for that in 2014.

Leader of the opposition, chairman of the center and future prime minister Juha Sipila praised Niinistö and Tuomioja after the meeting, stating that the center has no objections to the way they have handled things. Kääriäinen also gave his support to the foreign policy led by the president and mentioned that the center's foreign and security policy relies on military non-alignment.

President Niinistö soon had to notice that the duo - Stubb and Haglund - cared little about the interjections between the president and the party chairmen. Pushing for NATO membership was more important to the duo than respecting the consensus reached in foreign and security policy. 

The president did not approve of Stubb's and Haglund's actions. The relationship between the men later escalated even more and led to an almost complete rift, the coalition's election loss and Stubb's removal from the duties of chairman of the coalition by a voting decision.

However, Valtamedia kept Finns in the dark about Niinistö's and Stubb's disagreements for a long time after the hand-wringing in December. No major media outlet wanted to cover men's relationships more thoroughly.

Sipilä gave the heavy briefcases to NATO enthusiasts 

Sipilä, however, did a major disservice to military non-alignment by giving the NATO-minded fundamental Finns the portfolios of both foreign minister and defense minister after the victorious parliamentary elections for the center in the spring of 2015. 

Timo Soini was appointed Foreign Minister and Jussi Niinistö as Minister of Defense. Sipilä also prevented the return of Kääriäinen and Lehtomäki as ministers. Stubb, chairman of the coalition, continued in the new government as well, but now as finance minister.

Soini, Jussi Niinistö and Stubb took care that the new government took the direction towards NATO membership. Above all, the NATO relationship was strengthened by increasing the number of joint military exercises. The trio also pushed through the preparation of a report on the effects of NATO membership. 

A commissioned study "showed" that NATO membership would strengthen Finland's security. 

The same mantra has been repeated until exhaustion even after Finland joined NATO in 2023. 

In fact, as a result of NATO expansion and the permanent US military presence, Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea region are turning into a new zone of great power conflicts and instability.

"I say this straight. I felt in TP-utva that there was an unholy alliance that pushed for more NATO exercises and a tougher line against Russia. Soini, me and Niinistön's Jussi were that group," said Stubb later about the discussions in the government's foreign and security policy ministerial committee.

Stubb said that he was impressed by how the Ministry of Defense led by Jussi Niinistö started preparing cooperation documents with NATO's nuclear-armed states and Finland's membership in the British-led JEF forces. 

The common thread of the trio's activities was above all the strengthening of the military cooperation between Finland and the United States.

In Sipilä's government, the trio quickly took over the initiative to strengthen the relationship with NATO. It was helped by the fact that the prime minister was not that much interested in foreign and security policy and the other central ministers watched from the sidelines as a new period of development began in the relations between Finland and NATO.

President Niinistö, on the other hand, occasionally resented the trio's NATO policies, but at the same time allowed things to move towards NATO membership in accordance with the wishes of the Ministry of Defense and the generals of the General Staff, who support a military alliance, and the will of the politicians who support them.