by Amna El Tawil

Let’s face it, Barack Obama didn’t want Donald Trump to win the election this year. He made fun of him on a number of occasions with his Hollywood buddies, tried to discredit the incoming president whenever he could, and never tried to hide the fact he simply hates the guy. Since it’s impossible to blame Hillary Clinton for her own loss, like it’s illegal or something, her supporters including Obama decided to blame it all on Russia. It became fashionable nowadays. That’s why they accused Russian hackers of performing cyber attacks and changing the outcome of elections. They went so far to suggest that Putin himself ordered it all.



The NBC News found that Obama practically threatened with armed conflict when he spoke to the president of Russia regarding the attacks. With determination to end Russian interference in the course of the presidential campaign, at least one of Obama’s senior advisers urged him to make the threat to Putin: “Mess with the vote and we will consider it an act of war.”





That said, Obama decided not to go through with that when he spoke to Putin about the hacking during a September meeting at the G-20 summit in China. He didn’t want to worsen the relationship between the two countries that was far from ideal. Instead, Obama used less specific language to warn Russian president of potential consequences that could occur if Russia started hacking emails again. It’s safe to say that Putin probably thought Obama was very funny and didn’t think of him seriously, so the release of hacked Democratic emails continued.



Just one month later, the United States used the latest incarnation of an old Cold War communications system — the so-called “Red Phone” that connects Moscow to Washington. The primary goal of this act was to, once again, warn Putin of consequences that could occur if Russia intervened in election results as well. But, this time, Obama didn’t refrain from mentioning “armed conflict”.



Part of a message sent over the Red Phone on October 31, said: “International law, including the law of armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace. We will hold Russia to those standards.”



The Obama administration had never used the Red Phone before which only shows how serious the situation had become.



The White House official has confirmed that Red Phone was, indeed, used but declined to provide any detail about it with words: “This action was part of our ongoing, rigorous efforts to press the Russian government to halt the actions of those responsible for these cyber attacks.”



