Often buried under the more sexy foreign policy issues such as terrorism, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, and imported steroids for baseball players, U.S. politicians only rarely speak up about what they believe should be done vis-à-vis Russia. Now, probably thanks to TIME Magazine's selection of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year, the Kremlin problem is finally getting its due among the field of candidates for the U.S. presidency.
The sudden realization of some of these politicians that there could be some good political mileage to be had by squawking on about Russia has not always produced fruitful proposals or new ideas. Nevertheless, today the Council on Foreign Relations has provided a helpful rundown of each candidate's foreign policy position on Russia. Russia policy was stated as "unknown" for candidates Fred Thompson and Tom Tancredo.
Tancredo and Thompson are not at all in the same category, as a review of the material will show.
I've reorganized the list and ranked the candidates according to their willingness to confront Russia's neo-Soviet aggression here:
http://publiuspundit.com/articles/2007/12/russia_in_the_presidential_cam.php
Readers are invited to offer comments as to how the list might be revised.
I'm not sure it's accurate to say that the Kremlin is "getting its due." That would only be the case if Russia actually becomes an active part of the campaign discussion, which it certainly isn't now, and Time magazine certainly doesn't have the power to make it so -- nor was their POTY issue at all structured so as to encourage this.