WASHINGTON, April 1, 2008 (AFP) - A cloud of Cold War-style rhetoric is rising over the 2008 White House race, with Russia, and President Vladimir Putin reprising the Soviet Union's former role as an easy election-year target.

Presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain is carving out the toughest line, recalling some of the more bombastic rhetoric of his hero, ex-president Ronald Reagan, who once branded the Soviet Union an evil empire.

While offering an olive branch to European allies estranged from the current administration, McCain is playing it tough with the Kremlin, before President George W. Bush meets Putin by the Black Sea this weekend.

In the most important foreign policy speech of his campaign yet, McCain last week lambasted a 'revanchist Russia' which he said threatened its neighbors.

'Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom,' McCain said.

He also called for Russia, which he has previously accused of stamping on economic and political freedoms, to be kicked out of the prestigious Group of Eight club of industrialized nations.

It is a truism of US elections, that a candidate's campaign trail rhetoric does not always translate into action should they be elected.

China is a frequent campaign trail whipping boy, but has not seen its ties to the United States damaged: Bill Clinton railed against Beijing in 1992, then concluded the most sweeping Sino-US trade deal in history.

And despite Reagan's belligerent statements, he sat down repeatedly with ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

But should he win the White House, McCain's comments would seem to preface a more distant relationship with Moscow than the one Bush cultivated with Putin.

'Russia is a very easy target from the standpoint of any presidential candidate,' said Justin Logan, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute think-tank in Washington.

But Logan wondered whether antagonising Russia could backfire for the United States, as Moscow rebuilds its military and economic might and trades on its diplomatic weight as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

'What does McCain think we will obtain by bouncing Russia from the G8?' Logan asked.

McCain's comments predate his current campaign.

In 2006, he called on G8 leaders to boycott the summit being held that year in St Petersburg, saying Russia was neither a democracy nor a leading economy.

And he is not the only presidential hopeful to slap Russia, especially as Washington-Moscow tensions flare over the expansion of NATO.

Democrat Hillary Clinton mocked both Putin, and Bush's famous 2001 comment that he had looked into his opposite number's eyes and got 'a sense of his soul.'

'This is the president that looked into the soul of Putin, I could have told him, he was a KGB agent, by definition he doesn't have a soul, I mean this is a waste of time, right, this is nonsense.,' she said in New Hampshire in January.

Bush's comment also draws wry comments from McCain.

'I looked into Putin's eyes, and I saw three things, a 'K' a 'G' and a 'B,'' McCain sometimes says, drawing guffaws from his audiences.

During a Democratic debate in February, Clinton also disdainfully referred to the next Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, after initially struggling to pronounce his name.

'He is someone who is obviously being installed by Putin, who Putin can control, who has very little independence, the best we know,'

'This is a clever but transparent way for Putin to hold on to power, and it raises serious issues about how we're going to deal with Russia going forward,' she said.

Despite that jab, Clinton favors diplomacy with Russia to defuse tensions and cut nuclear stockpiles.

Clinton's Democratic rival Barack Obama has adopted a lower profile on Russia policy, though told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last year that 'Russia is neither our enemy nor close ally right now.'

He added that the United States should not shy away form pushing for more democracy, transparency, and accountability there.

In 2007, the Illinois senator travelled to Russia with veteran Republican arms control expert Senator Richard Lugar, and framed a law to help cut back nuclear stockpiles in Russia.