British strategic culture and the interpretation of Russia: continuity, cooperation, and threat perception

This article examines how British officials have understood Russia across changing historical contexts and why adversarial perceptions have repeatedly resurfaced despite significant periods of détente and cooperation. Looking beyond narratives of uninterrupted hostility or accounts focused primarily on immediate crises, it traces the gradual formation, over four centuries, of enduring habits of interpretation that have shaped British views of Russian power. Combining historical reconstruction with an analysis of elite discourse and policy across several key domains, the article argues that British strategic culture has gradually sedimented around interpretive frames that have repeatedly led London to view Russia as a systemic, geopolitical, and normative challenge, while still allowing for periods of accommodation and practical cooperation. The significance of the British case lies less in any claim to exceptionalism than in the persistence of these interpretive frames and the clarity with which they have been expressed in contemporary discourse, doctrine, and policy.