Timofey Bordachev, Program Director at the Valdai Discussion Club, delivered a scathing critique of British foreign policy in an April 10 op-ed for Vzglyad. The piece, also translated and edited by RT, accuses the U.K. of clinging to imperial fantasies while actively sabotaging peace efforts in Europe.
“There are only two countries in the world that have exercised full autonomy over major political decisions for more than 500 years: Russia and Britain,” which has made them natural rivals, he writes.
Bordachev writes: “For centuries, Britain caused nothing but harm to the international system. It played France and Germany off one another, betrayed its own allies in Eastern Europe, and exploited its colonies to exhaustion…. Britain has long understood that true unification of Europe—especially involving Germany and Russia—would leave it sidelined. Thus, the primary goal of British policy has always been to prevent cooperation between the major continental powers. Even now, no country is more eager than Britain to see the militarization of Germany. The idea of a stable Russia-Germany alliance has always been a nightmare scenario for London. Whenever peace between Moscow and Berlin looked possible, Britain would intervene to sabotage it.…”
He compares Britain’s decline to a “Singapore on the Atlantic,” claiming it no longer holds serious global relevance, but remains dangerous due to its unpredictability and aggressive posture. Domestically, he sees a crisis of leadership: its internal political life “is a carousel of increasingly unqualified prime ministers.”
Framing Britain’s foreign policy as atomized and adversarial, Bordachev traces this mindset back to Hobbesian political philosophy, contrasting it with the communal traditions of continental Europe: “The British approach to international relations mirrors its domestic political thought: atomized, competitive, distrustful of solidarity. While continental Europe produced theories of political community and mutual obligation, Britain gave the world Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, a grim vision of life without justice between the state and its citizens. That same combative logic extends to foreign policy. Britain doesn’t cooperate; it divides.”
The op-ed closes with a provocative warning: that in desperation, Britain could try to “manufacture a small nuclear crisis”—and that the U.S. might be forced to intervene to “neutralize the threat—even if that means sinking a British submarine.”
His conclusion is blunt: “There is nothing positive for Russia, or the world, in the continued existence of Britain as a foreign policy actor.”