The nation not the state. This is a matter of public record, IIRC.

Yes, admitting Georgia to NATO would be a dangerous move, and yet a top McCain foreign policy adviser was very recently paid by the Republic of Georgia to advocate their interests.

. . . and it looks as though they’ll punish the monkey and let the organ grinder go . . .

I agree that indicating a desire to decrease Russia's role in the G8 as a device for realpolitik is a good idea. But given the realities, it is better to talk about "will seek to kick out" or advocate lesser steps to lessens its role as a response to specific Russian actions that we disapprove. Then the Russians can decide what they want to do. More importantly, we have to win others to our point of view to make it go anywhere. Even if the proposed sanctions are less than "kicking them out," the point is more symbolic both to the Russian and to the allies with whom we need to gain influence to sell this point of view.

McCain's red meat advocacy to "kick them out" serves no purpose other than a domestic and political one. It is not realpolitik -- it is dumb diplomacy. Sending over-heated messages of disapproval does nothing to influence the Russians.

As for your disdain for Soros linked groups, you freely cite much more biased right wing sources without irony. Spare us the clutched-pearls routine about groups with an agenda.

... and damn near impossible" - and I'd lean toward the latter - to boot Russia out of the G8, then it isn't very effective leverage to influence Russian (foreign, much less domestic) policy, is it?

So either it's not Realpolitik that's driving McCain's rumblings along these lines, or it is - and he's just not very good at it.

Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.

barely industrialized? Russia has a GDP comparable to Great Britain or France - about $2 trillion. They'll also be providing the heavy lift capability for our space program starting in a few years, since we won't be able to. Economically and technologically, they're a lot more formidable than you seem to think.

Politically, I don't agree with a lot of what Putin has done, but to say they're not a free country is exaggeration. The Russian people sure seem to approve of the job he is doing, so I'm not sure what country you're comparing them to. They're certainly freer than Belarus, Saudi Arabia or China to name just a few.

I'll make the same point I've made before - trying to kick them out of the G8 for no reason other than the fact that we disagree with some of their policies is a stupid shortsighted idea. Now if you were trying to use that as leverage to get something out of them, that would be worth discussing. Otherwise, it just sounds like a temper tantrum - like a lot of McCain's proposals.

I blame it all on the Internet

Russia was not an emergent democracy when it joined the G8. That is simply crazy talk. Russia joined the G8 in 1997, several years after Yeltsin ordered the attack on the Russian parliament. It was also a couple of years after the indiscriminate destruction by aerial bombing of Grozny. The idea that Russia is only just now displaying dictatorial behaviour is total nonsense.

Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just

Russia seems to be going down the path of a cold war all on their own

That is not how it seems to me. Here is a story on Secretary of State James A. Baker III's pledge not to expand NATO eastward to Gorbachev. This was back in 1990.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E3D8113BF936A15756C0A...
NATO was expanded under Clinton and may be expanded again.

Back in 2001 the USA unilaterally withdraws from an anti-ballistic treaty with Russia, after 30 years.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/rec.bush.abm/

These days of course the US is putting anti-ballistic missile radars in Russia's neighbours to supposedly to counter some dubious threat from Iran.

I don't know if Russia is setting out on a path of a new cold war, but if they were, they are not doing it alone.

Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just

I wouldn't worry too much about a new Cold War with Russia. They're just resuming their old geopolitical position in the world, a role we haven't seen in a while, going back to the days of Rus, with all roads leading to Moscow.

Randy Scheunemann is trouble. He's a horrible continuance of everything the Republicans should be rejecting this time around. He's got McCain's ear. He's also the engineer of McCain's 2000 defeat.

The USSR was always its own worst enemy. In a sense, this new Russia is something it should and could have always been. Yes it's crude and jingoistic, but in our heyday we weren't much different. Russia's got to find its own place in the world, and it's come to the game almost a century late.

This may be apocryphal, but I am given to understand when Putin came to power, he was seriously annoyed to discover the ongoing Bushehr reactor complex, which had been built for cash by some of Yeltsin's cronies. Grudgingly, he agreed Iran could have the reactors, but Russia would fuel them.

Now Russia is giving Iran the stink eye. Iran is viewed as something of a rival in the area, and the last thing Russia needs right now is another casus belli. Russia's squeezing the rest of Europe for cash in exchange for natural gas, they like stability. Nobody in Russia wants yet another powerful nuclear entity on their borders.

Russia is pragmatic enough to fulfill its end of non-proliferation treaties, and they've got the good sense to dismantle the vast majority of its own nuclear weapons stockpile. Many US reactors are now fueled with the stuff once found atop the USSR's ballistic missiles.

The erstwhile Warsaw Pact countries will soon host NATO missile defense systems. Pull the cord taut on your globe, inspect the flight path from Iran to Europe, that's where to put such a defense system. That scares Russia. Russian have always had a strong paranoid streak, they might entertain fantasies that we're trying to bottle them up. Maybe one of our negotiators ought to bring a string and a globe to the next round of negotiations: maybe we could get Russia to build that ABM system itself.

Russia's got a huge inferiority complex. Even in the time of the tsars, they always had two faces. There's St. Petersburg, an idyllic European-style city built on a swamp, atop the bones of tens of thousands of slave laborers. Then there's the often-burned Moscow, the old confluence of real power.

Russia demands our constant attention, but they're far more useful to American interests if we allay their intrinsic fears. The worst-kept secret of the Cold War was this: the USSR was always more afraid of us than we were of them. When you consider our own fears during those grim decades, that's really saying something.

Russia is not the enemy, okay, it's not our good buddy, but the world doesn't neatly divide in to friends and enemies. Countries don't have friends anyway, and if we looked at Russia as a fellow-traveler on the road, one who exhibited faith in the nuclear disarmament treaties we offered, I believe we can trust them to be part of a worldwide solidarity against Iran's schemes. We really don't have a choice.

How Russia responds will depend upon the severity of the poke and kicking them out of the G8 would seem to demand a rather vigorous response from Moscow.

Russia (IMHO) would want it both ways. It wants an Iranian nuclear program that proceed slowly. Too slowly to risk Tehran actually getting a bomb but not too slowly to not twist Western knickers.

But if the next Administration starts a jihad of sorts against Russia their reaction could be unpredictable. And that would be bad, on many, many levels.

. . . and it looks as though they’ll punish the monkey and let the organ grinder go . . .