Just throwing the question out there. I know of a few precedents of countries being banned from tournaments for political reasons: Spain WC 1938, Germany WC 1950, and more recently, Yugoslavia at the 1992 Euros. (Denmark took their place and won the trophy). Also, in the event that Russia does get kicked out, who would replace them? I assume it would be the next team in line in their qualifying group, which would be Israel. Talk about trading one controversial situation for another!
As if for whatever reason Russia gets banned from the WC, it wouldn't be over an issue involving only Uefa, but an issue that involves the whole world. So if FIFA should replace them by someone else, they can perfectly replace them with a team from any Confederation among its associated members. In the past when a ban took place with so short time for the WC to begin, the WC would continue exactly as it was (with no replacement team in it), or found a replacement team, among the teams from the same Confederation where the WC was going to take place. As the WC takes place in a Conmebol member nation, maybe another Conmebol team can take their place, which would be great as in group H (where Russia actually is), it happens to be one of the 2 groups with no Conmebol teams in it, so it is perfectly feasible to happen. In this case, Venezuela (whom ended 6th in Conmebol qualifiers), could take their respective place in the WC.
It's a very serious situation over there with Russia and the Ukraine. China and Japan are on the verge of war as well over the Senkaku Islands as well... It is an interesting decision facing FIFA concerning this affair. If they do go ahead and romove Russia and give it to Israel, it would ironically go to a nation with many of it's own expats.
USA was not kicked out for invading and killing thousands of innocent Iraquis and robbbing the country of their oil why Russia is going to be kicked out for sending a few peace keeping troops to Ukraine. []__[]
No. If we start down that road no country would be allowed to compete, with the possible exception of Luxemburg, Lichtenstein, the Faroer and Easter Island. Do not mix sport and politics.
On regards to Easter Island, it is an integral part of Chile, and has no FIFA recognition as being an independent member. We actually don't have any mayor conflicts with the Rapa-Nui's (naturals of Easter Island), whom consider themselves as chileans, with the same privileges as every other chilean has. x 2 over the last sentence of your post, which I underlined.
I didn't know that about Easter Island. I was just listing some territories off the top of my head that are not part of some sort of political conflict... ;-)