Conference on Russia Papers

This article traces the evolution and enduring value of the concept of strategic culture in understanding state behaviour, particularly in defence and foreign policy. Originating with Jack Snyder’s 1977 analysis of Soviet nuclear doctrine, strategic culture reframed security studies by emphasising historically-rooted beliefs, norms, and institutional patterns rather than purely rational or material calculations. Subsequent scholarship has expanded its application across states, non-state actors and supranational entities. Still, persistent challenges remain, including definitional ambiguity, generalisation, and debates over continuity and change. Despite this, strategic culture continues to shape policy issues, such as tailored deterrence and other aspects of defence planning. The article highlights Jeannie Johnson’s ‘cultural topography’ approach, which systematises cultural analysis through four “lenses”: those of identity, norms, values, and perceptions. Applying this method to Russian policymaking illustrates how deeply embedded perceptions of identity, threat, and power shape its approach to European security under Vladimir Putin’s regime. Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine reflects a strategic culture emphasising historical grievances, the centrality of force, and the personification of state decisions by the leader. The study concludes that understanding these cultural underpinnings is essential for anticipating Russia’s actions, shaping allied policy responses, and informing future strategic stability and deterrence planning.

The article examines how Russia employs the concept of a multipolar world to justify a hierarchical and hegemonic vision of international order. Drawing on structural realist theory, it argues that Moscow’s rhetoric of multipolarity masks a project aimed at restoring great power status, securing regional dominance, and weakening Western liberal norms. Using discourse analysis and process tracing, the study reviews Russian foreign policy concepts, security strategies, and speeches by key elites, alongside case studies of institutional participation in SCO, CSTO, EAEU, and BRICS and military interventions in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and Kazakhstan. The analysis shows that Russia institutionalises multipolarity politically through alternative regional and global platforms that reinforce its centrality, operationalises it strategically through coercive use of force and veto power, and justifies it normatively through sovereigntist and civilisational narratives. Three intertwined ideological pillars balance of power, sovereignty as civilisational defence, and civilisational pluralism provide moral cover for revisionist policies at home and abroad. The article concludes that Russia’s version of multipolarity is not an inclusive pluralist alternative to the liberal international order, but a fragmented system organised around spheres of influence, hierarchy, and the unconstrained autonomy of great powers.