Immanuel Kant is among the greatest of the modern philosophers. He is also perhaps the most famous son of Königsberg. Legend has it that Kant never ventured further than 40 miles from his home during his entire lifetime, disregarded music, had little esteem for women, and had few friends other than a couple of local Prussian officials. In other words, not a beer-and-skittles type, hail fellow well-met. He was such a creature of habit that people used to set their watches by him as he passed by their doors on his daily constitutional. Heinrich Heine made that quirk famous, and if one knows little else about the great philosopher, that Prussian narrow-minded regularity dominates.

Kant strolled to sit under his favourite tree, there to read. That was his favourite pastime, Rousseau and Hume the greatest influences on his thought. His very wide reading compensated for his lack of travel, and was the foundation for the school of thought that carries on his name. Kant's philosophy, although it appealed to "pure reason", allowed the heart to have its say in defining theoretical reason. Kantianism has been variously called the critical philosophy or transcendental idealism. Yet, there was little idealism in his dialectics on reason. He felt strongly that every man is to be regarded as an end in himself, voicing his version of the Rights of Man. Kant wrote: "there can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another."

From this evolved his famous kategorischer Imperativ, or the Categorical Imperative. This is Kant’s supreme absolute law of rational, self-determining beings. The final formulation of the Categorical Imperative is "act on maxims which can at the same time have for their object themselves as universal laws of nature."

Moving from philosophy to history, one wonders whether Immanuel would recognize his beloved Königsberg today. Looking at a map of the new Europe post May 1, the Kaliningrad enclave that the Soviets refused to return to either Poland or Lithuania - two countries with historic connections to the region - sticks out like a red thumb. Indeed, the region has been banged up by the great powers for centuries; the strategic significance of access to the natural ice-free deepwater Baltic harbour has influenced geopolitics.

Consider what took place after the First World War. East Prussia was separated from Germany after its defeat - ostensibly to weaken Germany, while also strengthening newly re-established Poland by providing Warsaw with access to the Baltic. This separation of Germans from Germany was a trump card played very skillfully by Adolf Hitler. By playing on patriotism Hitler was able to destroy the artificial international order created by the Treaty of Versailles.

The other megalomaniac tyrant of the 20th century also used Königsberg according to his own geopolitical views. Joseph Stalin evicted the Germans from East Prussia, named the region (and city) after a famous Bolshevik and began to build a Soviet stronghold. Again, the appeal of a year-round naval base on the Baltic decided events. Neighbouring Lithuania was forcibly annexed into the Soviet Union, Poland made into a Warsaw Pact country "aligned" with the Soviet Union - Kaliningrad was as secure as any Soviet holding.

Stalin would never have dreamed that a constituent part of Russia could one day be surrounded by other, free and democratic states. The experiments - for that is what they could in hindsight be seen as having been - of the isolation of East Prussia and establishment of Soviet Kaliningrad have lived out the geopolitic principles of their bellicose eras. The first experiment was one of outright punishment of the Germans. The second was no less than Stalinist hubris. Today's irony is that further experiments with the enclave are called for - in hopes that a better solution can be found.

Kaliningrad has been isolated in more ways than merely on the map since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Economically, the region is dominated by illegal cross-border trade, smuggling. It is no secret that Russia has little official control of the economy there. In effect the economy is controlled by a number of mafiya, Russian organized crime groups. The smuggling does not involve only the obvious sinful items - automobiles, alcohol, drugs and tobacco, but humans as well. Trafficking in children and women for the "sex trade" of Western Europe is almost impossible to halt. As a result, Kaliningrad has the highest AIDS rate of any region in Europe.

The lack of capital infusion by both the Soviets and the Russians into the region means that the present infrastructure is crumbling. Environmentally, the legacy of the Soviets is horrendous - no policies are in place that even come close to meeting internationally accepted standards. In many respects, it seems that ceding the region to, say, temporary UN provincial rule would answer many of these concerns.

However, there is the question of loss of face. Vladimir Putin's Chechnya fiasco already counteracts every allegation that he makes about human rights "violations" in the Baltics. Accepting the situation in Kaliningrad as being perilous is thus not in Putin's interest. Further, no compromise on the issue of the enclave's sovereignty can even be considered. To "lose" Kaliningrad is a major political risk.

The EU that surrounds Kaliningrad is an economic power. All the borders are NATO borders. The question of Kaliningrad's legal identity should then be answered in economic terms. It is in the EU's interests to see proper customs regulations in place. As Russia has bowed to the inevitable over the recent months and indicated a willingness to follow, if not adopt many EU conventions, then Kaliningrad would be a logical starting place as a testing-ground. If the EU and Russia do intend to strengthen trade ties formally by convention, what better place to clean up?

The two experiments of the last century failed miserably. The third act in this play should be written and carried out in a modern spirit - the type of mutual beneficial compromise that is at the heart of the European Union's

Arvamus

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