Yet again, the state arrogates to itself the right and duty to “solve” the world’s problems through diplomatic activism, as if bureaucrats and coercive negotiations delivered salvation. Germany’s foreign minister preaches about “the unbearable humanitarian situation” but does anyone ask who created and perpetuates the suffering in Gaza? The answer is the never-ending contest for collective control, clientelist aid and paternalistic interventions by all stripes of governments—Israeli, Hamas, and the international busybodies alike—who thrive on centralized authority. The “world is watching” only because these crises become spectacles for politicians to parade their moral posturing and extract legitimacy for ever-greater state involvement.

This international meddling, always couched in the language of concern, is the logic of Hayek’s fatal conceit in action: the belief that planners and diplomats can redesign societies for the better. But the very act of intervention—be it foreign aid, economic sanctions, or “peace talks”—undermines local knowledge, individual incentives, and voluntary cooperation. It entrenches power structures by picking winners, funding entrenched elites and warlords, and perpetuating cycles of dependency and violence. When the German minister calls for “leveraging relationships” and “pushing for progress,” he seeks only to assert Germany’s own bureaucratic ambitions under the guise of humanitarianism.

Nozick warned against the state’s expansionist drift—the “night-watchman” mutated into a global busybody claiming rights to shape outcomes anywhere by fiat. Wadephul’s insistence that “German involvement is essential” is an arrogant assertion of German taxpayers' resources and prestige to manipulate other people’s destinies. There is no principled basis for this meddling—no individual signed a contract permitting their lives or property to be used for geopolitical games. Parents, traders, and dissidents in Gaza are all reduced to pawns for multinational technocrats, treated as means, not ends in themselves.

Ayn Rand would see in this an outright denial of the rights of individuals to determine their own fate. “Pressure must be placed”—on Hamas, on Israel, on Qatar, on Turkey—everyone is to be threatened or cajoled by threats of sanctions, bribes of aid, or the promise of recognition by foreign powers who claim to own the diplomatic high ground. And all this while recognizing a Palestinian state is “rejected” unless it fits neoliberal bureaucratic blueprints, imposed by committees of states, not by the free association and sovereignty of individuals.

If we took liberty seriously, the proper stance is radical non-intervention: stop propping up governments, stop the aid flows that fund authoritarian factions, stop blocking trade and migration, and let people build their own lives free from the violent incompetence of states. True progress will never come through the top-down schemes of diplomats and ministries, but by dismantling the structures of control and letting each person act in their rational self-interest, forming networks of cooperation and exchange beyond the reach of any state. Stop meddling, relinquish power, and let freedom work.