Trump has mused about allowing the spread of nukes, not honoring U.S. commitments to NATO, siding with Russia and Iran in the Syria conflict, and repeatedly disputed U.S. intelligence agencies that the attacks are originating from Russia based on no evidence whatsover (remember the reference to the 300 pound hacker?)
Also, as noted in the story below, Russia is not exactly shy about trying to influence elections in foreign countries. So, this is not about starting a new cold war, but it is about safeguarding the integrity of hour political system, which Trump is engaging in a mission to undermine with Russian help.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/seven-reasons-the-new-russian-hack-announcement-is-a-big-deal-214330
2. Russia is on a mission. Why is Russia doing this? Well, yes, it is to “interfere with the U.S. election process,” but there is also a far broader goal. The point, as many Russia watchers have pointed out, is to sow chaos and undermine Americans’ trust in their system of governance and its institutions.
The point is also to help Trump win the election. Trump has not only spoken warmly about Putin, he has also spoken extensively about ushering in a new era of isolationism, which would be right up Putin’s alley. It would allow Russia to take up even more room on the world stage, filling up the space left by a reluctant U.S. When the Obama administration hesitated to get more involved in Syria, for example, Russia immediately stepped into the void, not just militarily. It has become the key broker of the conflict, rather than the U.S. or regional powers like Turkey and Iran. Putin’s goal has always been to undo the 1990s when Russia was freshly defeated in the Cold War, becoming an ignored and marginal player in world affairs. He has steadily clawed back Russia’s geopolitical might and relevance, saying he was “raising Russia up off its knees.” So why not support a candidate who says he is ready to cede influence and accord Putin the respect he craves? And why not support a candidate whose very candidacy wreaks havoc on Putin’s greatest enemy from within? Why do the work yourself when you can have Trump do it for you?
3. We've seen this pattern developing for years. Back in 2014, Maxim Trudolyubov, a prominent Russian columnist, wrote an op-ed in the Times in which he argued that the asymmetrical warfare we were witnessing in Ukraine, and the systematic campaign of disinformation targeting Europe, were simply Putin taking his domestic tactics international. He was absolutely right.
There are no better election-rigging artisans than the Russians. Ever since Putin came to power in 2000, his henchmen have developed all kinds of precise ways to engineer their elections: tampering with voter rolls, fooling around with the analogues of absentee and early ballots, and manipulating the informational space around the election, so that even if the elections weren’t rigged, and voters weren’t bused around different polling stations to vote several times (the notorious so-called carousel), the election would come out in the Kremlin’s favor.
This meant disqualifying opposition candidates on technicalities and simply blacklisting them from national TV—still Russians’ main source of news—so that they had no brand recognition whatsoever. It also meant dirtying their reputations by concocting criminal cases against them so they’d be legally barred from running for office, or entrapping them with potentially incriminating information—like using a prostitute to lure them into a bugged apartment for a romp, and then dumping the video in the lead-up to an election. One helpful consequence is that all of this makes the opposition squabble with itself, focusing its energies on blaming one another and distracting them from their real goal of chipping away at Putin’s political monopoly. Sound familiar?
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