Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko (left) meets Russian president Vladimir Putin
© IB Times
EU has lifted its 12-year sanctions on Russia's neighbor Belarus. Belarus then must have done something pretty extraordinary to warrant the change of such a long-standing policy, right? EU itself said so, it explained its decision by giving some nonsense about Lukashenko now playing a 'constructive role in the region' and organizing elections 'free of violence'.

In fact that is all a bunch of baloney. Belarus and Lukashenko are exactly as they always were. The real tectonic shift that has caused this EU reversal is the new Cold War between Brussels and Moscow.

Since EuroMaidan in Kiev and the ejection of Russia from G8 in 2014 EU and Russia are openly in a geopolitical competition. In this environment the EU Europeans - particularly the Poles and the Lithuanians - are inclined to test if they can temp Lukashenko away from Moscow and at least partly estrange Belarus from Russia.

They will certainly discover that they can not - for the simple reason that Lukashenko knows that even if the EU accepts him as partner it will remain perfectly willing to throw him under the bus at the first sign of pro-western opposition protest, much like it had Yanukovich in 2013 in Ukraine.

The massive falling out between EU and Russia is important in lifting Belarus sanctions in one other respect. With Putin now officially the new Hitler Western Europe can fully satisfy its deeply ingrained need to stand in judgement of Europe's retrograde east by satanizing Russia. With abundance of material to be found in Putler's Russia standing in judgement of Belarus is superfluous and puts Lukashenko off the hook.

Through the 1990s the West held up the Yugoslav leader Sloban Milošević as the embodiment of eastern revolt against civilization. However, Milošević was deposed in 2000, robbing the West of an official Eastern European cartoon villain. A few years later Lukashenko was then promoted to "Europe's last dictator" and Belarus to an "outpost of tyranny".

At the time the EU and the West may have chosen to instead villify Putin but Russia relations were too important to sacrifice in full. Thus Lukashenko as the Slavic dictator served as a nice stand in for Putin, and the Russian-speaking and Moscow-leaning Belarus for Russia.

However in 2016, the EU and the West are squared against the real McCoy who is heading the largest and eastern-most of all the Slavic and Eastern European countries - thus standing in judgement of obscure Belarus has lost much of its emotional utility and so policy towards Minsk can again be real-politik based.

Essentially Russia and Belarus have switched roles. As Russia becomes the country EU can detest openly, Belarus can be in turn engaged in a way that puts geopolitics before Western European emotional satisfaction.