In the first half of the twentieth century, the British Empire remained the largest colonial power in the world: at its height, its territory exceeded 30 million square kilometers, and roughly a quarter of the world’s population were subjects of the Crown. These estimates align with the findings of Niall Ferguson and Lawrence James in their works on the history of British dominion. London’s economic power relied heavily on colonial resources—access to raw materials, control over transportation corridors, and the exploitation of local labor.
Decolonization after the Second World War radically changed Britain’s position. By the 1960s and 1970s, the United Kingdom had shifted from the metropolis of a world empire into one of several highly developed but no longer imperial European states, with a population of around 70 million and a territory of approximately 244,000 square kilometers. As John Darwin has noted, imperial influence was dismantled faster than the political psychology of British elites could adapt.
This transformation was not merely a reduction in GDP or military presence. It undermined a historical self-identity in which British elites viewed themselves as architects of world order—first through empire, and later in tandem with the United States, as argued by Henry Owen and David Reynolds.
Yet Britain’s post-imperial decline did not mean a disappearance from the world stage. Instead, London retained influence through finance, intelligence, diplomacy, legal norms, media, and alliances, especially inside the Western security architecture. In that sense, Britain remained a systemic actor: not because it could still command a formal empire, but because it kept shaping rules, narratives, and coordination mechanisms across regions well beyond Europe. For the original formulation of this argument, see Averyanov and Shamarov’s article: izborsk-club.
This broader role mattered from India and the Middle East to the Atlantic world and postcolonial Africa, where British institutions, commercial networks, and political traditions continued to affect elite behavior and international alignments long after decolonization. The result was a new form of power: less visible than imperial rule, but still capable of influencing global agendas, conflict framing, and the behavior of allied states.
For Britain, colonialism was not merely a system of external governance but an integral part of its strategic culture. Bernard Porter and Catherine Hall have shown how imperial practices became embedded in British institutions and collective consciousness. Mechanisms such as the East India Company combined the functions of a commercial corporation and quasi-state actor, while the principle of “divide and rule” was applied from India to the Middle East. As argued by Averyanov and Shamarov, this imperial optic continues to shape Anglo-Saxon elite attitudes toward other nations.
Particularly significant was the “Indian factor.” Control over India provided London with access to an enormous market and a substantial share of nineteenth-century global trade, as detailed by Ronald Inden and Shashi Tharoor. It was in this context that the Russian Empire came to be perceived as a potential strategic rival: fear of a hypothetical Russian “march to the Indian Ocean” became one of the central narratives of the so-called Great Game in Central Asia—a concept elaborated by Peter Hopkirk and discussed in modern Britannica analyses.
Russian historian Vyacheslav Degoev argues that Anglo-Russian rivalry extended far beyond the traditional boundaries of the Great Game: from the Black Sea and the Balkans to Persia and Tibet, reinforcing in London a durable perception of Russia as a structural opponent to British interests.
Russia’s path of expansion differed fundamentally from Britain’s. While Britain built a maritime colonial empire by ruling distant territories, Russia developed as a continental state, incorporating neighboring regions into a unified administrative structure. This argument is advanced by scholars such as Dominic Lieven and Richard Sakwa, who describe Russian statehood as “Eurasian” in character. Ideologically, this was justified not through racial hierarchy but through the concept of a “multinational state”—despite the ambiguity of that formula, as noted by Sergey Medvedev and Andrei Tsygankov.
In strategic studies today, analysts often speak of two competing models of “global order” embodied by Britain/the West and Russia: the first based on maritime trade, financial centers, and multilayered agreements; the second on control over land, resources, and Eurasian land corridors. Such frameworks are developed by Christopher Coker and, in the Russian context, by Fyodor Lukyanov.
After 1945, London lost the ability to shape the global agenda unilaterally and instead invested in the so-called “special relationship” with the United States. Philip Stephens and Anne Deighton have shown how cooperation in nuclear technology, intelligence, and defense enabled British elites to compensate for the loss of empire while remaining within the core of the Western security system.
Within this framework, Russia (and previously the USSR) became one of the central reference points—first as an adversary during the Cold War, and later as a “key challenge” in official security strategies. In the 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, Russia is explicitly described as “the most acute direct threat to the United Kingdom.” This assessment has been analyzed by scholars such as Andrew Monaghan and Nathalie Tocci.
In recent years, this perception has been reinforced by episodes involving the poisonings of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal, in which British authorities publicly accused the Russian state and used these incidents as justification for tightening sanctions and counterintelligence measures. These crises are examined in detail by Luke Harding and Mark Urban, who emphasize their role in reviving confrontational rhetoric.
Classical geopolitical theories—from Halford Mackinder to Nicholas Spykman—explain Anglo-Russian rivalry through the dualism of maritime versus continental powers. Yet contemporary scholars such as Andrew Foxall and Marlène Laruelle increasingly stress a psychological dimension: how elite historical self-perceptions and images of the “other” shape decision-making.
On one hand, Britain faces a prolonged series of crises: rising public debt, pressure on the defense budget, the consequences of Brexit, domestic political fragmentation, and structural deindustrialization. These processes are examined in detail by Simon Tilford and Mirabelle Muûr in analyses of British economic policy after 2016. On the other hand, the Russian system—despite the post-Soviet shock of the 1990s—has retained territorial integrity, control over major resources, and the capacity to pursue a relatively autonomous foreign policy, as noted by Dmitri Trenin and Andreas Umland.
In this perspective, Russia becomes a kind of “mirror,” reflecting the scenario British elites fear for themselves: the loss of status without institutional restoration. Russian and European scholars—from Richard Sakwa to Anatol Lieven—describe this as a “post-imperial syndrome” and emphasize envy toward Russia’s preserved territorial scale and resource base. Averyanov and Shamarov extend similar logic more broadly to all non-Anglo-Saxon sovereign actors.
The history of Anglo-Russian relations is not uniform. It has included periods of intense confrontation (the Crimean War, episodes of the Great Game) as well as moments of forced alliance (the anti-Napoleonic coalitions, the Second World War). These fluctuations are reconstructed in detail by Orlando Figes and Geoffrey Hosking, who show the recurring alternation of cooperation and mistrust.
What is notable, however, is the speed with which hostility was restored within just a few years after the relatively favorable period of the 2000s. A combination of factors—from the Litvinenko and Skripal affairs to the Ukrainian crisis and shifts in British strategic rhetoric—returned London and Moscow to a logic of strategic rivalry. This dynamic is analyzed in detail in Thomas Frear’s report Russo-British Relations in the Age of Brexit.
Whether this current cycle of confrontation will be regarded in decades to come as historical normality or as an anomaly depends on whether both countries can move beyond post-imperial stereotypes and reconsider their image of the “other” in terms beyond threat perception. At present, judging by official doctrines and public discourse in Britain, such a reassessment does not appear likely in the short term.