Originally Posted by
carleton
Allowing athletes to compete as neutrals defeats the premise of athletes being accountable to their country, and a country being accountable to its athletes. The athletes and the federation are the same entity. Without a federation, the athletes can't compete. Without athletes, there is no federation.
This is no deterrent to the corruption. It just puts it on hold for 4 years. In the meantime it allows the state to hone it's doping program on athletes who aren't allowed to compete.
In 5 years it will be business as usual for them.
You stop this by making it so the clean athletes see it as too risky to compete for dirty federations. Barr them as well and they will seek other federations to compete for.