McCain has won praise from the media for all of his bluster and tough talk on Russia. These are the folks he refers to as "my base" and that have cozied up with the Senator for bbq at his private residence, so it's not surprising that they're eating up neocon John's act.
http://www.cnn.com/...
However, people that are looking objectively at the Georgia conflict are reaching a different conclusion. Had we pursued the policies recommended by McCain in the past years regarding Russia, we would have forfeited most of the means we currently have at our disposal to put pressure on them.
Consider McCain's recommendation to kick Russia out of the G8. . . months ago. . . before the conflict in Georgia:
http://www.newsweek.com/...
The plan was received so poorly, even in Republican leaning foreign policy circles, that the McCain campaign had to quickly back off from the Senator's extremely poor judgment, flip-flopping on the suggestion.
Now, if Russia doesn't honor its agreement to withdraw from Georgia and refuses to negotiate a neutral international peacekeeping force in the breakaway regions, the kind of sticks that we have at our disposal are things like removal from the G8, from consideration for WTO membership, etc. But these are all things that McCain would have done as idle provocations out of his longing for a renewal of the Cold War. Timing is everything. Threatening removal from the G8 is an effective way to pressure Russia in response to aggression, but McCain's suggestion that we kick them out without any reason or provocation makes little sense. It would have left us with one fewer tool in responding to a crisis such as this.
McCain's Russia policy is the exact opposite of Teddy Roosevelt's sage advise. We don't need a temperamental hothead who thinks "strong foreign policy" means always taking the most provocative and hawkish line. . . even if his friends in the M(cC)ain Stream Media eat it up like good bbq.