You probably could get away with removing "that of" and the sentence would probably be understood in the same way, but technically, it would have a different meaning. In this sentence, the word "that" means "the position": ...comparing the position of a nation with the position of a private business enterprise. If you remove "that of," you would be comparing the position of a nation with a private business - not with the position of a private business. As I said, in this sentence, the reader could likely understand that you're not comparing a position of a country with a business (whatever that would mean), but a position of one thing with a position of another. In other cases, it won't always be so obvious to the reader what you mean.
