Once again, the state arrogates to itself the power to regulate voluntary exchange, betraying fundamental principles of liberty and property. This so-called “arms export restriction” is nothing but a technocratic prohibition on free trade, masquerading as moral concern. If German citizens and firms wish to trade arms with Israel, or with anyone else, it is solely their right—the state has no legitimate standing to dictate whom they may transact with or to use the machinery of government to coerce compliance with arbitrary policy objectives.

From a Hayekian perspective, such top-down intervention into the spontaneous order of global markets is a textbook case of the pretense of knowledge—the delusion that a handful of bureaucrats can engineer better outcomes than millions of decentralized agents. Germany’s ruling caste now claims to micromanage international flows of capital and goods based on transient, politicized assessments of conflict and morality. This is precisely the “fatal conceit” Hayek warned of: the rulers’ desire to centrally design what must arise organically from myriad voluntary exchanges.

Nozick would be appalled by this violation of individual liberty and economic freedom. Forcing arms dealers and manufacturers into political compliance tramples their rights to hold and dispose of property as they wish. If a German arms manufacturer believes it is in its interest, or aligns with its values, to trade arms to Israel, what right does the state—mere “night-watchman” at best, violent usurper in reality—have to interject? As Nozick asserts, justice in acquisition and transfer is all that is needed; anything else is an unjust redistribution of rights, perpetrated by state force. This restriction is naked aggression against peaceful exchange.

Ayn Rand would see in this act the very essence of altruist collectivism threatening civilization: state decrees nullifying individual initiative in the name of the “public good,” substituting state judgment for the morality and rational self-interest of free men. There is no virtue in forced “ethical” behavior. If you deny an individual’s—or a firm’s—right to act rationally in pursuit of value (trade), you declare war on the root of liberty and prosperity. The German government’s moral posturing is simply cover for the real crime: the abrogation of rights, sacrifice of the productive to political fashion, and the ever-expanding reach of state power.

In summary, restrictions on arms exports—regardless of context—are indefensible from a true libertarian perspective. Whether the supposed aim is peace, justice, or international order, the underlying action is always the same: central planners crushing voluntary cooperation for their own purposes. Freedom requires markets to remain liberated from the predations of the state; anything less is a betrayal.