Russia’s attack on Ukraine, together with the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump, have challenged established practices in international politics as well as the prevailing world order.

In this global political situation, Finnish President Alexander Stubb has defined values-based realism as the guiding line of Finland’s foreign policy. Recently, our political leadership has been criticised for emphasising realism over values in its choice of words when addressing the United States. I fully understand that our foreign-policy leadership must carefully consider how it communicates with an ally that is crucial to Finland’s security.

This kind of political realism is for the highest state leadership to decide, and rightly so—they have the best overall understanding of the situation. Values, by contrast, arise from our shared societal understanding. Culture reflects this value framework, and for that reason I believe the cultural sector has an important role to play in the discussion triggered by Trump’s actions. While our foreign-policy leadership must balance its language, the cultural sector should not refrain from condemning actions that run counter to our values. In fact, I see this as our duty. Effective cooperation requires that everyone takes care of their own domain.

For these reasons, I consider it important to state my own view on Donald Trump’s actions—naïve as it may sound, especially since many of these issues seem so self-evident.

In Finland, even toddlers are taught that self-aggrandisement and bullying others are unacceptable. Such behaviour signals insecurity and a desperate search for attention and approval. This wisdom fits Trump perfectly. It is pitiful how, time and again, he praises himself for one thing or another—be it the peace agreements he claims to have negotiated, the unrest he says he has quelled, or the economic problems he asserts he has solved. When the self-praise momentarily subsides, he resorts to bullying and threatening those weaker than himself and even his allies, instead of supporting them as is normally expected. And even when we have mistakenly assumed that one of his actions was noble, it has ultimately been revealed as selfish pursuit of self-interest, along the lines of “we will help you, but only on the condition that you hand over your wealth to us or buy weapons from us,” and so on. Only a true coward behaves in this way.

It is telling that, during his second term, Trump has been forced to appoint complete dilettantes as ministers and heads of key agencies, because no self-respecting professional has been willing to implement his agenda. One does not need to be Einstein to understand the kind of destruction such individuals can cause within their organisations.

It is shocking that, with his approval, a form of state terror has been created in the United States, where people can, in the name of immigration enforcement, be detained, abducted and even killed without consequences.

It is darkly comical that Trump attaches his own name to national cultural institutions, because he himself knows that no one would do so after him. It is tragic that Trump remembers culture only to interfere in the content of cultural institutions, not to mention university research agendas, in an attempt to steer public opinion and scientific knowledge to support himself and his views. Through his actions, he is destroying the reputation of these cultural institutions and eroding the ability of American universities to conduct world-class research and to attract top researchers to the country. Under Trump’s leadership, the United States is in danger of losing the greatness it managed to achieve in past centuries and decades.

Ironically for Trump, the respect shown to him by decision-makers in other countries is directed not at him personally but at the institution he represents—the United States and the office of the presidency. Trump’s power thus derives from the actions of his predecessors and from the history of the institution itself. As a result of Trump’s actions, the respect accorded to the United States by its allies is in free fall, and its power is also waning—whether in the economy, healthcare, research, or in addressing the solutions inevitably required by climate change.

Trump has succeeded in the United States with his “flood the zone” strategy, the aim of which is to overwhelm the democratic institutions of American society with a massive number of extreme and impossible initiatives and measures, thereby rendering those institutions dysfunctional. Let us not allow this smokescreen to blind us to his poor behaviour and actions that violate our values. Our politicians defend our borders through realpolitik and by carefully weighing their words; let those of us working in the cultural sector defend our values by condemning Trump’s actions as clearly and unequivocally as possible.

- Kai Huotari, Managing Director of KAAPELI