Stop Trading With Dictatorships

In November 2025, Estonia sent a delegation to Kazakhstan led by President Alar Karis. My conclusion is simple and unapologetic: doing business with dictatorships is not “pragmatism.” It is a choice to strengthen systems of repression, often while creating security and compliance risks for ourselves.

Kazakhstan is a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy. When a liberal democracy treats such a regime as a normal, reputable partner, especially through high-profile delegations and “headline partnerships”. It does more than sign papers. It lends legitimacy, money, and access.

This is why I argue for more than “caution” or “better transparency.” I argue that responsible states should actively restrict trade and investment flows that enrich dictatorships, including Kazakhstan, rather than promote them.

1) Why “just do business carefully” fails in a dictatorship

A common response is: “Relax, trade can be legal, and we can manage the risk with compliance.”

That logic may work when counterpart institutions can be trusted to produce truth: independent courts, a free press, real regulatory enforcement, real consequences for corruption, and an investigatory environment where wrongdoing can be exposed.

A dictatorship does not work like that.

In a dictatorship, paperwork can become theater. You can get whatever certificates you want, stamped, signed, and useless as proof of reality. If the regime controls enforcement and information, the system is designed to protect insiders and keep inconvenient facts from becoming actionable.

So this is not merely a technical dispute about documentation standards. It is an institutional reality: when you trade with a dictatorship, you are building economic relationships that depend on trusting an untrustworthy system.

2) Why the focus on bulk commodities and transit is especially dangerous

The public emphasis around the Kazakhstan engagement highlighted sectors like oil, grain, and fertilizers, and the logistics that moves them.

Yes, Kazakhstan can export its own commodities legitimately. That is not the point. The point is that bulk commodities and transit are structurally well-suited to:

• mixed-origin supply chains,
• relabeling and intermediaries,
• opaque routing through ports, free zones, and transit nodes,
• large volume flows where verification is difficult at scale.

When you open or celebrate these lanes, you don’t need to prove that every shipment is illicit to see the risk. You only need to recognize the incentives: if someone wanted plausible deniability in a sanctions-heavy world, this is what it would look like.

Even if only a minority of actors attempt to exploit loopholes, the reputational and strategic cost lands on Estonia as an EU border state.

3) The key issue isn’t “Kazakhstan exports X”, it’s what’s missing: honest governance

Supporters of deeper engagement often argue: “Fine, then require transparency.”

But this is exactly where the debate becomes dishonest. In a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy, “more transparency” is often not a solution; it is a comforting illusion. What would actually be required for meaningful trust is:

• an independent and competent police and judiciary,
• genuinely enforceable anti-corruption mechanisms,
• independent media capable of investigation without fear,
• rule-of-law institutions that do not serve the regime.

That is not a small missing ingredient. It is the entire foundation. And it is precisely what a dictatorship cannot supply without ceasing to be a dictatorship.

So the right conclusion is not “ask for better documents.” The right conclusion is: do not build significant economic dependence on regimes where truth is politically managed.

4) Wood/plywood proposals would import enforcement risk into the EU itself

Among the most troubling ideas discussed publicly was inviting Kazakhstan-linked investment in plywood/wood-related production in Estonia.

Wood supply chains are widely recognized as a high-risk domain for origin fraud and laundering through intermediaries. Moving production or processing “into Estonia” does not magically clean the upstream chain. It can do the opposite: it moves the risk inside the EU, where:

• Estonian institutions bear the enforcement burden,
• Estonia bears the reputational damage if abuses are discovered,
• and the laundering mechanism, if it exists, becomes harder to unwind because it is now embedded domestically.

A responsible state should not import known high-risk supply-chain problems into its own jurisdiction while claiming this is normal investment policy.

5) This is also about Estonia’s credibility as a frontline state

Estonia’s security is not only military. It is also political: credibility with allies, consistency in values, and resilience against hostile narratives.

High-profile “business as usual” engagement with a dictatorship, especially in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, creates vulnerabilities:

• it invites accusations of hypocrisy (“rules for others, money for us”),
• it offers propaganda material (“even the frontline states profit”),
• it undermines Estonia’s moral authority when demanding discipline from others,
• and it increases the surface area for future scandal, coercion, and reputational attack.

If there has been internal diplomatic criticism about how such visits were messaged and perceived, that should be taken as a warning sign, not dismissed as a minor PR dispute. In a war-era Europe, optics are not superficial; they shape trust.

Conclusion: Estonia should disengage, and restrict, not promote

I am not arguing “we can prove every future shipment is illicit.” I am arguing something more fundamental:

Even “legal” business with a dictatorship strengthens the dictatorship. It generates revenue, legitimacy, and endurance for a regime that traps its own population in a closed political system. In that sense, “safe industries” are not morally neutral. They are still profit streams for repression.

That is why I advocate active restriction, not polite caution.

What restriction should mean in practice (policy direction, not slogans)

If Estonia is serious about being a liberal democracy and a frontline supporter of Ukraine, it should move from trade promotion to trade constraint with dictatorships, including Kazakhstan, by:

1. Ending state-led trade promotion with such regimes: no celebratory delegations, no partnership branding, no invitations framed as strategic economic cooperation.
2. Additional scrutiny of high-risk categories and structures (especially where origin opacity is inherent): bulk commodities/transit arrangements and wood-related investment structures should face prohibitions or stringent limitations rather than facilitation, from any source or destination.
3. Tightening investment restrictions and beneficial-ownership rules within EU to prevent regime-linked capital from embedding itself inside Estonia/EU.
4. Designing policy around institutional reality: if verification ultimately depends on the dictatorship’s honesty, treat that as non-verifiable and therefore non-acceptable.
5. Choosing people-centered engagement instead of regime-enriching engagement: support civil society, education pathways, and human rights, while restricting the regime’s access to respectable EU economic endpoints.

This is not “extremism.” It is moral and strategic hygiene.

The honest question is not whether a few actors can profit. The honest question is: who pays when the bill arrives, in reputational damage, weakened deterrence, and a dirtier sanctions environment?

A liberal democracy should not help dictatorships earn money and legitimacy. It should do the opposite: constrain them, isolate them economically where it matters, and reserve cooperation for other liberal democracies, not regimes.