Íslenska leiðin - 01.10.2002, Page 28

The European Empire and Russia:
Solving the'Kaliningrad Puzzle'?
In recent years, scholarship on the European Union (EU) has evolved
beyond our conventional understandings of the Union. Perhaps
the most unconventional efforts to grasp the Union's ambiguous
character have been tabled by a few well-known scholars who have
started to think of the EU as an empire.
These scholars include for example Ole Wæver (1997) and Jan
Zielonka (2001).They have suggested in a somewhat metaphorical
manner that by thinking of the EU as an empire we can understand
better the evolvement of its borders and external relations,especially
in the context of enlargement. The 'empire Europe' metaphor also
gets us around the notorious problem of whether to treat the EU as a
modern state in the making. In other words, we avoid the problem of
determining whether the EU has already acquired enough attributes
of modern statehood from the member-states. And notably, this
metaphor does not require us to expect similar violent behaviour
from the Union in keeping its empire together as was characteristic
of imperial behaviour in the past.This is due to the fact that the EU
possesses mainly other policy instruments than military force.Thus,
treating the EU as an empire does not necessarily refer to its use of
power politics, but rather to its geopolitical form.
Empires differ fundamentally from modern states. In the geopolitical
sense, modern states are characterised by the prevalence of similar
policy practices throughout a given, strictly demarcated and
guarded territory. In other words, modern states are 'containers' of
certain policies. By contrast, empires are characterised by a strong
centre surrounded by several concentric circles. When we move
from the centre towards the outer circles, policy practices become
less consistent with those prevailing in the centre. This means that
empires do not have any strictly demarcated nor guarded territory.
Nor do they function as 'containers' of policies. The power of the
centre just gradually fades away towards the outer circles, until we
suddenly find ourselves in the transition zone where the outer circles
of one empire are confronted by the outer circles of another.
The'empire Europe'metaphor helps us to understand the problems
faced by Russia and its Kaliningrad region that have surfaced recently
in the context of EU enlargement. Kaliningrad's problems have
become very topical in EU-Russian relations on the whole, as Russia
has, since the turn of the millennium, framed Kaliningrad as a 'pilot
region' in EU-Russian relations. Kaliningrad, or the former German
Königsberg that Russia obtained as a war conquest in World War II,
has become a much bigger case than the 15,100 square kilometres
of relatively resource-poor territory that it covers between the EU
accession states Lithuania and Poland. Because it is landlocked from
mainland Russia by future Union territory, its significance is far higher
than we might thinkat first (Figure 1).
At the centre of the 'empire Europe', which is not necessarily quite
neatly defined geographically, we find well-integrated member-
states such as Finland that participate in practically all sectors of EU
policies.Atthe next circle,there are member-states such as Denmark
that have abstained for example from the monetary union and EU-
wide police co-operation. This is followed by a circle of accession
countries such as Lithuania and Poland that are not yet allowed
to participate in joint policies in many other sectors except border
control, where they face strong pressure from the Union to join the
Schengen regime and tighten the control over their borders with
Pami Aalto
Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Relations,
University of Tampere, Finland (pami.aalto@uta.fi)
Kaliningrad. Poland has already complied and Lithuania will do so
around 2004, the planned time of its accession. Finally, there is the
circle of non-applicant countries that are trying to find compensation
for the negative consequences of remaining outside the Union.The
so-called 'Kaliningrad puzzle' (Joenniemi et al. 2000) arises from
the peculiarity that the region is located in-between the third and
fourth circles. In some sense, it is neither inside nor outside the future
Union.
Inside/Outside Approaches
The import of the 'empire Europe' metaphor is that it helps us to
understand better puzzles like Kaliningrad, which do not fit easily
with our modern understandings of political space and its strict
division into inside and outside spaces that is so characteristic of
modern states. This is why the 'empire Europe' metaphor can be
proposed as a useful thinking exercise for the Union, member-states,
accession countries and non-applicants alike. At present,their mutual
debate on Kaliningrad is locked in the somewhat unnecessary
division into the 'outside' approach as manifested in the Schengen
border practices, and the'inside'approach as manifested in the EU's
Northern Dimension (ND) initiative.
The outside approach is for separating Kaliningrad from future EU
space. Underlying this approach are the various'soft security'threats
associated with Kaliningrad, as witnessed for example in the External
Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten's famous comment of the region
as a 'hell-hole enclave' within the future Union. HIV, tuberculosis,
crime, black economy, environmental waste piled during the decades
of militarised Soviet economy, and the sorry state of the sunken
submarines and other naval vessels in the port of Baltiisk, can be
mentioned for starters. Add the threats of a potential army of job-
seekers from among Kaliningrad's population of about one million,
most of whom are educated for the needs of Soviet military (and
some for KGB),and very soon it becomes better comprehensible why
the Commission rejected in Summer 2002 all calls to compromise the
Schengen principles in Kaliningrad's case. Although the Lithuanian
PM Algirdas Brazauskas said Lithuania is willing to preserve a visa-
free regime for Kaliningraders transiting to mainland Russia through
the country,the Commission asserted:'Both the EU and the candidate
countries firmly reject the Russian proposals for special "transit
corridors" It is a question of security and protection of EU borders'
(European Commission 2002; italics added).
The idea of Schengen borders promises full control over the flow
of people and goods to and from Kaliningrad by asking for a visa,
internationally accepted passport (which many Kaliningraders don't
have) and by establishing rigorous control and surveillance around
Kaliningrad's borders. The resulting inconveniences are many. They
are not limited to the EU's actual violation of Russian sovereignty,
but include several human rights and free movement of people type
of problems for the Kaliningraders: cost of visas; the fact that not
everyone in need will be granted a free or low-cost multiple entry visa;
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