On both right and left, there's a lot of anger about the assessment of threat from Russia and the need to prepare to meet it. There's a lot I could say here (as my students know), but most of it boils down to two things. 🧵 
1. For over a decade, but particularly since 2022, the ideology of Putin's presidency has rested on the claim that the West is an existential threat to Russia - that the main goal of the West is to destroy the Russian nation and state, Russian values and culture.
The need to destroy the Western "existential threat" to Russia is one of the key ideological pillars justifying Putin's domestic repression, the distortion of the economy, and the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers. Putin's power now depends on the idea of war with the West.
Everything we can see tells us that Putin is never going to admit that the West is not, in fact, an existential threat to Russia, because he personally depends on the idea. And the UK is hated most of all.
2. The Russian political elite think power is *everything*. Power means you assert yourself; not asserting yourself means you're weak. Weak states are not sovereign and deserve what they will inevitably get. They see the West as weak but are now worried they might be wrong.
When dealing with this mafia version of Realism, coming from a state whose leadership's survival is now tied to perpetual enmity with the UK, opting out is not possible - it's not something we can do anything to change. All the UK can do is to protect itself, together with allies
TL;DR: The UK is Russia's enemy and there's nothing we can do to change that as long as Putin is in power. The choice is whether to be an undefeated enemy or a defeated one. That's all the choice we get.
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