The largest country on the planet has been accused of conducting the biggest sports doping scandal in decades, including rampant cheating at the most expensive Olympics ever.

At least three insiders who blew the whistle on it fled the country in fear. Two of its former anti-doping officials ended up dead in February, adding to the dread. And now the stakes have been raised to unprecedented proportions, all focused on one big question:

Should Russia be banned from the Olympics?

Many believe it should be after witnesses and reports detailed systematic cheating by the Russians with the help of Russian state security agents. The latest came Wednesday, when a new report from the World Anti-Doping Agency said armed Russian agents threatened doping control officers with expulsion from the country.

“If your country is this complicit in a comprehensive and extensive doping program, then the country has to pay the price,” former WADA president Dick Pound told USA TODAY Sports. “And there may be some collateral damage.”

But that’s still a tricky issue, one of many complications that could give pause to decision-makers weighing Russia’s punishment.

Is a blanket ban for one country fair if other countries clearly have their own doping issues but just haven’t been singled out like the Russians? Will the Russians retaliate in some way, as they often threaten to do when in conflict with the West? If not every athlete is guilty, is it fair to ban all of them?

“There’s no winning outcome here,” sports governance expert and University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s a smorgasbord of bad options. … People have to look back and say, `How did we let ourselves in the sporting world get to this point, where all we had were bad options?’.”

On Friday, track and field’s world governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, is scheduled to meet about whether to continue a suspension of the Russian team, banning it from the Olympics in Brazil in August. In July, another investigation is due to report findings about Russian doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia – which could prompt a larger ban.

A look at the stakes and the smorgasbord:

The case for restraint

Never before has a nation’s entire Olympic delegation in all sports been banned for doping, though some have been banned for other reasons, said David Wallechinsky, president of the International Society of Olympic Historians.

After the IAAF makes its decision on Russian track and field athletes, it’s not even clear how the International Olympic Committee would go about considering a larger Russian ban. Last month, IOC President Thomas Bach submitted an editorial to USA TODAY that said the IOC’s actions could include the exclusion of entire national federations under a “zero-tolerance” policy.

“This is a hypothetical scenario, but what we can tell you is that the IOC would always act on a case-by-case basis,” IOC spokesman Emmanuelle Moreau told USA TODAY Sports.

If it happened, it would set a drastic precedent. And that could be risky for other nations with their own abundant doping histories, including the United States, whose Olympic track team this year is expected to include two high-profile sprinters with previous doping bans: Tyson Gay and the twice-punished Justin Gatlin.

In Russia’s case, its doping issues came to light after Russian whistleblowers revealed their secrets to the media, triggering independent investigations commissioned by the WADA. There’s no telling how other nations might fare if they underwent the same heavy scrutiny.

“Allegations have been made about other countries,” Pielke said. “WADA and the IAAF in particular face the criticism that they’re just responding to the media rather than facing the issue head-on. If Russia is penalized in some way, they would be on solid ground to say, `Why not treat every sporting nation similarly with the same approach?’ And they’d be right.”

American cyclist Lance Armstrong made the same argument about himself after getting a lifetime ban by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. He believed he was unfairly singled out as a high-profile target during an era when doping was rampant in cycling. In 2012, the USADA said Armstrong’s cycling team “ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”

He and other riders still were punished according to the evidence as individuals and were not subject to a blanket ban that could have punished innocent riders. The USADA stripped him of all seven of his victories in the Tour de France, and the IOC took back the bronze medal he won at the 2000 Summer Olympics.

“When you have somebody like Lance Armstrong become one of the biggest cheaters as an American, the Russians are looking at us and say, ‘They’re doing it, too’,” former American swimming star Donna de Varona told USA TODAY Sports.

Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko suggested as much last month, when he told Russia’s news agency TASS lthat there “are enough violations of anti-doping round the world, and they can all be probed. We would like to see the United States probing its own national team. The atmosphere there is far from being cloudless.”

The case for banning Russia

The big difference between the Russian case and the Armstrong case is that Armstrong didn’t have the vast power and resources of his nation’s government helping him use performance-enhancing drugs and then cover it all up. He didn’t have FBI and CIA agents switching urine samples to avoid getting caught using banned substances, as has been alleged of Russian state security at the Sochi Olympics.

That’s what takes this case to a whole other level of consideration – state sponsorship. While U.S. and other governments arguably could be accused of negligence with doping, the allegations in the Russian case point to actual government malfeasance.

If the evidence supports this, anything less than a ban could strike a blow to the trust that athletes and consumers have in the Olympics, Pound said. Last year, Pound presided over an investigation that concluded that the Russian state directly interfered with, and intimidated, operations in a Moscow drug-testing lab – part of a broad doping conspiracy that implicated coaches, athletes and lab personnel in Russian track and field.

Compromising with Russia in the face of more evidence would send a message that “just because it’s Russia and because it’s big and powerful and truculent, it can ignore the rules and pay no price for state involvement in doping activities,” said Pound, a former IOC vice president. “I suspect that would do quite a lot of damage to the Olympic brand and track and field brand.”

The new WADA report on Wednesday said Russian security staff created significant delays for doping control officers entering venues for race walking and wrestling. It said Russian athletes evaded and tampered with drug testing, including one athlete who unsuccessfully tried to pass a test by inserting a container inside her body, presumably containing clean urine.

Such a culture draws comparisons to Russia’s former Soviet Union ally, East Germany, whose epic state-sponsored doping program involved thousands of athletes and forced many of them to start using steroids as children.

It worked. East Germany won 40 gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics, second only to the Soviet Union. It also allegedly worked in 2014 for the Russians, who ranked first with 13 gold medals and 33 overall at Sochi.

In East Germany’s case, the sheer scale of its program wasn’t known to the outside world until after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

In Russia’s case, the IOC would be getting a chance to end such a culture, setting a precedent for any government motivated to cheat in order to win medals.

“If it’s the whole organization that’s doing the cheating – and that doesn’t necessarily mean every member – but if it’s state-sanctioned and it’s the whole organization, the only way to stop that is to have a sanction against the whole organization,” said Sarah Konrad, a member of the U.S. team at the 2006 Winter Olympics and chair of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s athletic advisory council. “I feel really bad saying that in that there probably are some clean athletes in Russia, but they’re going to suffer from it.”

Clean athletes and selective prosecution

Any clean athletes would be collateral damage in a Russian ban.

“But at a certain point everybody is complicit,” Pound said.

Vitaly Stepanov, a Russian whistleblower and former Russian Anti-Doping Agency employee, said Russian athletes are vested in the system and help support it whether they doped or not. He said they get pensions and jobs with the police and state security agency – valuable perks they’d risk losing by speaking out.

“Obviously, athletes understand this,” Stepanov told USA TODAY Sports. “Even if there are clean ones, which I obviously doubt how many really clean athletes there are in Russian athletics, they don’t speak up.”

As for treating the Russians unfairly by singling them out, Pound says that’s an old argument only made by the guilty.

“It’s a little bit like the guy who’s pulled over on the interstate by the police for going over the (speed) limit, and he says, `Officer why are you arresting me? There are all kinds of people out here going faster than I am’,” Pound said. “That may be true, but I got you for going over the limit and you’re going to get a ticket.”

A ban is still a difficult proposition even if the evidence supports it. Other complicating factors could enter the equation, too, even if they shouldn’t. One is politics. Another is fear of retaliation.

Russia has flexed power by threatening retaliation in conflicts over nuclear arms, missile shields and sanctions for annexing Crimea. In 1984, the Russians boycotted the Olympics in Los Angeles, getting even with the U.S-led. boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow.

Fearing Russia

Russia has denied claims of a state-sponsored doping. How will the Russians react this time if they believe they’ve been treated unfairly?

It’s the largest country in the world and its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, likes to project influence on the international stage. He has been a big supporter of the Olympics, having led his country to invest a record $51 billion in the Sochi Games. Russia also hosts soccer’s World Cup in 2018 and could make things uncomfortable for its guests.

If Russian track and field athletes are banned, Wallechinsky, the historian, said Putin could get “fussy” and boycott the Olympics. “Then all of a sudden we’re back in a deal we don’t want to be in, particularly with them hosting the next World Cup,” he said.

Fear about Russia’s reaction already have led Russian whistleblowers to leave the country, including Stepanov and his wife, Yuliya, a former runner for the Russians. Vitaly Stepanov gave a detailed account of the alleged conspiracy in a 2014 German documentary, which sparked the investigation led by Pound. Likewise, Russian lab director Grigory Rodchenkov left Russia and spilled more details last month to The New York Times.

It’s not baseless paranoia. In February, two former senior officials with Russia’s anti-doping agency died within two weeks of each other – one from a heart attack at age 52 and another for causes unexplained, according to reports. The Sunday Times in Britain reported that one of them, Nikita Kamaev, planned to make doping revelations in a book before his unexpected death.

“I obviously would not want my wife or child to go back after disclosing what was really happening in Russia because, especially looking at Dr. Kamaev, it doesn’t look that she will be welcomed,” Stepanov said.

After the prospect of a ban from the Rio Games gained steam with the revelations from Rodchenkov, Russia reacted by softening its tone, with Putin saying he welcomed an investigation into Sochi. Russia even hired a public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, which has represented many big clients under siege, including the Washington Redskins in the controversy over their nickname.

It’s a strategic move to avoid a ban and emphasize reform. If a ban comes anyway, Russia could change back to a more combative posture. But Pound said any risk of angering Russia is probably exaggerated.

“We survived the absence of Russia and its allies in 1984,” Pound said. “Life as we know does not end, the same as it didn’t when the U.S. and all of its allies boycotted Moscow. They tend to be one-off things, and if you’re going to stand up for your principles, when necessary you have to say, `It doesn’t matter who you are.’ The rules don’t just apply to Sierra Leone. They apply to the big guys as well. The deterrent effect of dealing firmly with the big guys would be much greater than (punishing) Sierra Leone.”

Contributing: Rachel Axon

Follow sports reporter Brent Schrotenboer on Twitter @Schrotenboer. E-mail bschrotenb@usatoday.com